Hello!
My name is Cole, I am a Roblox builder, UI designer, and game manager.
I recently have finished building an “adopt and raise” type game and when I put in the “BrickCounter” script into my game it is saying I have roughly 18,000 parts in my game. Is this too many parts for iPhone & tablet users or is this amount okay? Any help will be greatly appreciated!
side note: the buildings/areas are a significant distance away. (around 50-1500 studs away)
Depends on the user’s hardware, (rough estimate: “The average user would get <20 frames”)
18,000 parts will be really laggy in my opinion. Players with “decent” type internet starts lagging from 10k parts I believe. You might want to make some Mesh parts along with adding textures & remove some parts lmao.
Goodluck! 
For the “average mobile user” > 10,00 parts/instances (within 600 studs) is a lot of process.
I would recommend unioning parts and try to limit texturing
Another option to have >10,00 parts would be removing shadows and turning on StreamingEnabled
All of this adds up. I would also take into consideration that users will have different hardware and internet connection!
Unioning would not really help. I think that meshes would probably be better
It could, for there would be less instances. Correct me if I’m wrong?
Well, I think the shadow would work. It depends on the graphics (Depending how many parts are in their vision, graphics 1 would be low looking distance) and I am pretty sure that even if you union 2 blocks together they still are two seperate things technically. There are two parts in that union.
Shadows would be a good idea because those could cause lag.
Unioning can get frustrating if his map for instance has heaps of different materials. It just would not work. I would not recommend unioning.
@1CoaI It depends on their internet, graphics, the device and it would depend on how their device acts anyway.
On an overall note: I have done some research and most big games have meshes. This would probably lag and I think that you should do something about this.
Using meshes would be the ideal thing to do and would definently help you with your game’s lag.
Why is this directed towards mobile? With a big game like this, maybe it should be directed towards another device. Say in the description that you may need a high end device.
Add a little settings that you can choose the graphics, like most simulators. That should help. Maybe you could choose a setting and it would remove shadows etc to make this less laggy.
Probably not if you’ve taken advantage of instancing your assets - basically copying and pasting. But don’t use Part counts (or any object count) to determine how laggy a game is for a platform. Use the Memory Usage (F9 in game) to see how many megabytes are being used.
Don’t give rough estimates based on zero information. This isn’t even correct. This serves nobody and just furthers misconceptions.
Don’t make guesses for performance optimization based on your opinion. And 10k Parts means nothing if they’re all reasonably using Instancing. Again, this furthers misconceptions.
Do you have proof of this? Because I really don’t like using object count to find out if a game is laggy when instancing can make this number well over 50, 000 Parts if used properly. But again, that really depends on a lot of factors.
Unioning doesn’t solve performance issues
Don’t Union things just because you assume “less objects means better performance” because that’s not at all how this works.
However, StreamingEnabled helps in many situations - depending on how your game is coded - since there’s caveats to how it functions.
Having worked on big games, there’s a reason for this: more complexity without the cost of tedious Part management and manipulation. For asset assembly, and especially for organics, meshes are just easier to make in my experience, though I know some 3D artists prefer Studio, which is just as valid. This is a development pipeline preference, not necessarily a performance optimization method.
Some games are developed with mobile in mind - you can accommodate for performance issues to allow this. We did for Egg Hunt 2018.
What cusp? There is no “cusp” to Part count. There is a limit to Memory Use, but that waaay more complex than just how many objects there are in the game.
I recommend everyone above watch all of my RDC talk on performance optimization. And please stop spreading these misconceptions - it only hinders development.
Will vouch for Cronic, working with tofuu creating VERY large and complicated obbies isn’t easy, when I see people playing those obbies I see 0 lag or stutters and am impressed!
Who decides how many objects should be on a map besides the development team? A roleplay map can have however many objects they damn well please - nobody can, or should, police that.
I’ve made maps with as many as 90 000 objects, and with some clever tools, it ran on mobile fine (this map was in the 2018 Egg hunt, in case anyone was wondering). Your imagined “limits” are only limiting yourself.
@1CoaI performance optimization is impressive! And it can be done with some understanding on how it actually works, not like the many misconceptions shared above.
I agree with Aotrou. There is no “set limit” because Roblox wants you to determine that for yourself and what suits you and your game. 
Edit: I’m not taking sides, I agree with both of you.
In the video, the developer just said that mobile and tablet players max out at 600-700mb, I’m trying to find that amount of memory where games can run smoothly and not stutter. When I press f9>memory>client inside the game itself the memory is around 513mb. But in studio doing the exact same steps the memory is 2000mb… Is this okay?
Either way, I guarantee none of those games base their performance stats on how many Parts are in the game. They go by actual performance stats.
@1CoaI that developer in the video is me, I based that 600-700mb limit off of experience, but again, I say these aren’t hard numbers either. Also Studio performance stats are not the same as at run time. Always base performance stats in run time (as in, while playing the game).
Oh woah, that developer is you 
! It’s crazy how many well-known developers you can find on the developer forum!
I am going to say as of right now that the 500mb is fine, I am going to get my family members who have Ipad’s and my brothers who have Iphones to give it a shot and I’ll see if it lags and go from there.
Thanks for your time and I have marked your answer as the solution 
!