oh. ok i got it. sounds nice. might be useful for my game.
6 Likes
This update sounds enticing, but I’m left wishing for the ability to have more than four animation priorities. or even better, being able to make a custom list of priorities for any of my needs. Priorities are a simple solution that would drastically allow for easy and complex animation management with a new implementation. But for now, we’re left with weight managing.
5 Likes
This would be preferable. I pretty much always use the Action priority so that most of Roblox’s underlying character animations can’t affect our keyframes.
Which brings me to a BIG KERFUFFLE with this change.
If you happen to:
- Use Roblox’s default character animation scripts
- Use Tool objects in your game.
- Have animations that can be played while those Tool objects are held.
Then you’ll be inadvertently hit with the following issue:
Having only 4 priority levels isn’t enough to avoid layering conflicts with Roblox’s standard character animations. This needs to be addressed before Phase 2 is rolled out.
43 Likes
It’d be cool to see Priority as an actual number data type rather than an enum to give you more control over what animations should play and such, it’s kind of weird how it’s laid out with only like 4 different states, which, I think makes this confusing to have to address later down the road.
If you’re going to break games by rolling out improved features, please at least make it more approachable to fix.
13 Likes
We have had no issues with the animation system for 4 years, and yet, just like with the materials, here comes another, pointless update that nobody requested. It’s another case of Roblox trying to fix what wasn’t broken, and developers having to find janky solutions to clean up a mess which is not their own.
This has a negative impact on every existing game on the platform with no way to opt out and no simple solution to fix it. Pretty much every model which utilizes an animation system is now broken because of this silly “blending” system that I’m sure NOBODY finds convenient in the slightest. This is ridiculous, and I shouldn’t be forced to go back and update an absurd amount of animations when I’m already in the middle of working.
Please, consider making this opt-in, or just not changing it. It’s horrendous.
I’m seriously just going to quit development if you keep throwing curveballs at me like this.
I’ve been working on this project for 2 months and I’ve already had to spend weeks campaigning against the materials update, and now you’re out here pulling ANOTHER game-breaking update.
39 Likes
I have heard a lot of negative and positive conante on Roblox fixing the Animation Engine for the game. Could some explain to in detail on how this is bad/good because I quite don’t understand and would like more of an understanding because I do make emote animations in Roblox.
4 Likes
Refer to my post above, as well as CloneTrooper’s. It conflicts with tools as well as any form of animation stacking.
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Ok thanks I will definitely will check it out and give my feedback a bit later or later tomorrow thanks again.
4 Likes
Contrary to a good number of Roblox updates, this is actually a stellar update. It fixes a broken behaviour that developers should have never relied on and brings in optimisations for animations. The only problem that should be addressed before this update fully releases is that we need to be able to assign an arbitrary priority to animations. Four priorities doesn’t cut it and it never really has.
There have been various issues with the animation system though they’re in terms of other fields so this update gives us the satisfaction that engineers are paying close attention to the animation engine in order to bring us improvements. It needs to be clarified again, this is a good update. The only problem is being restricted to just four animation priorities.
It’s been specified that the behaviour was never intended so this is a proper fix, they aren’t doing this for the sake of trying to attach a solution to a nonexistent problem. I get that layering was never perceived as an unintended issue but this isn’t on Roblox. You have time to fix your animations and opt-out (during Phase 2) so that you can go and fix your animations.
This ain’t pointless at all. Now that you know this behaviour is unintended, you should go and fix your animations with the time up until the update goes live.
32 Likes
Ok so I agree that this is another one of Roblox’s updates where it’s not so necessary to it as the main/permanent fixture instead of an opt-in. From what I read and experienced as a part time animator is that there wasn’t really any big problems and hopefully Phase 2 will be reiterated. There is one thing that I would love to change, adding a system to the animation that can preform a specific type of animation like more towards a an angry and such but this update to change the way the animation works is very not useful. I hope I got this explaining right but yeah that’s what I got from this post and my ideas I shared thank you.
5 Likes
“Go and fix your animations.”
Yes, because I too would like to update 300 bloody animations on nine different rigs, and that’s just ONE of my projects! Screw me for having anything BETTER to do with my development time!
I’ve had enough of this platform. First they broke half of the games by making filteringenabled forced, and my group had to reprogram everything. Then they tried shoving new materials down our throat that would have ruined nearly every game on the site. Now, in the middle of everything, where I already have a project that I intended to have finished by July, I now have to update hundreds of animations to use priorities and risk incompatibility with an absurd amount of tools and other animations because they can’t stick to what works.
I’m done trying to use this incompetent platform.
Edit: What a surprise! It’s for Mobile performance boosts again! Screw the people with competent devices, right?
17 Likes
It’s not Roblox’s problem if you don’t want to learn current and best practices. I also work on a project with several hundred animations and more than 20 different rigs including of different sizes and makes (characters, enemy mobs and boss enemies). Go update your animations, you have 8+ weeks.
FilteringEnabled is also a behaviour that should’ve existed since the beginning, it’s industry standard and Roblox fell behind on that but caught up appropriately. Developers got years worth of time to migrate without it being forced so again it’s not their problem if you couldn’t be bothered to migrate and learn new practices with that time left.
Also your rage against mobile devices is unjustified. 75% of Roblox’s playerbase is mobile users so this update is beneficial for everyone. Calm down.
ETA (01/06/2023): This should’ve been said at the time too, but, it was never proper to set all of your animations to Action priority. With or without this update, that was bad practice, and developers should take note of this so they can avoid doing the same in the future.
26 Likes
Developers should not have to take responsibility, go back, and change already pre-existing work just because Roblox neglected to fix an oversight from nearly a decade ago until now, especially after that oversight has essentially become standard.
It might not be Roblox’s problem, but it’s another problem for many developers, and just because you are completely fine to go back and change your work doesn’t mean that everyone else is.
17 Likes
I’m supposed to be finishing this project and then moving onto college. I do not have the time to not only complete what was working, but then go back and start fixing crap AGAIN when I had other projects I intended to move onto. It’s absolutely ridiculous that Roblox will just push game-breaking updates like this with zero respect for games that don’t get updated anymore.
FilteringEnabled is an industry standard, that was gamebreaking, and although it was an annoyance, it was at least within reason and ultimately beneficial for everyone.
It’s not unjustified. The fact that Roblox is going to completely remove the old functionality at all is totally unnecessary and a frustration. Instead of keeping this as an opt-in or opt-out, they intend to remove it and make everyone conform to this new change, so screw your schedule, screw what you have to work on besides this, now we just have to waste weeks slaving away in a painfully organized animation editor shifting priorities only to find more problems and have to start reuploading everything all over again.
This is literally us being required to fix what is not broken, which we did not break. If Roblox is going to keep breaking the things I work on, I’m never going to get anything done because I don’t have the security of knowing, “Hey, this is done!”
I have made so many rigged models over the years, with over 50+ animations on each. I would have to literally go back and reupload every single one of those animations for each one, with a different priority, and hope to god that they aren’t going to conflict with something else. Not to mention I now have to modify the transition time to look right again as well.
If we assume I have 20 rigged models (and I KNOW I have more), and then assume each one has 50 animations, I would literally have to track down and reupload one thousand individual animations MANUALLY. Does that not seem RIDICULOUS for someone who’s already trying to work on the IMPORTANT parts of a game? All for the sake of a mobile performance boost? Seriously? I want to remind you that the same excuse of a mobile performance boost was Roblox’s justification for removing the old materials before the ABSURD amount of backlash.
18 Likes
Yeah I gotta say this seems like really screwed up priorities. Completely changing the Priority property should be the number one priority before these changes are released. I mean, come on man! 4 enums to use for animation priorities? How is that supposed to work?
At least make it a number data type instead of enums. I don’t understand why that wasn’t changed yet, considering how stuff like ZIndex functions.
14 Likes
Roblox is giving advance notice that this behaviour is changing and giving us a good amount of time to migrate. One period with opt-in, one period with opt-out and an unknown time where the old behaviour gets removed. I think they gave pretty good notice personally.
I understand that some old practices have become standard and it’s not necessarily convenient for everyone to migrate that fast (even though most projects have good time to do so) but some changes do happen that way and it’s good for you to migrate anyhow. We don’t know if there were technical limitations that prevented the oversight from being fixed to begin with, so you can’t necessarily chalk it up to intentional neglect. They’ve had it on their agenda and they got to it.
6 Likes
Four enums, countless amounts of conflicting priorities, a “blending” system that looks more like a single messed up animation than a proper combination, and literal thousands of animations that all have to be manually, meticulously, individually reuploaded by hand. You consider this even REMOTELY reasonable?
9 Likes
Feel free to re-review my post:
I never said I didn’t agree that four animation priorities was appropriate. It hasn’t and still doesn’t cut it. That’s why I feel it’s appropriate to address the ability to have arbitrary priorities before this is fully pushed out.
5 Likes
If this is going to be pushed out to begin with, it needs to first be friendly to the pre-existing animations. Even if more priorities get added, we’re STILL going to have to reupload thousands of animations just to fix the countless problems this is going to introduce. Again, forget old games whose developers have left! Not important, right?
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My view is that this update is very reasonable and helps the ROBLOX team push more great features in the future.
The creator of this thread already said priorities will be given an overhaul, this is super new and will change how many games work, making things ultimately simpler and will make developers jobs(like mine especially, i absolutely adore the priority changes coming to have more than 4) MUCH easier in the long run.
With your animations, if you have to upload thousands of animations because of a fix for what was ultimately a bug in the engine, you may want to re-consider how you’re doing what you are doing, because it’s probably either the wrong way, or a much better way exists…
Interesting sonic game, by the way! Haven’t seen many sonic fangames on the platform so far so it’ll be a very refreshing concept to see when it’s eventually done.
9 Likes