Compatibility replacing Legacy on 17th of June 2019

[ConvexRumbler]

Update: Legacy was removed, all games set in Legacy are now running in Compatibility.

Hello Developers

As announced previously in this thread: Deprecating Lighting.Legacy, Introducing Lighting.Compatibility, we are going to force all remaining games running in the Legacy mode into Compatibility at:

— 17th of June 2019 around 10am PST —

What will happen exactly:

• Legacy will disappear from Studio as an option.
• Any legacy games opened in Studio will get converted to Compatibility.
• Every published game that is in Legacy mode will start running as Compatibility.
• Any content in Voxel or ShadowMap mode will remain untouched by this change.

Please visit the topic linked in the top for more information and reasoning behind this step.

Hopefully with the shadow maps being released, all of you are excited to leave Legacy behind and enter the future, that is so bright

[BakonBot]

Any content in Voxel or ShadowMap mode will remain untouched by this change.

Does this mean ShadowMap will possibly be released by then

[TerrodactyI]

enter the future, that is so bright

Yes!

I hope that the various issues I filed will be fixed by v17.

And this issue which prevents v16 from ever working again.

[bubbley552]

ShadowMap is already here it seems

EDIT: My bad, it only works in studio.

[TerrodactyI]

They mean online. Right now it’s only supported in Studio.

[TheRings0fSaturn]

Another instance of an update being rushed out.

I’d rather see all of the bugs present with Voxel & Compatibility, which has been posted by myself & various other developers, be fixed first before Legacy is killed off, rather than allowing several bugs be present.

The over compensation for Compatibility and under compensation for Voxel seriously needs to be looked into before the 9th of May.

Materials look washed out & honestly lose most if not all of their sharpness while running Voxel or Compatibility.

[ConvexRumbler]

I think we have addressed most of the issues. If you have got concrete example of legacy->compatibility switch being game breaking… or just making it really ugly, please send it to me in PM or post it to this forum:

Deprecating Lighting.Legacy, Introducing Lighting.Compatibility

Hello Developers What are we doing? Deprecating and later removing Lighting.Legacy, which will be replaced with Lighting.Compatibility. What is Compatibility Compatibility mode simulates our Legacy mode within new engine code (Voxel mode and further), with minimal changes in the engine code and 0 changes in shaders. It’s purpose is to approximate legacy, but not simulate it perfectly. Your game may not look perfectly the same in Compatibility, but it should be playable. Basically compatibili…

[4D_X]

The future is here m8s!

[OldBo5]

Cya later Legacy, and hello future, that is so bright!

[LoganboyInCO]

Well yes ShadowMap is already here but its changes are not visible yet in game, ShadowMap only works in Studio as of now.

Edit: ShadowMap now shows changes in game.

[Jaguar515_YT]

From the Deprecating Light.Legacy, Introducing Lighting.Compatibility post that I made:

Been noticing this warning in my game, and it redirects here. When is exactly the date when Lighting.Technology = Legacy deprecated?

Thanks for the date of the deprecation.

[kingerman88]

I would love if roblox could keep all their old items, it does put pressure on developers to keep their game up to date with roblox’s updates. However, roblox has to get rid of older features to bring in new features to keep performance high. Now I will say it does not take a powerful computer to run roblox, but it keeps it accessible for everyone.

[qqtt991]

Legacy is being removed because it is not nicely compatible with the new lighting system and is iirc just spliced in as a special case. It’s not sustainable to keep it.

[Hexcede]

Loadstring is a function which loads code from a string. Roblox removed the ability for developers to use this in client scripts. If they left this function in, the client would need to have code to create Lua from a string allowing an exploiter to simply run this code and now run any Lua they want.

This is similar but it has different intentions which aren’t security related. Roblox has Legacy which is a lighting system which is less realistic and less performant. Currently, Roblox needs to have all of the code to run Legacy, Compatibility, Voxel, etc and they need to be able to change the code the client uses at runtime. That means the client is doing a lot of extra work.

Roblox’s goal is to only use one method of rendering so they can in the end give us better performance, and keep their code clean. It’s a tradeoff: More work for us to adapt our games, but in the end we get better performance, more realistic graphics, and Roblox can continue to grow.

For a platform to survive there needs to be change and this is what we’re seeing. Roblox does need to “keep removing everything” because if they didn’t the engine would be a cluttered, laggy mess and we would be missing tons of features we have today, and the engine would be held back by these old features

[LoganWallace25]

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but apparently theres a ~5% performance tax for keeping both legacy and voxel.

Thats pretty significant.

[Elttob]

If they left this function in, the client would need to have code to create Lua from a string allowing an exploiter to simply run this code and now run any Lua they want.

Hackers don’t need loadstring, they can just insert their own local scripts.

Roblox does need to “keep removing everything” because if they didn’t the engine would be a cluttered, laggy mess and we would be missing tons of features we have today, and the engine would be held back by these old features

This however is spot on. imho legacy kinda sucks anyway, from an aesthetic standpoint.

[TheRings0fSaturn]

Here’s an example:

Legacy:

Compatibility:

Voxel:

As you can see, Voxel & Compatibility both causes color to be lost or sent through the roof. Both look ugly in outside environments, and I feel like both are only good for internal environments.

This could also be fixed with new specular highlights, but this honestly looks way too ugly to be forced onto developers.

[Elttob]

Being completely honest, I think your criticism is disproportionate. 99% of players would not even notice in that example, me included, and I’m a complete nerd when it comes to colour and colour theory. It’s not ever going to be completely accurate so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[TheRings0fSaturn]

Just look at how much more “modern” Voxel looks.

Using Modern because a lot of modern games use washed out colors.

[Elttob]

Using Modern because a lot of modern games use washed out colors.

You got me there

But in all seriousness, the difference is very slight at best. Especially considering the target audience for many games on Roblox is for a younger audience, I doubt they’ll lose sleep over this as much as you seem to imply:

Another instance of an update being rushed out.

It would definitely be good to fix these issues but I wouldn’t say they’ve rushed anything out at all. They’ve worked on Future is Bright for a very long time, and they’ve planned this a long time coming.