As a Roblox developer, it is currently hard to design your game around allowing for local multiplayer and it is impossible to have local multiplayer with independent characters. I have designed one game which had local multiplayer as a possibility but it was very limited. Local multiplayer on Xbox with a split-screen functionality would be a step in the right direction with allowing friends and siblings to play Roblox together on the same device. The Xbox is also the only platform that Roblox is on right now which guarantees enough power to be able to handle the job of rendering two separate images. I also only see split-screen working on console compared to pc or mobile.
If Roblox were to add local multiplayer support for Xbox(and whatever consoles Roblox may be on later this year), I believe that would greatly increase the joy some players get out of playing Roblox. This would also help developers to make their game more entertaining for their audiences. Of course, some small details such as the ability to do vertical, horizontal, quad splits or no multiplayer screen splitting at all would have to be implemented so developers have more control over their games as well as some way to detect if the game is currently split and how. These would all be necessary to make split-screen multiplayer as smooth and fun as possible. Of course, I see this being a really big challenge for Roblox if they decide to do it, but I believe it would definitely be worth it.
Roblox has support already for handling input of multiple controllers, so really all it needs would be the ability to have multiple Camera objects that each account for a portion of the screen.
I wouldn’t want it to force split-screen though when multiple controllers are present, because there are certain situations where having a single screen for all characters works out great (think recent Lego games, Smash/fighter games, etc).
I wouldn’t mind having the split-screen / multi-camera feature on Desktop as well. The devices may not always be powerful enough, but it would be nice to have the option available for players that do.
I agree with what Thomas said about dual view points all it needs.
Having said that, local multiplayer isn’t what Roblox is about, and all the uses for it are fairly niche. I want the ability to have multiple camera objects for different parts of the screen, but split screen play seems like a waste of dev time to me.
I think a feature like this would have even more functionality than just local multiplayer; a split camera object would be nice to have for many different things. For instance, displaying a vehicle customization menu while also spectating other players racing. I would definitely find a use for this. I also like how the gui on your example can cross between the two viewports. It’s in the middle and keeps the devs from having to script 2 of them
So since one of the most popular hack-week projects was a multi-cam API I’m going to bump this thread just to reinforce the point that a multi-cam API would be a game-changer.
At this point, something like this would be very great. Most people on Xbox rely on local player, so with this feature, it would be a great path for expanding the Xbox player base. I do hope that this is considered, if it hasn’t already.
I’m the PM working on Xbox, and just wanted to say thanks for all the feedback. Ill try to get through these threads one by one so that everyone gets the benefit of my answers, but from a big picture perspective, we are really looking into investing in improving Xbox this year, both from a performance and a usability perspective.
At the moment, our current focus is improving the apps performance and usability. Local Multiplayer isnt on our roadmap today given other pressing console needs, but we will take this request into consideration.
