Glad to see outlines are being depreciated. To me they made the game uglier with outlines enabled, and when they were first released some of my games were forced to be made to look worse for a short period of time which really annoyed me.
Glad Roblox don’t ship such an update in that manner now.
I’m glad to see this feature go. I never really used outlines anyway and seeing the performance decrease that they cause (the disabling of part instancing) makes me even more glad that they’re being deprecated.
The benefits are good, but I really don’t understand people being “glad” and “happy” to see it go. It was optional, albeit sometimes annoying esp when it was on by default, the affect of the outlines them selves, for the games that properly used them to benefit their aesthetic, was great.
Although I personally don’t and never will use outlines, I do think an alternative to them that works smoothly would be great. I know a lot of great builders who relied on them for their showcases.
Anyways, GPU improvements are always welcomed 
Emulated outlines using a top surface decal (128x128 with 1 pixel border), and a random color saturation shift on tiles. I am pretty sure the “real” color shift is a quantization to 10bit color effect, but this looks good enough!
(edit: Ok so the outline is a little thicker, but I still think it looks good considering it runs better)
Personally, I have never used outlines in any of my games due to the performance drop. Although, a new alternative that looks better and works smoother would be nice.
I forgot to ask. Does this mean the SmoothNoOutlines surface is deprecated too?
Am I supposed to see both?
I don’t know any developer’s that use this feature and it did not make a lot of sense in the first place.
If i understanded correctly, “LegacyOutlines” will control outlines once “Outlines” gets hidden/deprecated.
Perhaps, but they should probably not be displayed at the same time.
Honestly, nobody even had control over configuring the outlines anyways, so it’s just more practical to use SurfaceGui’s to begin with. In fact, now is the best time ever for someone to make a Plugin for controlling "OutlineSurfaceGui"s with configurations. I’m sure they would be very loved by the community using Outlines right now.
They were displayed at the same time before the change was in effect to give devs who really need outlines a chance to enable new property.
Now that the change is in effect, Outlines should not be visible anymore (the change happened ~2 hours ago, a bit after your comment)
Using decals, textures, selectionboxes, custom meshes, and other brick altering objects is not a viable option to replace or remove outlines for client side efficiency.
These objects just by themselves in small groups, like meshes, heavily lag and drop fps rates for players in simply built places, once a players faces or goes near them. To do outlines with textures, you have 6 sides per block to put it on. Thats crazy, and to do outlines on just 2 R6 Statues, you got 72 new instances for your players to deal with. How about we add hats to the statue next?
As for the 80% of developers, most of them don’t have the high end devices, and neither do most players. Outlines have become part of the roblox culture, from Roblox Build Mode instead of Studio, from Personal Places instead of Team Mode, from Building Sims, from Stamper Tools. LegacyOutlines is the best option for reliable performance with outlines now (I usually do smooth surfaces + ambient changes to make it work where needed).
As so, I am absolutely thankful that outlines/legacyoutlines will have a place in the ROBLOX society for at least awhile longer, its important to developers who still use that nostalgic view in their games. While not many devs here who dedicated themselves to being in the dev forums, outlines were on in every game once, defining the ROBLOX Universe ever since outlines went live.
Thank you for being transparent with us, really appreciate the headsup.
Outlines were added far into the development of Roblox, almost nobody liked them and they were generally out of place as they popped out of flat surfaces on models.
You are speaking of them almost as if they were a culture of their own, but they actually never were massively used.
ROBLOX was the place where anyone could build, where imagination and creativity were the building blocks of this universe.
There were things ROBLOX specifically offered highlighting the use of outlines, Build Mode and Personal Places/Servers were games you had stamper tools, which made 5x5x5 blocks, and housing, and sci fi, and castle, and furniture genre stuff, as well as the ability to create electrical systems using config tool and connect tool. You could resize things, and do a lot.
Outlines were the key to every player using it, even these same tools were front page in many Build To Survive, Building Sims like under the Roblox account, or Build A Cyber Security Base, etc.
It wasn’t simply turned off by devs, I think its mentioned there wasn’t a option to turn it off via boolean in here at the start, but either way, you are expecting the high end developers who do this, not the general players who experienced these kinds of games. Mad Paintball, RoFare, Muffin Defense, Club Boates, Build a Hideout And Fight, Wall Crusher since 2010, Base Wars since 2009, The Real USSF’s Foward Operating Base, many games with millions of plays.
You simply can’t say all developers because tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of people experienced building first hand using pre-made blocks, often used with outlines so they could be seen.
Closing, millions of games had outlines turned on, a billion games at least by the default roblox player game had it on before this.
It is completely normal for devs to have outlines on.
Fair enough, but the way they were made was flawed at the core. With the eventual return of them in a different form we should be able to specify whether we want to outline the entire model or all of its descendants. They should also be a per-object thing; an instance like texture which you place inside a basepart, except this one accepts both baseparts and models, or they could have an adornee property to avoid cluttering the hierarchy.
Roblox has removed outlines for this reason. Outlines are a legacy feature, I suggest changing your games to be less reliant on Outlines.
That “status quo and forcing features on everyone” reminds me of the old legacy terrain that was rather… blocky, and how I had used it for gameplay purposes that don’t really work with smooth terrain’s greater focus on, well, being terrain.
I kinda like outlines, though I definitely didn’t at first, I guess it grew on me in some fashion. Performance improvements are a fair trade, though, I suppose.
I thought outlines were a thing since the beginning, not 2013! I suggest using SelectionBoxes as an alternative to outlines.
I’n perfectly fine with the LegacyOutlines now at least, you guys did some fine tuning from making the new outlines with black selection boxes to actually what it used to look like.
Some of my games relied on selection boxes, such as this plank floor in a WIP I made.
I really don’t prefer textures, and haven’t ever minded the part count tbh.
1st without LegacyOutlines
2nd and 3rd with LegacyOutlines
Another downside is that the surfaces are being removed, meaning everything will be outlines instead of what I specifically want to have outlines?
Anyways, still feeling okay with Outline’s removal because LegacyOutlines was created, thanks.
EDIT:
Meant to say Outlined Parts, instead of selection boxes between pictures 1 and 2.
