Extremely Dangerous Flashing UI Issues

[Dogon]

Reproduction Steps
Our studio was recently informed on Twitter that at certain points in our game on mobile devices (specifically iOS), the Roblox’s built in UI systems seem to completely glitch out and rapidly flash various colors and shapes on the screen. The game in question is:

Shrunken School Obby

This is an extremely dangerous visual bug to anyone with any sort of light or photo sensitivity and as such I have marked it as critical despite it not involving any specific data loss, especially if this is happening at other games under similar circumstances, whatever they may be.

This is certainly an issue with Roblox’s UI systems rather than it being something our end (we’re certainly not flashing the screen random colors intentionally, nor is there any code that would mimic this behavior), though what exactly is happening is beyond me. The bug also seems to completely lock up the mobile app.

Here are a few quotes from the person who reported this to provide some additional context for what happens in our game.

“So when me or my friend enter a cutscene, sometimes it ends up like this. We can’t press any button including the Roblox menu. Luckily, it didn’t really do anything since you can restart roblox by task manager or pressing the home button twice.”

“I was using my tablet, but my friend was using her phone. It just happens randomly when we are supposed to enter a cutscene. It is a rare occurrence, but it gave me a headache.”

“My friend has an IPhone 12 and I have a IPad Generation 8(I think those exist, I dunno I just looked at settings.)”

I do not have the devices mentioned to test with, but so far this has only been reported happening on apple devices. Specifically on an iPhone12 and an iPad Generation 8. It’s worth noting that all of the filtered devices in our developer stats seem to be exclusively apple devices, leading me to believe that this is an apple exclusive bug.

The game runs completely fine on android devices of just about any power level, so far as I can tell. I have yet to replicate this on my personal mobile device (Moto G Power 2021), which is an android device.

Expected Behavior
I expect Roblox’s UI systems to not flash people’s screens and put people at risk. If this is somehow a visual bug related to something we’re doing on our end, I suppose I would expect ROBLOX to simply stop rendering the screen instead of whatever is happening here.

Actual Behavior
VISUAL EPILEPSY AND PHOTOSENSITIVITY WARNING, RAPIDLY FLASHING IMAGES IN ATTACHED VIDEO

ROBLOX’s UI absolutely explodes into a mess of flashing colors, see attached video at your own risk. This is, quite frankly, unacceptable and very dangerous to people of all ages using the platform.

UPDATE: I can now confirm that this issue isn’t specific to our experience, and also seems to be a consistent behavior with trying to load any experience when using an iPhone 5s belonging to one of our artists.

Issue Area: Mobile App
Issue Type: Display
Impact: Critical
Frequency: Sometimes
Date First Experienced: 2022-01-26 09:01:00 (-07:00)
Date Last Experienced: 2022-01-26 00:01:00 (-07:00)

[Scottifly]

Does that seem to be related to this case as well? It doesn’t say there is any flashing, but mobile players are having graphics issues.

Mobile Buttons and Textures get pixelated after an hour of playing

What do you want to achieve? Get the pixelated buttons and textures to be fixed What is the issue? Alright, everytime on my mobile devices such as ipad, i get this annoying pixelated buttons and textures after like playing for 3 minutes or like an hour. This ever happened to me since 5 months ago and when i first got my new ipad recently, everyone who is on ipad/iphone is complaining it to me too. This thing happens again after 2 weeks, now i cant play it on mobile anymore. What solution…

[WillowDevelops]

I played the game on my iPhone.

I’m not experiencing any graphic issues.

[nightend16]

Hello @Dogon ! Thanks for the report! This issue is being looked into but it would help us so much if you could share a reproduction file. Can you message me one, please? Thank you!

[Rototally]

That would be helpful, we are currently seeing if we can reproduce the issue on our end. Thank you.

[Dogon]

I have done so (sent the file to nightend16), and also updated the post with some additional information on how this issue can be encountered. It doesn’t seem to be limited to our experience after all, at least according to our artist who has an old iPhone 5s and encounters it when trying to open just about every experience on the platform.

[nightend16]

We tried to reproduce this issue on our iPhones:

Iphone 8 f.w 14.5 Result: after loading screen the game crashes
iPhone Xs Max, FW: 12.3.1 Result: issue does not reproduce
iPhone 7 Plus 11.4 Result: after loading screen the game crashes
iPad Pro 2020 iOS 13.6 Result: issue does not reproduce
Iphone 8 plus 13.3.1 Result: issue does not reproduce
iPhone X - 12.4.1 Result: after loading screen the game crashes
iphone 8 11.2.1 - Result: after loading screen the game crashes

Do you know or have some idea on why Shrunken School Obby crashes on some iPhone devices?

[Dogon]

I have absolutely no idea, especially now looking at that list and seeing that the range of crashing/not-crashing seems entirely unrelated to the specs of the phone. It is worth noting that, allegedly, the crash also happens mid-gameplay when reaching the spot that the test file I sent loads the player into, so it’s most likely not tied into the actual loading of the map itself but instead activating that specific cutscene, though I can’t possibly think of anything we’re doing there that would be out of the ordinary, especially compared to every other cutscene in the game, most of which work fine on apple devices.

If you’d like I’d be happy to create a few more test files with various elements of the scene enabled/disabled to help narrow things down.

[bitsNbytez (bits)]

I also experienced this yesterday on my Apple iPhone mobile device.

[AngeloFawkes]

Using my iPhone 12 mini on iOS 15.3 I could not replicate the issue. The game didn’t crash either.

[nakata1609]

I have got reports from players about this issue, but there were no details. I know that this exists in my game as well.

[Rbl0xGaMer949 (MeMellow)]

Wow, I am not sensitive to any fast lights like that but dang bro… My eyes were moving as fast as the screen was…

[IConsumeCheddar (DerangedDevforumUser)]

Got to the food fight kitchen thingamajiggy placey, and I noticed this visual glitch on my iPad pro:

Will update if I see more
Edit: finished the game, didn’t see any other unusual visuals

[1nf1n1tyRX (F3lix)]

Sorry for a bump

maybe this is tied with the apple phone version/os version, since most of the ones with crash are in an older update and vice versa…

the average version to crash is maybe 12. _ . _ , idk…
and the average phone version to crash is maybe iPhone 8?

[Richy5949 (Richy)]

I am receiving feedback from players of my game regarding flashing from UI. Mostly related to text-based BillBoard GUI and Surface GUI.

One player even mentioned that I need “Photosenvitive” warnings for players due to them experiencing flashing.

I just sent this message to Roblox support. Hoping for a quick fix as I agree, this could be very dangerous for photosensitve people!

"Hi,

I am experiencing severe UI distortion on multiple games including my own. The distortion/artefacts relate specifically to text-based UI. Mostly Surface GUI text labels and Billboard GUI. Text is flickery and appears half rendered. The issue is mostly affecting mobile device experiences.

The UI issues are not game-specific and from testing gameplay, on multiple well-known games, such as Roblox titanic it is evident many games are affected. Have a look at the leaderboards in the lobby on Roblox Titanic to see the distortion. (I tested on from Iphone and Ipad on latest IOS).

This severely impacts player experience’s as vital information cannot be properly seen.

My IQ test experience is currently majorly impacted by this. IQ test questions are shown through surface GUI’s. Dozens of players are reporting being unable to read the IQ test questions due to UI distortions - and thus cannot progress in the game.

These distortions only recently appeared a few days ago - and were not there previously.

Please have this reviewed and fixed as many experiences are affected, including my own.

Thankyou"

[0xabcdef1234]

Hi, we recently turned on a fix for a similar issue and could you check if the issue in your game is fixed? Thanks.

[GoodNameOnly (Hashtags)]

I have also experienced similar things on desktop when you repeatedly press F11, Roblox rendering completely stops and breaks, and you can not interact with anything including roblox UI, I’m unsure if this have any connection to this
Last experienced: Early august 2022

I will try to retrieve the logs if I see this on either mobile or desktop.