Crossroads is a classic BrickBattle game developed by early Roblox staff members and published under the Roblox account. Crossroads contains several common BrickBattle weapons, like the Sword and Rocket Launcher. Crossroads was also Roblox's first true multiplayer game.
In December 2009, the place was re-designed into a winter-land to celebrate Christmas. The theme remained for approximately two months after Christmas until it was reverted to the normal environment.
In July 2011, Crossroads was updated with a new teleporter, as a part of the new teleportation feature. Crossroads typically receives 12,000 visits per week. This used to be the most popular game created by Roblox, now overtaken by Welcome to ROBLOX Building, which receives around 120,000 visits per week. On November 1, 2012, the user, Games created a remake titled Roblox Battle that Crossroads is one of the playable maps in Roblox Battle. As of November 2012, it is uncopylocked.
The game reached the decline stage since the peak of 2014, leaving the game with 0-10 users each server; it was taken down completely around September 12, 2017, but has since been returned, now using AfterEffects, dynamic lighting, and FilteringEnabled. The takedown was most likely due to FilteringEnabled concerns, hence how FilteringEnabled is now on.
As of May 5, 2019, the game has revamped its thumbnail and has up to 25 players online at peak times. A remastered version, created by GFink, has become more popular, earning several million visits.
Gameplay[]
Photo of Crossroads circa 2011
There is no specific objective of the game, although it is almost always used as a free-for-all BrickBattle arena.
The tools available include:
- Sword: A LinkedSword that is good for very close ranges.
- Rocket Launcher: Fires slow rockets that can instantly kill a player or destroy their limbs. It can also destroy buildings.
- Bomb: Detonates after a few seconds that can instantly kill a player or destroy buildings.
- Slingshot: A spammable weapon that fires slingshot balls. Great at close range.
- Superball: Can be thrown at ridiculous speeds to greatly injure a player and knock them down.
- Trowel: Can create a wall to block Superballs, Bombs, and Rockets. It can also be used to help climb places.
- Paintball Gun: Can shoot paintballs for damage and to paint blocks.
The baseplate is divided into four areas: the Blackrock Castle, the Thieve's Den, the Lost Temple, and the Tower. Each of these quarters has a team beacon, which if touched, will either heal the player and color their torso and legs or kill the player if they have touched another beacon. All four areas regenerate for a certain amount of time.
History[]
Crossroads possibly had multiple prototypes before it was fully released in July 2006 as Brick Battle.[1] Throughout the game's entire existence, Crossroads has always been intended for multiplayer functionality, and the earliest documentations show mock-ups of this feature.
The original release of Crossroads was created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in June 2006. It was in three sections:
- Playground: A typical house (later a Hospital) with a classic playground set that would later be used in the Happy Home in Robloxia. The original version in June had no red cross, plus some minor differences.
- Castle: A castle gate with two towers, originally seen in Castle Destruction by Erik Cassel.
- Overhead Ramp: On the northwestern side of the map, there was a green ramp that matched with the baseplate.
The original release of Crossroads dated July 14, 2006. This release date does not connect with how long the game was developed, and contradicts Shedletsky's memories of how state of the art the game was in Late June 2006. There is a game that looks exactly like this that dates back to June 22, 2006, called Community Building Site.
Originally a showcase/construction map in Mid June 2006, Crossroads would eventually evolve into a fighting game after Shedletsky joined Roblox.
A player visiting Crossroads had the option to choose between three weapons/tools, which include the Rocket Launcher, the Slingshot, and the Move Tool.
Contrary to popular belief, Crossroads was not the first multiplayer Roblox game, that honor goes to jk323's Place. However, Crossroads may have been in development along with this place.
According to Shedletsky, when he first joined Roblox, David and Erik were struggling to create Crossroads to its fullest extent. Revisions after Shedletsky's joining will improve Crossroads significantly. One of John's prototypes for a future Crossroads revision was made later in June, and re-released as My First ROBLOX Level.
The first updated version of Crossroads released.
In Late July 2006, an update was released to Crossroads which added more features, such as an area for free bricks, the Trowel tool, and a tower, which was first seen in Shedletsky's planned revision.[2] The castle also got a new wing.
In August, a watch tower was added in the area with the castle. Later that month, the Thieve's Den was added to the area where the free bricks once were. Behind the Thieve's Den blue walls were added to the sides. The weapons/tools had their code remastered with the addition of the Superball and Timebomb. A leaderboard was added which counted your knockouts and wipeouts.
Crossroads in Late August 2006.
In Late August, almost the entirety of Crossroads was revamped. Blackrock Castle replaced the area where the castle and watch tower once stood and the Lost Temple replaced the hospital and play area.
At the start of September, Crossroads started to look much like what it is now, with the large tower at Blackrock Castle being removed and the Lost Temple having larger hills and a lookout tower, plus a rotating spinner.
Team beacons were added for team fighting, but never had any real function. If you touched a beacon after you got in contact with another one, it would kill you. The game was not really considered to be a team place, even after proper teams were added.
In March 2007, Crossroads received an update which removed the large blue walls, added a new skybox with a day-night cycle, added billboards, a trampoline by the tower, and replacing the HopperBins with functioning Tools with handles.
The game was moved to the Roblox account in May 2007. The Sword and Paintball Gun tools were added on the same day.
During the Disney XD promotion in 2010, Crossroads was removed to make way for a Disney XD skating place, causing great panic and anger within the community. It later returned after the promotion ended.
Shedletsky Reminiscing About Crossroads[]
"For the time being, I am more or less the designer and maintainer of all official Roblox levels. But it wasn’t always this way. I joined the Roblox team just as they were rolling out the first multiplayer Roblox level - a very early version of Crossroads. This version featured a castle made by Erik and a white house and playground constructed by Builderman. There were two weapons: the slingshot and the rocket launcher. I remember the first time we noticed a user, “dergenx”, actually playing our game, everyone on the team got on and played with him for an hour. It was very exciting. Since the original Crossroads was published, it has been added onto many times as we push the state of the art forward. I took over managing the official maps soon after the first version of Crossroads was released."[3]
Trivia[]
This section is a trivia section. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections of the article.
- It was intended to be a team-based game through team beacons, however, the team feature wasn't introduced until 2007.
- Crossroads was one of the most heavily exploited places on Roblox. Occasionally, objects that would not typically belong to the game may be present, such as random colors appearing on the screen or an orb for manipulating a server, which indicated that the server with said items has been compromised. The FilteringEnabled update to Crossroads which was given to Roblox by CloneTrooper1019 seems to have alleviated this, although some players still manage to use newer exploits on it.
- Crossroads is one of the oldest assets to exist on Roblox, observed by the extremely low ID of 1818. The game was originally hosted on the arena account before the May 2007 multiplayer update.
- The modern version of Crossroads was created sometime in March 2007; this version of Crossroads was meant to represent the original, "true" vision Shedletsky had.
- Classic: Crossroads is the only game on the official Roblox account which can be played to this day (however, many of the other official Roblox account games are uncopylocked and may be played via Roblox Studio).
Gallery[]
.png "Crossroads.PNG (1).png (1.38 MB)")
- ↑ (n.d.) . Roblox Forum Archive. Archived from the original on April 13, 2023.
- ↑ (n.d.) . Roblox Forum Archive. Archived from the original on April 13, 2023.
- ↑ (n.d.) . ROBLOX Blog. Archived from the original on December 14, 2006.