The Problem
As a Roblox developer, it is currently a big annoyance that I am not able to configure graphical fidelity in a lower level.
Imagine a player, who wishes to lower render distance while keeping lighting the same (like shadows, bloom and more) so they lower their graphics level only to be met by results that doesn’t match what they wished.
Another is if they wanted to enable anti-aliasing while keeping render distance low and shadows off. But when they went and increased their graphics level, they’ll be forced into enabling shadows and have their render distance set to high due to the nature of the graphics level slider which again doesn’t match what they wanted.
As you can tell, it is pretty underwhelming for the player that wants the game to look exactly what they wanted performance wise which is bad for the player experience. The player’s experience is everything, it is what makes a experience memorable. I know that there are low end hardware out there but at the same time, not all of those can run any game. It’s the reason system requirements in games exist anyway.
Possible Solutions
Possible solutions includes:
- An API that lets us change the behavior of the graphics level slider.
- Overhaul how graphics are configured for the users (advanced graphics section or menu) and let us also define the limitations of how low graphical fidelity can go.
Conclusion
Now, I am by no means saying that Roblox should replace the default graphics level slider. If anything, some find the graphics level slider convenient and an easy way to make sure that Roblox can run on lower end hardware. However, for some, they need more configuration so that they can keep the graphics quality consistent while running the game better for the lower end.
If this issue is addressed, it would improve my development experience because I can make the game look exactly how I want while also giving some freedom to the user it self so they can optimize the game for their hardware while keeping the quality consistent.