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 compatibility should require no work on your side to fix bugs, while there might be slight differences. We tried to to balance our code sanity and your comfort while developing this feature.
Some work may be required though, mostly on post processing side. For example, black neon is gone, if your game relies heavily on it, you might have to do more work.
Why are we doing it?
As we are moving forward with our rendering engine (project known as “Future is Bright”) we want to focus on development of new features and maintaining current engine (Voxel mode and what will come after it).
Having legacy in our code base has couple negative points
- We have to dedicate our engineering time to maintain the old code. We can use this time better, like working new features for You
- Having Legacy and Voxel is causing ~5% rendering slowdown across all platforms. Lets get those 5% percent back
Roll out plan
- Enable in Studio Only, gather feedback from developers
1a) Iterate with developers, if fixable problems are found by them - Allow compatibility on clients, so developers have time to voluntarily adjust their games
- Force all Legacy games to Compatibility in studio and client. Remove Legacy option from Studio
What You should do?
If Your games uses voxel mode, sit back and relax. If your game is in Legacy mode, go to studio and try to switch to Compatibility and report if anything breaks. Please don’t report minor differences in colors - that is expected.
"But wait, I’m mad," you say?
Really sorry, that you feel that way. This will allow us work better and faster on the future of Roblox engine and trust us that we tried to make compatibility as good as possible and we will listen to your feedback.
Also to ease your mind. Here is a nice screenshot of new material system that is currently being worked on by three members of graphics team:
