The RBL-PHNiX Engine is a case maker made onto ROBLOX, “the largest user-generated content site in videogames ...generating over 3.5 billion page views and 62 million total engagement hours each month”[1]. Developing on ROBLOX sacrifices precise emulation, but allows for the possibility of cross-platform play (PC, Mac and iOS) & cloud saves, along with full 3D graphics. The RBL-PHNiX Engine was made to introduce the Ace Attorney series to a new audience (the ROBLOX community) while still satisfying existing fans of the series.

Functions
The RBL-PHNiX Engine currently supports:

~Basic Court Functions & Phases (Testimony, Cross-Examination, Present)
~Other functions, camera shaking, camera panning (camera functions in 3D environment).
~Image examination functions

Upcoming and planned functions include:

~SAVING, arguably the most important feature in the series.
~Investigation support is already in development and will be supported soon.
~Psyche-Locks
~Additional courtroom functions (add testimony statments, etc.)
~Court Record “Check” functionality on 3D models.
~Character animations (waiting on official ROBLOX support)
~The addition of some features introduced in Dual Destinies-- including some 3D ones (w/o the 3D screen).

Availability & Customizing
At this time, the RBL-PHNiX Engine is closed for outside developments (other than my own). I had initially planned on making a closed platform (much like Ace Attorney Online) where I would make an editor and people can publish cases to me after checking for any explicit or harmful content. As such, the engine was built to minimize customizing (as players shouldn’t have been able to access the engine source directly).

After I release my own fangame (and a time afterwards), I will eventually make the engine open source.

ROBLOX’s Benefits & Limitations
As previously mentioned, ROBLOX has a few benefits:

~Compatibility with PCs, Macs, iOS devices (and in the future, Android devices).
~Persistent Cloud Saves (available cross-platform)
~3D Graphics
~As of September 25, 2013, you can upload sounds (that are moderated).
~Spritesheet support (for GUIs, and other on-screen elements)

As well, ROBLOX has its limitations. Among these are:

~No video or gif support
~ROBLOX’s guidelines limit creative potential. (No profanity, etc.)
~Inability to upload sounds (albiet, the engine is partially supported by ROBLOX: they kindly uploaded Phoenix’s three shouts).
~Music is not native. However, someone reversed engineered MIDIs to allow them to be played on ROBLOX using pre-uploaded sounds by getting the Hexadecimal value of the MIDI.
~At this time, you cannot play any ROBLOX game offline.
~All submitted graphics must go through ROBLOX’s moderators.
~Inability to upload custom meshes; however, there are a whole plethora of hats to make TF2 jealous. You must use the meshes ROBLOX uploaded or build a model brick, by brick.

Developing/Playing a Fancase
The prerequisite to developing or playing a fancase on my engine is to download and install the ROBLOX Player and ROBLOX Studio (along with a third-party browser extension/plug-in). Rest assured, the applications are entirely safe and community content has the inability to access ROBLOX's core functions. If there's anything to worry about, it's the advertisements on the site. Nothing that a little bit of AdBlock wouldn't fix, eh?

Coding
The engine is based on ROBLOX Lua, often shortened as “RBX.Lua”, which is a slightly modified version of the Lua programming language. You only need to know the basics of Lua to program cases onto the RBL-PHNiX Engine. Additionally, understanding a bit of JSON is ideal, but not AT ALL required (it's mostly for the occasional table).

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Last edited by JoTS on Sun Nov 10, 2013 5:00 am, edited 4 times in total.

Interesting case-maker, it's a novel idea. However, I'm wary of installing required 3rd-party plugins from the site, so I'll have to pass...but the character models look really interesting and out there! Good luck with this :)

Oh yeah, that's probably something I should address in the main post.

If you want to avoid the plugin, I believe you can use Internet Explorer... then again, no one should have to suffer and use Internet Explorer. :P Either way, you'd have to install the ROBLOX Player in order to try out the case.

Anyways, thanks!

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