Creator Roadmap - AMA with Nick and Tian [Oct 4, 2023]

Will there ever be a time that we can sell models, audios, decals, etc and not just plugins on the Roblox marketplace for Robux? Iā€™d love to be able to sell asset packs, and other similar things in an easy to get to place.

Thanks!

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I want to start by saying: thank you for the announced changes to the creator marketplace. I remember mentioning this to you at RDC but it bears repeating. The changes you announced are huge and solve long-standing issues. Iā€™m sure I speak for the entire community when I say that these changes are much appreciated.

The questions:

  1. A large portion of the creator base (teenagers) likely do not have control over a bank account of their own. If developers are required to cash out to a bank account before purchasing development goods with fiat, this could be a problem. Can revenue earned on-platform be used for buying plugins and other development goods, without having to go via a bank account?
  2. In my recent video, I run some numbers on plugin dev wages. Part of the reason why the old marketplace didnā€™t make business sense was not just the bureaucracy, but also because creators were compelled to match the prices of others, who tended to price too low. How do you plan to help keep pricing in the creator marketplace sustainable and livable for creators?
  3. Also - Iā€™m enthusiastic - when can we get it? Iā€™m itching for it!
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Hi!

How does Roblox plan to address security and safety concerns around requiring its developers to verify their accounts with phone numbers and IDs? It seems like theyā€™re only being added to more and more features.

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Hello,

I would like to know how the Accessory Adjustment Tool is going to work. Will it allow you to position the accessories by using tools similar to how you move and scale parts in studio?

Thanks,
@sirvko

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Hello! I have two questions

Can we have an update on Android Future is Bright? The creator roadmap says mid 2023.

Secondly - when will games have access to user uploaded videos? Iā€™d love to have users display their videos in my experience!

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Hello Nick & Tian! :smile: :wave:

A question about ā€œRoblox Connectā€, which was announced and showcased at RDC.

Will Roblox Connect support groups (group calls w/ multiple people)? Something similar to popular communication applications, so users donā€™t have to rely on third-party applications, or roblox VC for in-game communication.

Thank you in advance! :heart_hands:

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This is a bit of a technical question so it probably wonā€™t get answered but ā€“ is the redesigned Studio based on QT 6? or is it still QT 5? Maybe based on a completely different framework? Asking this because most of Studioā€™s issues (especially the issues with hidpi displays and docking) seem to arise from the fact that itā€™s still on QT 5

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Hi Nick & Tian, love these AMAs!

With the announcement of the Banning API at this last RDC, I am curious to learn more about it.
Specifically, whether or not this is a combination of internal Lua APIs (like Player:Kick()) and a web panel for developers, like in developer stats.

If there is a web panel involved, is it planned for it to be customizable for who can access/manage bans?

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Are there any plans dealing with restrictive nature of environment aspects, such as lights, skybox, and post processing?

The lighting currently suffers a lot from the following aspects i found:

  • No way to adjust attenuation (basically the curve at which the light energy dissipates over distance)
  • Cannot go over the light range of 60 studs, which makes it infuriating to light up large places
  • Specular factor control (basically how much specular a light gives off to the surfaces)
  • Spotlight shape softness

As for the skybox:

  • No way to add a dedicated night skybox or make it procedural (although atmosphere instance exists, it doesnt provide that much of the functionality)
  • Cannot adjust skyboxā€™s energy for either day or night (basically how bright that skybox is)

And for post-processing:

  • Not much effects to play with.
    • I really donā€™t know how to describe this but UIā€™s and just in general we lack the effects that would enhance visuals of the game like for example sharpening or RGB split, or maybe dithering and noise overlay. We canā€™t blend UIā€™s either.

Sorry if this all seems poorly worded, if clarification is needed, I can answer those

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Are there any plans to allow developers to use different material variants for terrain simultaneously? Currently, you are limited to using only one variant of each material for the entire game. Additionally, will you also enable us to paint the 3D grass over any material, rather than just the grass material?

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Will we see anything related to GUI API?


Examples:

  • Pixel color at screen point
  • Invert/Mirror images/UI elements (via negative size) (Especially ViewportFrame)
  • UI render effects (such as blur)
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First off, thanks for trying to improve clarity and community communication. I think itā€™s essential to try and get feedback from everybody, and Iā€™m glad to see if starting to happen more. As for the questions, I only have a few basic ones (mostly relating to UI design):

  1. Will we ever be able to expect a native Figma importer solution? Now that VSCode support is being added along with Git, I think something to allow us to make UI in Figma or other tools such as Adobe XD is past due. Iā€™m using a 3rd party plugin at the moment which is half broken, Iā€™d love official support.

  2. Are there any plans to add long missing UI features, such as ImageBlur, Acrylic, and precise UIcorner editing?

  3. With the new VideoFrames, will we be able to use them inside of ScreenGuis? (Ignore this if it already exists, I havenā€™t been able to use it yet)

  4. Are there any plans allow the upload of .gif files?

  5. How much of a priority is it to improve Hyperion to patch more exploits which lead to executors/injectors continuing to work?

  6. With the Studio redesign in ā€œearly 2024ā€, will it add improved UX over the current Stufio? Will it address long standing bugs?

Thatā€™s all I have for now, thanks for doing one of these once again.

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Hello there,

With the upcoming release of customizable grass height, does this also mean we will be able to have different grass heights in different areas? For example, the left side of the map has short grass, while the right side has tall grass. Additionally, will we ever be able to change the texture of the grass in the near future?

Thank you.

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Hello Nick and Tian, thanks for hosting this AMA!

I was wondering what the plans are for DynamicImage and DynamicMesh, is there any estimation for a release date or for some kind of announcement surrounding those two? Iā€™m really looking forward to it, Iā€™ve had a lot of fun testing them out but I would love to be able to use them in a real game!

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Any plans for actually expanding the engine past the current limitations and issues it has right now? Right now itā€™s very hard to see a future in witch ROBLOX can allow the creation of large, detailed and complex experiences without running into heavy performance issues and engine limitations. While you guys will often praise showcase experiences (like most of roblox), itā€™s pretty clear that those experiences somehow suffer from performance issues while not really offering a visual fidelity more advanced than what could be seen on something like Crysis 1 (2007 AAA game) while even STILL having an area of exploration 50 by 50 studs at BEST. Other games that do try to offer higher visual fidelities, larger worlds, etcā€¦ often have to rely on hacky optimization tricks that can easily chip away at the games quality in an attempt to make the unreasonably low performance engine take away resources. Another issue i have seen with the ROBLOX engine (and that will continue to be accentuated) would be the fact that the engine itself keeps getting more and more bloated with new features that are forced to have baked into their games regardless of not those features will ever be used. I do not believe simply having a ā€œDisableā€ button is enough as even THEN those features will be present in memory and still take away some valuable resources regardless.

With all of this, i personally do not believe ROBLOX itself can go too far without tripping over most obstacles due to the lack of a proper game engine. Would there be any chance of the ROBLOX engine getting a major ā€œrewriteā€ or something similar (in order to alleviate the issues it has right now)? Would there be any chance for ROBLOX themselves to take a more ā€œmodularā€ and ā€œopenā€ approach with the engine so developers have way more access to everything? While i do understand that opening the engine up would leave the chance for many bad actors to create many relatively ā€œharmfulā€ experiences, i personally believe that these sorts of risks have to be taken in order to elevate the engine AND the developer space to higher grounds for a better future.

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Hey darkpixlz,

Thanks for sharing your questions. To ensure weā€™re engaging with as many creators as possible we ask that everyone keep to one question per message. Can you reduce or consolidate? Thanks so much!

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Any more plans with highlights? I asked last AMA and didnā€™t get a response. Thereā€™s a limit of 31 highlights and they donā€™t work on mobile. We really want to use this feature more broadly.

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Will we get more control over terrain?


Examples:

  • More water properties, such as flow direction.
  • Being able to modify water/grass uniquely from one area to another. (Non-global properties)
  • Ability to edit voxel size. (Including smaller than 4 studs)
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Hello again! Thanks for doing another AMA :slight_smile:

Since I just found out about this AMA right now, Iā€™ll post an abridged version of my primary question, which is the same thing I asked dave in-person at RDC (which did not result in a response with any meaningful substance) : When will transparency and communications about the status of programs improve for the better, and what is Roblox actively doing right now to achieve those? Right now, creators have no way of knowing whatā€™s going on with a given program, where itā€™s heading, or why itā€™s being shut down, nor can they give any feedback on them. The accelerator, stars, devawards and verified badge programs have all either randomly halted or been axed, typically with radio silence from Roblox on the matter. This leads to a lot of problems and frustration towards Roblox as a company!

Iā€™m super happy to chat about this problem further if itā€™s desired, my DMs / email are always open. I have a lot of feedback on this matter that simply would not fit in this reply:

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Are there any plans for us to get more UI features such as sliders, UI blur, etc?

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