Introduction
As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to create effective optimizations for our games due to the extremely limited amount of graphic options. If this issue is addressed, it will improve my development experience by allowing players to customize how they want to view the game, and allow lower-end devices to play easily.
While there is a reason it’s not already in games, the sole argument of performance being affected doesn’t really suffice in some cases, especially if it’s only modifiable via the client. Not to mention it can be changed in studio, while play testing with basically zero issues. Lighting technology is something that can be pretty graphic-intense, so if we could prompt the users for what lighting technology they would like to use, it could allow low-end device users to easily play without sacrificing performance.
Cases & Proposal
Really, the only graphics options we can provide to the users is CastShadow. You could create your own graphics settings by using magnitude checks and destroying the parts if the user is a certain distance from it. The issue is that this is simply not enough, especially with lighting technology being one of the main issues for performance, as well as some developers not being experienced enough to create advanced systems like that.
In one of the few games that creates their own graphics options, Welcome to Bloxburg, the developer has said that you must use another device if yours can’t handle it. If an alternative device isn’t available, tough luck! You can’t play.
With my own firsthand experience, having graphic-intense builds in this game, with my graphics at 1, I still experience lots of lag; both mobile and computer, keep in mind that I own fairly up-to-date devices. This lag would be reduced if we were given the option to change lighting via LocalScripts.
Conclusion
To revisit my points, I would like to create a brief summary to my points:
1- We have an extremely limited amount of graphic options to give users, these options are sometimes not enough.
2- Many games could, in theory, benefit from this feature.
3- Lighting technology can significantly reduce lag as some technologies are extremely graphic intense
Thank you for reading my proposal!