Developer Community 2020 Wrap-Up

Updates Community & Events
#1

Hey developers,

Apparently, an entire year has flown right by us. For many of us, this year has been different (to say the least), uncertain, and even difficult at times. A lot happened in the developer community throughout 2020, so let’s take the time to recap and reflect on a year unlike any other.

Studio & Client

We brought many of the client’s UI elements into the modern era with some visual and backend updates, including BubbleChat, the PlayerList, and the Topbar.

Speaking of UI elements, we also released UIGradient, UICorner, and RichText to take some of the hassle out of your UI design workflow!

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Unified Game Permissions revolutionized the way developers collaborate, manage, and work on games both as groups and individuals.

We also announced that we’re replacing the Game Explorer with the Asset Manager, currently in beta, to make it easier to navigate the assets associated with your game.

The new Lua dragger is available as well, giving developers both a better tool and the ability to customize it as they please!

Oh and the highly-anticipated Luau Type Checking arrived to Studio as a beta feature early this year!

Did you notice that the output window is now more expressive than ever? We also beautified the script editor with some new semantic highlighting and temporary tabs, which are currently available as a beta feature.

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The dazzling Future is Bright: Phase 3 hit Studio as a beta feature and the screenshots have completely captivated us! Between it and the SurfaceAppearance beta feature, we’re poised to absolutely push Roblox games to the next level of visual fidelity.

Skinned MeshParts also came to Studio as a beta feature, allowing for continuous, seamless, and more realistic-looking meshes - and they’re now live, btw!

You might also want to check the weather because the skies got a little cloudy thanks to… well… clouds!

Monetization & Marketplace

Premium Payouts created new ways for developers to earn money by creating, and we also tripled Premium Payouts in April!

Popcorn not included, but Videos in the Marketplace stole the show with a surprise appearance. This new feature allows developers to add videos to their games. Coming soon™: The ability to upload your own videos!

UGC Catalog Applications opened up, helping the program see some fresh faces and new talent! We’re looking forward to continue opening up the program more broadly to include even more creators.

In 2020, we also gave you free Robux (Sorry, force of habit.) Free VIP servers to make it easier for everyone to play games together.

Additionally, we unified the marketplace fee for Dev Products and Game Passes, and then, being the mad lads we are, did it again for Private Servers, Paid Access sales, and the Plugin Marketplace. Now, all users only have that 30% marketplace fee instead of 90% without Premium.

Community and Partnerships

We challenged builders to show us what they can do using only Roblox Studio, and we were blown away by the submissions. Be sure to check out the Builder Challenge Winners!

We also challenged everyone across all of Roblox to solve the mystery of the Ready Player Two event. Were you successful? Huge shout-out to the developers who helped make the event happen.

The audio library is now full of bops thanks to our partnership with Monstercat.

And speaking of bops, you went to the Lil Nas X concert… right?

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Thank You!

As always, thank you for being a part of our developer community. We hope you have a wonderful holiday and a happy new year!


Best,

Developer Relations

377 Likes
#2

Sending warm holiday wishes to everyone! See ya next year :relaxed:

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#3

This topic was automatically opened after 15 minutes.

#4

Thank you! We appreciate the frequent updates. The forum has made me grow both as a developer and as a person. I thank y’all for that!

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#5

Wow, I certainly didn’t realize that the player list update and especially the tripling premium payouts was still this year! I guess I counted the brief non-lockdown and lockdown parts as separate years. It’s been quite a long one, let us all be honest.

On a lighter note, the updates have been splendid, especially the SurfaceAppearance. Enjoy your well-deserved winter break! :snowflake:

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#6

It was a good year to join the dev community, thank you for everything you did to make my work here better. It’s a shame that I’ll be leaving you all, I can’t wait to see where this platform goes.

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#7

It may have been one of the worst years in the real world, but that didn’t stop ROBLOX. What a monumental year we have had on the platform. So many great new features, games, and live events most certainly blew all of our minds. ROBLOX has been far more than just a game for me this year. Cheers!

Special thanks to the team that setup these audio partnerships as well, they have come in very handy.

Happy Holidays!

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#8

Thank you for such a nice messages, you dev relation workers do a great job, I (and I’m sure many others) appreciate all the hard work you do. Have a blessed year everyone!

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#9

Roblox being something incredible.
I hope 2021 would be the same or better!

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#10

2020 was an amazing year for all of the features that were added this year such as Luau, Script Editor features / adjustments, Clouds, and especially Asset Manager that has improved me and other developers in the community.

Lil Nas X was a great concert, I hope we’ll get more concerts like these in the future, possibly another Lil Nas X one? :eyes:

Hoping 2021 will have even more exciting things for the engine, Merry Christmas! :santa:

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#11

Roblox made it the best year! I can’t wait for 2021 :grinning:

Happy holidays!

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#12

Thank you for writing this informative post. There were some good updates this year and I thank the Roblox engineers and staff for improving the engine. However, I intend to be honest with my reply. While many great updates were introduced this year, I feel like a lot of the updates and events which occurred not only brought pros with them, but cons. A lot of them revealed many issues in terms of organization, priority, and workflow. 2021 is almost here and I want to write this so that you are aware of my feedback.

Starting off with the UI updates, a lot of these made my workflow easier. I was able to create new types of UI, however, it also brought some cons. The bubble chat was and still is initially a bit buggy and some other users have in more detail posted its issues. The Rich Text feature, while appreciated, also felt like a half-baked addition. It did not support text scaled properly and I was extremely disappointed to hear that many others were experiencing this as well.

The asset manager was a needed update, but honestly, its handling was a mess. Earlier in the year you had to roll it back and even now it feels like it turns on and off every few days. I thought I was the only one experiencing this until I saw other users saying it as well. Considering that Roblox is becoming more professional and more developers are taking it seriously as a potential job, this cannot keep happening. Power users of Roblox are most of the time aware of Roblox’s pros and have a decently good idea why they want to be on this platform. For me, Roblox provides a better environment for indie game developers because of its instant play features, advertising features, and more. Therefore, I look past Roblox’s reputation. I see a great gaming platform in the future. If developers continue to take this platform more seriously, updates can not be handled this way. This is of course only my opinion, but I am stating it hoping that others agree.

The marketplace is a needed part of Roblox for developers. What we currently have is not exactly usable in many ways. I was glad to hear that Roblox was improving this, but in my opinion, the information given seemed mixed. It was mentioned in some posts, some blog posts, etc. however, I think more information needs to be given.

The events were nice. I honestly have mixed feelings about them though. While I think they were great, I was also concerned with how much of a spotlight was put on it. It feels more representative of the Roblox brand. A lot of people have the false idea that Roblox is a game rather then a platform, and I think such large events result in this false idea still being believed. I was a bit surprised when I joined the concern for example and saw how many users just signed up to see this. I was also a bit sad to see what they had to say about Roblox. Of course, negative feedback can’t just go away, but I feel like this event which was hosted by Roblox which brought new users now represents all of Roblox, including all of its developers, even the ones who don’t want to be associated with these events. In other words, it feels like that negative feedback applies to all of us when many developers had nothing to do with those events.

Moving on, I noticed that a lot of stuff on the roadmap was deferred. A lot of it was expected, at least by me. Please consider that many developers have workflows, timelines, and plans and a lot of it may loosely rely on what the roadmap says.

This is a living document and we will be updating it approximately quarterly.

Please note that our goal is to provide you with the best updates possible. Sometimes, bugs or technical complications may cause us to move the release dates to ensure that we’re shipping reliable features.

I do not think this should really be an excuse anymore. There has to be some sort of promise we can rely on. Simply stating that “this could change anytime” feels like a sentence your adding just to dodge the problems. Of course, things can happen so a 100% promise isn’t reasonable, however, the roadmap can’t be this far off.

I am glad to see a lot of features from earlier quarters got finished. I am going to assume some difficulties occurred earlier this year due to world events, however, I hope this does not occur next year and years moving forward. In my opinion, it’s not just about finishing the task, but finishing it on time. By moving features down to later quarters and finishing it, it almost feels like quickly turning in assignments before the end of the semester.

There were overall a lot of interesting things that happened, but I am concerned about how many problems occurred this year with Roblox. Looking at a lot of posts from developers this year, I can see that I am not alone in many of my opinions. I am only giving this feedback just so that it is out there and so that my concerns can be heard with the hope that the problems are fixed in the future.

Overall, thank you Roblox. A lot of these updates have been really good and inspiring and I am excited for the future. :slight_smile:

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#13

Man! what a great year, this year was full of new exciting features and sick events.
Cannot wait to see what you guys have in store for us next year :grinning:

Happy holidays :heart:

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#14

So it was YOU, the one who took over Coefficents’ job in closing the posts for a few moments before we can comment on them and opened them after! How dare you?!!

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#15

Incredible what everyone has accomplished this year. This year has been… insane (to say the least), but I’m glad to see all the good things that came out of it! We have a lot to look forward to next year and many things to appreciate from this year!

This year I decided to open Roblox Studio in February and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Thank you DevForum, Roblox, and everyone for this wonderful experience!

Cheers to next year! :birthday:

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#16

Those were really nice updates this year :happy1:. But I hope Roblox will add better Terrain, so we can blend materials nicely and have terrain more detailed and so its precise enough to manipulate it under 1 stud.

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#17

This year for Roblox was amazing so hyped for 2021! :smiley:

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#18

Wow, what a year.

Not only did I better myself in terms of being a developer, but the platform has improved by providing more tools for developers, and we’ve seen an insane surge of activity due to the pandemic. Roblox is growing like never before and it’s so surreal to see how much the platform has changed in the past few years.

There were so many new things that were released this year and they have improved my workflow immensely. I can’t even think of what sort of crazy features will be announced in 2021. :slightly_smiling_face:

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#19

By Far one of the best years on the platform. Although we had tons of real world issues roblox still managed to pull through and release some of the best updates this year. Absolute mad lads! Can’t wait to see next years roadmap! Super excited to see what’s in store.

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#20

Thank you to those who kept pushing out improvements to the Roblox community.

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