Improvements to Play Solo load-time [Beta]

Hi Developers,

We are very excited to announce improvements to play-solo loading as a beta feature! This should make loading times significantly faster (around 35% for most places.)

This is made possible by heavily optimizing the loading mechanism. You can try it by enabling Faster Play Solo in the beta features menu.

As a part of the optimizations that made this improvement possible we removed non-testing-related built-in plugins from the loading procedure. We don’t expect this to affect most users but we will have a studio setting for enabling them back in case your workflow depends on it (coming before the end of the beta period).

Many thanks to @swmaniac, @ArmyOfCorgis, @MisterUncloaked, @ReallyLongArms, @idevride, @MoonRocketApollo and @Rusi_002 for making this possible!

This is a beta and as always your feedback is greatly appreciated and crucial for improvement.

Thank you!

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This topic was automatically opened after 11 minutes.

Just timed the difference, looks like it saves around 2-3 whole seconds in a production game. Including the saved 0.6 secs from disabling the loading screen, these changes will save a lot of development time!

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This is awesome! If only it was instant :frowning:

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I remember reading somewhere that Play Solo loads every asset once again. Is that true? If it is, has that behavior changed?

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As someone who has to constantly play tests my game for bugs, saving 35% every time will definitely add up! Great update!

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Just noticed it a few hours ago in Studio, and I must say, it’s a significant enhancement for testing! This upgrade is fantastic! :+1: :rocket:

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And some people want faster loading time… we all have different needs, AND the engineers don’t all have the same job. Some work on datastores, some on the website, some on Open Cloud, you get the idea.

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You might be surprised, but a 35% improvement can make a big difference, especially on large projects.

Oh thank you! We totally would have missed your sarcasm if you hadn’t pointed it out.

One important point to note is that there are multiple Roblox teams working on different features for the platform. Just because one team is focusing on improving Play Solo, it doesn’t mean that all other features are put on hold.

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I can safely say, many people if not most people will benefit from it.

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Thanks for reducing iteration time!

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Works great for me, from 6 seconds down to 4. Really adds up over time and makes prototyping much easier!

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I don’t see the point going into announcements, feature requests, and bug reports just complaining because something you wanted didn’t got released yet. Doing that won’t change anything. If this isn’t useful for you then it definitely is useful for many others. And as others have pointed out, different teams work on different things.

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Thank you so much for these changes! I’d like to ask though - does it improve loading times by memoizing studio-only data, or things that would be reflected in-game also? I’m mainly interested as it could potentially misguide developers into believing their games load fast not just in studio, but also in-game.

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Are these plugins disabled for running local servers on Studio as well?

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I’m glad roblox is stepping up to the plate with really cool and useful updates like this one.

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:pray:
Thank god you finally optimised playtesting.

Studio is already very optimised compared to other engines, but everyone knows Roblox is mean’t for (mostly) optimisation. Very good update. Honestly, I can’t imagine what will come next, colouring SurfaceAppearances? Shaders? EditableSounds?

You can already create innappropiate stuff with EditableImage and EditableMesh, so EditableSound would still be appropiate. Moderators may just ban these games anyways.

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Great beta feature. I am very excited for more improvements and the eventual release.

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I was half expecting this to be an update to life games that have 1 player servers but this is also super neat!
Play testing projects gonna be a lot more seamless I feel, less hanging!

I wonder if this is hardware spec dependent because my PC already is pretty fast, I’m not complaining though, faster is always better!

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Speak for yourself, but this update is extremely useful. Those ~3 seconds add up super quickly when you constantly have to fix bugs & make changes that need tested again.

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