It’s frustrating when Roblox removes legacy lighting settings, like ShadowMap and Compatibility. Those settings are part of what made classic Roblox games so memorable. They had this unique, low-fi look that’s just hard to recreate with today’s high-fidelity options.
For developers who want to build games with that classic, nostalgic vibe, the removal of these settings feels like a restriction. Not every game needs to look super realistic. Some of us are actually aiming for that old-school feel because it connects us to the past and to why we loved Roblox in the first place.
Instead of taking these choices away, Roblox should keep the old settings as an option. Let us decide what’s best for our games. If we want that retro, classic Roblox atmosphere, we should have the tools to create, I’ve even made the Job for you roblox. Check this out
Honestly, bringing back the old lighting options in Roblox shouldn’t be that hard. Roblox already had those settings built and running for years, so why not just make them optional? Like, just add a toggle or a setting so developers can pick between the classic lighting and the new realistic one.
A lot of people want that classic Roblox vibe for their games. The old lighting adds a specific nostalgic feel that just can’t be recreated with modern settings. So instead of forcing every game to look super realistic, Roblox could just let us decide what style fits our games best.
Adding back legacy lighting options would make Roblox feel more open to different styles, instead of pushing us all in one direction. Let people create what they want whether that’s an old-school look or a modern one. Just give us the choice!
Even the Event Classic in Roblox made us think we could relive that nostalgia. Firstly, it generated a lot of money for you, Roblox developers, so let’s not deny that.
If there were ever votes for it, it would get the Majority of Players Inside it.
why
legacy was removed in favor of compatibility
now compatibility is being removed in favor of voxel
then what voxel is being removed in favor of shadowmap?
we need legacy back
Yes, roblox Devloppers. I don’t think it’s hard for YOU to make a Options where you can Select this
Who cares about IRL Physics Just break the Fourth Wall already.
im already trying to recreate legacy somehow with compatibility just to realize all my efforts going to waste cause they’re sunsetting the lighting. this is sad for me.
Why not you just provide examples of your lighting problems? Do you realize that all brightness clamp does is limit how bright it can get, so theoretically you can just lower the brightness and it would look same. Are you trolling or what?
Making the top part thicker allowed you to darken or lighten the shadow intensity, which you no longer can. Now it’s either dark shadows or none at all.
Best pray some day these shadows can be altered again, as there’s currently no lighting setting that actually does change opacity - possibly depending on the part and its (size) properties
this is now my suggestion, could you make an effect which limits how much light be in one place? (like compatibility) or something similar (like eyes adjusting)?
i meant brightness clamp, like a property in Lighting instance which immediately affects all light sources and when light reaches the limit, it then affects it’s range. and if possible, to make a property which allows the size of the roof or BasePart affect how dark is in that area, like in Compatibility, because I believe merging old features and new features can introduce something greater which allows developers to make even better games.
i have another suggestion, which are colored shadows and colored light rays, so like, when light rays goes through transparent (BasePart.Transparency<1) then it gets colored. i ask this so i could improve realism of my game. and for shadows, could you do color and transparency of it so i could recreate roblox experience from 2010s. thank you!
Frankly you seem to be pretty uneducated on why options like Compatibility or Legacy were taken out off the engine in the first place.
Please read the statements made by the former engineer who was on the team that removed Legacy in favor of Compatibility, back in 2019. He goes pretty in-depth as to why your proposal is unfeasable:
I am also the only developer behind a game that has an old roblox aesthetic and was built from the ground-up using Compatibility (mostly because, when I started back work on it in 2022, I was conviced by people like you to believe Compatibility looked more “retro”). I managed to adapt all of the lighting of my game to the new system in less than an hour (I mostly spent time toning down very bright Lights).
You can’t possibly justify clogging up the Roblox client with useless features like Legacy lighting because someone on a YouTube Short told you old Roblox was better.
Old games looking bad come from the fact that Compatibility (and Legacy) were fundamentally primitive and people had to adapt to the awful resources they had using hacky workarounds. This isn’t good practice, your projects shouldn’t be built on “hacky workarounds” even if that’s what you’re used to.
During the development of my game, I was faced with issues after more issues because of Compatibility’s showing age (and technical debt since it was supposed to replace Legacy). Once you take on an actual serious project, you will quickly realize how bad Compatibility actually was.
Additionally, you can pretty much still achieve “the old Roblox look” without having such an inherently bad system clogging up the engineer’s jobs at Roblox (again, I migrated my game and nothing changed but the lighting being easier to work with and looking more reliable and consistent).
I’m not writing this specifically for you (although I found it so funny you started the petition), but rather for the 10s of other people on this thread complaining about similar things you’re putting on the table here. We can do better, guys - let’s not get stuck in some romanticized version of the past.
