Creator Roadmap: Fall 2024 Edition

[Photoguy82]

Right now it’s PS4, PS5, Xbox, Generic.

[Negativize]

@Roblox

Comments and Annotations Inside Studio - Annotate and leave comments in Studio for your collaborators. (Early 2025)

Is the ability to write custom documentation for code (a la Python docstrings or Java’s Javadoc) being delayed as well? I saw a flag for this not too long ago and it would be a shame if it were delayed - it’d pair very well with the new type solver and general Luau typing improvements.

EDIT: Here’s the post that shows the flag off.

[heedicalking]

Really hope something is done with this soon, especially now that roblox is slowly walking back their commitment to anti-cheat

[railworks2]

@Roblox

Require by string - Add support for require-by-string to the engine, allowing users to better manage modules in their place. (2025)

Let’s gooo! Now this is awesome and something I’ve wanted to do forever. I would want to be able shortcuts similar to TS. For example @server/example would require game.ServerStorage.Server.example. Not expecting for a first release but would be cool

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@Roblox

Forums - Housed in Communities, Forums is a dedicated space where users can share feedback, discuss gameplay, and report issues found. (Late 2024)

I’m hyped for this as a replacement for existing platforms, does Roblox plan for this to be COPPA compliant so that under 13 users are able to use this? That’s a major market that is missed by existing options

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@Roblox

Actionable insights to grow your experience

Remote Configs - Dynamically update experience settings or content without requiring a new update or deployment. (Mid 2025)

In-Experience Experimentation - Test different versions of experience features or content with live players to optimize gameplay and engagement. (Late 2025)

FFlag and A/B testing? This would be so awesome when it hits production and should make a lot of folks easier. I do hope we see the same level of supporting as what Roblox uses internally with both static and dynamic flags.

@Roblox

Custom Logging - Allowing you to pass error locations through pcalls. (On Hold)

I do custom logging for my test projects, as I find Roblox’s current system too restrictive for future decision making. This is cool for people who use PCalls, but I’d like custom logging levels and customisation. Such as:

• debug level prints always show in studio but never in game.
• Fatal level will error out

But I’d like things like different colours for different levels to make things more readable

[HealthyKarl]

Annotations may be related to Place Annotations that I’ve seen appearing around a bunch of places e.g. Roblox API Dump and etc. a really long time ago

[Negativize]

I figured as much, but it’s a similar vein so I figured I’d ask

[nothing_1649 (gom_a)]

whatever happened to ControllerManager.UpDirection? i’ve had a project on hold for like 10 months now since it was promised to be coming at that point and we’ve never heard from it since; this is getting extremely infuriating

[IdontPlayz343 (FPS Enjoyer)]

Please, revert the website home page updates! I would be perfectly happy for those updates applied to the discover- I mean charts page, but I just want to have a usable homepage again. Recent experiences, favorited experiences, things like those should be prioritized!

[chareou]

This creator roadmap, unlike the one this summer, doesn’t include marketplace analytics. Is marketplace analytics still planned for the upcoming months?

[XenoDenissboss1]

@Roblox

New voxel light grid - Improvements to lighting to bring the highest quality option to as many devices as possible–includes shadows, specular highlights, light reflection. (2025)

What’s this exactly? Is this supposed to be the overall lighting system used at low graphical settings and/or past the rendering distance of per pixel lighting?
What’s up with light reflection? Is that supposed to be some sort of voxel based GI implementation?

@Roblox

Improved Physics Solver - New and improved physics solver that enables more complex mechanisms and makes existing mechanisms more robust. (Early 2025)

Right, any info as to what the new physics solver actually changes? Any performance benefits?
Will this new solver finally do anything about the usually horrible physics replication and instability?

@Roblox

Physically-Simulated Avatars - Release a new AnimationConstraint instance as a replacement for Motor6D joints that enables physically-simulated avatars by allowing force and torque limits for target pose matching. The Avatar Joint Upgrade Studio Beta will be an easy way for devs to opt into having all avatars in their experience spawn with AnimationConstraints rather than Motor6Ds. (Late 2024)

Are you guys planning in ditching Motor6D’s entirely with this?

@Roblox

Properties Revamp - Edit high-touch properties faster and more fluidly, and reorganize the properties panel to make interacting with it as quick and easy as possible. Significantly improve performance and stability of the properties panel, so working with it in large, complex places doesn’t slow you down. (Early 2025)

I mean, other than improving performance for the property panel (which tbh i believe it’s already pretty fast, no?), what else could exactly be done to make it easier to interact with? Hey, maybe this is not specifically related to the actual properties menu but why not just make attributes properties? Would be willing to use attributes/custom properties if it wasn’t for the fact that attribute api’s are slow (and pretty unnecessary) for heavier tasks. Manipulating properties does not have any of the attribute api shenanigans going on.

[index_self]

@tnavarts

Performance at scale isn’t about the language the feature is written in, it’s about the algorithmic choices and design tradeoffs that allow a performant implementation to exist.

I’m sorry, what?

There is a huge difference between the performance between an interpreted and compiled program. There is a huge difference between the performance of a garbage-collected procedural one and an RAII object-oriented one. There is a huge difference between a language made to run on bare metal and a language made to script lego games.

I’m tired of people in the software industry using design choice and hardware advancements as an excuse to write programs that blatantly waste 90% of processing power. The Windows 95 installer was only 1.7 MB, and now we have Google Calendar at nearly 200 MB. It’s actual insanity, and now we’re replacing C++ with Lua because it doesn’t matter!

And don’t even start on algorithms. Like 40 million games aren’t being bottlenecked by your CoreScripts.

[XenoDenissboss1]

You will use StreamingEnabled and be happy.

[TheRealANDRO (ANDRO)]

@tnavarts

Think of it this way: Even if Lua is 50x slower or whatever, the largest selections are >10000x bigger than the smallest selections. If your code is slow that extra 50x you get using C++ isn’t going to help all that much.

They have some points, tnavarts. So far in many CoreScripts, we have yet to see any performance improvements at all.

[Gamergirl_12549 (Gamer)]

When is the new friend limit coming out

[Lightning_Game27 (Elitriare)]

so are programmers, this is going to open so many possibilities

[Dekkonot]

@index_self

There is a huge difference between a language made to run on bare metal and a language made to script lego games.

Whatever helps get you though the day. There really isn’t that big of a difference; you can say “an order of magnitude” if you want (and you’d be right) but let’s be real: Luau running with native codegen and C++ really don’t have that big of a performance difference. Particularly when the Luau is precompiled.

@index_self

I’m tired of people in the software industry using design choice and hardware advancements as an excuse to write programs that blatantly waste 90% of processing power. The Windows 95 installer was only 1.7 MB, and now we have Google Calendar at nearly 200 MB. It’s actual insanity, and now we’re replacing C++ with Lua because it doesn’t matter!

Luau. Distinctions matter if you’re going to try and scream into the void because otherwise it makes you seem uninformed.

[Lightning_Game27 (Elitriare)]

The Clouds Phase 2 & Phase 3 have not been released since their original announcement over 4 years ago! Is there an estimated time of arrival for this? It’s something that will truly elevate the look of an experience.

[ffrostfall]

i’ve written games that do custom:

• Networking (we do not rely on Roblox serialization, and use buffers.)
• Animations
• Character replication
• Tools

and every single time it’s faster. Why is this?
Because of a few reasons:

1. Luau is one of the fastest scripting languages out there. It can get ridiculously fast (it beats nodejs lol)
2. Luau has native compilation. This means that it’s “compiled” too. The line between an interpreted program and a compiled program gets a little bit blurry sometimes… because you can technically run Rust using an interpreter. Technically, the CPU is an interpreter, and everything is an interpreted language. Wow…
3. Algorithmic performance matters A LOT. o(n) beats o(n^2) at high n values every single time.
4. The CoreScripts aren’t bottlenecking experiences, the PlayerScripts are. And the PlayerScripts are written in 2018 and use 2018 APIs.

To be perfectly honest, Roblox already runs tons of stuff in Luau. Luau is small, and pretty damn fast. Google Calendar is likely written in JavaScript and React with 20 trillion dependencies, but Luau is literally just not that.

These comparisons are nonsensical.

EDIT: It turns out that Google Calendar has an initial payload size of 1-2 megabytes, and they use the Wiz framework, not React. They use server-sided rendering, so most of the UI is streamed in on-demand.

[0Tenth]

@Roblox

Physically-Simulated Avatars - Release a new AnimationConstraint instance as a replacement for Motor6D joints that enables physically-simulated avatars by allowing force and torque limits for target pose matching. The Avatar Joint Upgrade Studio Beta will be an easy way for devs to opt into having all avatars in their experience spawn with AnimationConstraints rather than Motor6Ds. (Late 2024)

I’ve been playing around with this for quite a while, and this is a really really big upgrade in avatar physically based technology. Ragdolls will become as easy as changing a DeathType property, without needing to worry about network ownership, cloning avatars, bandwidth, complex scripts to override Humanoid default behaviour, and many other pain points I’ve had for a while with making ragdolls.

It will also allow for bodies to react realistically with other variables, such as feet dragging on the floor when it has high friction, turning down forces for max torque and responsiveness to show exhaustion, arms that don’t phase through stuff, and more!

Here’s a demo video I took around September of it, regarding tool interactions.

[computerph1_DEV]

@Roblox

New voxel light grid - Improvements to lighting to bring the highest quality option to as many devices as possible–includes shadows, specular highlights, light reflection.

this feels ‘future’ lighting for me? like whats the difference someone explain other than performajce