LoadLibrary is going to be removed on February 3rd

[orangewarrior78]

As of right now, there’s only 20 pages of gears…not even counting the ones that arent broken.

So i doubt they’d care if a few dozen broken gears were removed tbh…it really wouldn’t affect the catalog in any way…

@Humanagon

If they did, it would still kinda be unfair for the people who know about the gears and still want to use them.

I mean, i understand if newer people see that they look cool and all…but…there’s literality no information that tells people if the gear they want still works or not.

If the descriptions on any broken gear offered a warning or advisement that the gear currently shown is broken, i’d be cool with that.

But there’s nothing like that released officially, not a blog post or a simple announcement in messages, selling malfunctioning gears officially on the catalog is sorta like a game selling a gamepass that doesn’t work.

It just comes across as scummy…

I know at least half the people on this post dont care about this problem i’m pointing out right now…but let’s face it.

When this update finally comes out and finally breaks every gear on the platform, there’s gonna be a large amount of complaints.

But…who know what’ll happen, they probably already plan on making all gear cheaper or offsale since they’ll all break after this. All we can do is wait and see what happens i suppose.

( It’s probably best to not talk about gears anymore until after the update happens imo. )

[colbert2677 (ImagineerColbert)]

@orangewarrior78

When this update finally comes out and finally breaks every gear on the platform,

This is somewhat of a misinformed comment. LoadLibrary isn’t used in every piece of gear on the site. All gear breaking on the platform because of LoadLibrary’s removal is too generalised and inaccurate a statement to make. Only those that use LoadLibrary will cease to function and that isn’t a huge amount. They can easily be fixed by developers as well.

[orangewarrior78]

@zeuxcg

I wouldn’t expect any popular game on Roblox to accept arbitrary gear or any gear at all really without removing all scripts from the items. It’s just too dangerous and unpredictable.

Oh, the quote above sorta makes it seem that way with the “any gear at all” part and all.

It would be nice for the majority of gears to continue in some way though, welp…all that’s left is to see what this update brings everyone.

[Humanagon]

What I was trying to say in my comment was that if they keep removing gear with these gear breaking updates, sooner or later it will happen to all of them. They need to fix their gear or not release these updates.

[Humanagon]

@colbert2677

My argument is that its yet another update that breaks gear, it doesn’t get any simpler than that. People still use gear, people have asked to stop breaking them countless times, and they have been ignored each time.

@colbert2677

According to the catalog, the last updated gear was Skeletal Scythe in 2018 .

The last gear updated was not updated in 2018 and I know that for a fact because Dagger Of Shattered Dimensions (71037101) was updated in 2019 (I was literally there the day it was updated) and it comes several gears after skeletal scythe when you look it up on the catalog with the recently updated filter. I even know who is the one updating them. @TakeoHonorable updated Dagger, Chaos Master’s Wing Slasher, Scroll of Sevenless, Medusa Head, Bear Mine Gun, and many more gears all in 2019. His name is even in the classic sword script.

@colbert2677

Gear is aesthetic for your character.

This is a pointless argument. Gear was never intended to be for your avatar, in fact in most cases TODAY (11/15/2019) when you equip gear in your avatar it actually breaks the r15 animation you have on. If gear was intended for your avatar then it would just be stuck to your hand and not do anything, there’s a reason why some games don’t allow it.

Also I should add that the whole reason that the gear community is getting so small is because you people keep releasing these updates that destroy gear, not the other way around. Even if I am being ignorant toward your argument (which I don’t believe to be true), you continue to do the same.

[colbert2677 (ImagineerColbert)]

I can be a broken record all day, which I have been for the past two days. That isn’t a proper argument nor a significant one that is causation for gear to be updated and your posts haven’t been replied to for a reason. You are making a generalised and uninformed comment (see: LoadLibrary’s removal doesn’t break all gear), appealing to emotion rather than making a good case.

Gear is literally meant for your avatar. Anything in the catalog is intended for your avatar. Gear can be brought into games to allow you to use their effects if games allow it while hats function universally if no overrides are applied. I don’t know what you mean by “gear is not for your avatar”, this is silly. Anything that you can actively equip from the Avatar menu, is avatar material.

The gear community has always been a niche part of the Roblox community. Games are moving forward with creating their own versions of gear or developing their own systems, which means that they aren’t allowing gear usage in their game. You can still use gear in a small number of games that sell it via the Add Gear option; less so arbitrarily allowed gear.

I completely hear your argument and I’m not being ignorant to it at all, my points are directly pushed at your complaint. You’re upset that some gear will stop working because of the removal of a platform actively blocking platform development. On the other hand, you seem dismissive of both my and engineer information because they are anything but “I agree, LoadLibrary’s removal is a problem, let’s not”. I have yet to see you provide anything useful or substantial to the conversation to make staff take any alternative considerations.

• No empirical evidence or statistics to show that arbitrarily allowed gear is still being used in games with large player bases, such as “gear fighting”.

  • Epic Minigames is the only major game I can think of that still majorly uses Roblox gear wrt gear fighting minigame, but all gear used in EM has been modified to fit game systems.

• A lack of acknowledgement towards the fact that you would rather platform development be sacrificed, a danger remain and potentially a security-risking alternative (see: request to update LoadLibrary which YOU HEARTED and the engineer’s response saying this is too dangerous to consider which I assume you dismissed).

• Appealing to emotion rather than bringing up an actual argument, which on Roblox is never a good way to push a request for something to happen. Ever.

• Lack of acknowledgement towards better alternatives to your problems or recognising any information that’s been brought up. Don’t expect me to parrot word-for-word.

There are better ways to complain or request alternative ways for this to be handled and maybe you’ll get a staff response. Take PeZsmistic’s reply for example. Rather than opening with a complaint against the update and a subsequent rant, she asked if there was a way to update LoadLibrary so it would be able to be used. This got a staff response. Arguing and complaining pointlessly without suggesting anything helpful is what doesn’t get responses and is ignored. That’s on you, no one else.

The only thing I will concede towards is that some gear has been updated recently, though it will do you well to take note that the supposed person responsible for this is not staff and does this on their own time. If you are so passionate about gear, instead of whining on the threads bring a strong argument to the table and/or get into contact with them. We have a thread here on the DevForum for reporting catalog errors and one of its core points is to touch down with support for functionality issues.

You’re a little blinded by your passion for gear that you’re being dismissive of everything else. Calm down, read things over and try this again. Again; there are better ways to go about making a request or a complaint that isn’t ranting.

---

@Humanagon

Also I should add that the whole reason that the gear community is getting so small is because you people keep releasing these updates that destroy gear, not the other way around.

Ok I understand.

[Humanagon]

I’m not going to repeat everything I said over again because then you will just do the same. The fact that you are still responding to me shows that you know what I’m saying is true, why else would you care? You keep making the same false claims because there’s no reason for why you shouldn’t put in just a few hours to make sure the gear doesn’t break.

I hearted that comment because it was a solution to having both the update and not break the gear but you almost immediately deflected it because it was “fragile”. Hell you could even make it so that when loadlibrary is called it automatically makes the module script in-game so that it doesn’t break gears that aren’t going to be updated.

I think it’s clear at this point that you don’t want to listen and are just going to make this change anyway, so I don’t see a reason to continue this argument. I’m just going to move to another site when this update is made public anyway.

[SenorSbeve (sbeve)]

Gear is not a crucial part of the platform, sure there are a few people who still use it in their gear fighting games, but that isn’t a major genre on Roblox. It is also especially easy for developers to take those gears, and update them to their needs, it isn’t like developers rely on the base gears in their games. LoadLibrary is an outdated system that has a lot of flaws, it is much better that the engineers remove it so that they can focus on other aspects of the platform.

[colbert2677 (ImagineerColbert)]

Not sure what kind of stance that is, me replying means there’s truth to your words, but alright then. You’re free to perceive this as you wish. I understand that anything not in support of gear is inherently a bad post at this point and that I’m supposedly making false claims despite providing citations.

Not going to bother responding to the rest. I’m not zeuxcg and I’m not an engineer. Those two paragraphs aren’t relevant to me and have already received response from the thread creator.

[Humanagon]

The problem is that it isn’t really a big obstacle to make sure the gears don’t get broken, but they insist on breaking it anyway.

[SenorSbeve (sbeve)]

They insist on breaking it because it is an outdated system, if I should quote zeuxcg here:

@zeuxcg

LoadLibrary has been challenging for us to support due to mechanics of how Lua library loading works on the client. Because of this, we have inadvertently broken this mechanism a few times, and it prevents development of some internal changes.

It is getting harder for the engineers to maintain LoadLibrary, and it is using time and resources that could be spent working on more important things than maintaining an outdated and, should I add, deprecated library.

If you’re so insistent on keeping gears around, then you should fork them and fix them yourself. Again, the engineers aren’t going to spend their resources on fixing a feature that is barely used nowadays, and with all the gear on the catalog, that would take up a lot more time than needed. They have even provided a fix for you!

@zeuxcg

I use LoadLibrary, what do I replace it with?

We recognize that you don’t really want to spend a lot of time cleaning up uses of LoadLibrary. Usually the use of LoadLibrary is just for RbxUtility.Create which is a simple enough function to replicate, but some of you may be using RbxStamper or RbxGui . The good news is that it’s easy to replace LoadLibrary with the use of ModuleScript s and require . Here’s how to do this:

1. Download the attached file that contains 3 ModuleScripts in a Folder:

LoadLibrary.rbxmx (249.0 KB)

2. Insert it into your game into ReplicatedStorage by right clicking ReplicatedStorage, choosing “Insert from File…” and locating the file you downloaded.
3. In your script code, replace LoadLibrary calls with require as follows:

local RbxUtility = require(game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage"):
    WaitForChild("LoadLibrary"):WaitForChild("RbxUtility"))

-- call RbxUtility.Create as usual

Of course you are free to put the libraries into any other location in your game’s hierarchy, and you can remove RbxStamper / RbxGui if you only need RbxUtility.

That’s it! That’s all it takes.

[Humanagon]

I meant break gear, not break loadlibrary.

[SenorSbeve (sbeve)]

Again, they aren’t going to maintain a library for the sole purpose of keeping old gears around. I do not know a single person who uses gears besides for aesthetic reasons, and those who do use gears maintain their own version of them, so that when things that are critical to the gears, such as LoadLibrary are broken, they can fix it themselves. The engineers don’t need to maintain the gear, and I don’t think they should, as they are barely used.

[Humanagon]

Didn’t want them to, just wanted them to try and find a solution to not break gear.

[SenorSbeve (sbeve)]

There is a solution, which has been said many times before in this topic, and that is maintaining gears yourself.

If gears are so important to you, then you should take the time out of your day to update the gears that will be broken by the LoadLibrary removal, instead of asking the engineers to maintain an outdated library just so that you can keep your gears around (that might I add, are barely used and barely updated as it is) and keep playing your gear fighting games.

I’ll repost the workaround again for your convenience.

@zeuxcg

I use LoadLibrary, what do I replace it with?

We recognize that you don’t really want to spend a lot of time cleaning up uses of LoadLibrary. Usually the use of LoadLibrary is just for RbxUtility.Create which is a simple enough function to replicate, but some of you may be using RbxStamper or RbxGui . The good news is that it’s easy to replace LoadLibrary with the use of ModuleScript s and require . Here’s how to do this:

1. Download the attached file that contains 3 ModuleScripts in a Folder:

LoadLibrary.rbxmx (249.0 KB)

2. Insert it into your game into ReplicatedStorage by right clicking ReplicatedStorage, choosing “Insert from File…” and locating the file you downloaded.
3. In your script code, replace LoadLibrary calls with require as follows:

local RbxUtility = require(game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage"):
    WaitForChild("LoadLibrary"):WaitForChild("RbxUtility"))

-- call RbxUtility.Create as usual

Of course you are free to put the libraries into any other location in your game’s hierarchy, and you can remove RbxStamper / RbxGui if you only need RbxUtility.

That’s it! That’s all it takes.

[Humanagon]

It’s not a solution if it still breaks the gear and people have to manually insert a module script to fix it. The gear should work as it is supposed to on all games and I’ve given my own solution to this.

@Humanagon

Hell you could even make it so that when loadlibrary is called it automatically makes the module script in-game so that it doesn’t break gears that aren’t going to be updated.

But of course, the majority doesn’t get effected so my point is invalid.

[Tomarty]

Could updating gear be automated by simply replacing LoadLibrary("[library name]") with (function() [library source] end)()?

[SenorSbeve (sbeve)]

Contrary to what you believe, it actually is a solution. There are two things that could happen after this update hits, you either fix it yourself, or the engineers waste precious time and resources fixing a feature that is barely maintained or used as it is, just because they decided to remove another deprecated feature that was also barely maintained or used as it is. I’ve actually said this before.

@ShelDev

If gears are so important to you, then you should take the time out of your day to update the gears that will be broken by the LoadLibrary removal, instead of asking the engineers to maintain an outdated library just so that you can keep your gears around (that might I add, are barely used and barely updated as it is) and keep playing your gear fighting games.

You are right about the majority not being affected, and that is exactly why they won’t take the time out of their day to fix gears, you’ve essentially proven mine and @colbert2677’s point. Gears are barely used nowadays, and when they are used, they are maintained by the developers so that they
can easily issues that arise with the gears due to updates like this.

There are tons of gears that exist and use LoadLibrary, and I’m sure the engineers have much better things to do with their time than replace a few lines of code for each gear.

[Humanagon]

I think that’s over exaggerated, taking a few hours to make loadlibrary do something else when called wouldn’t be wasting nearly as much time as it would if the gear dev had to manually fix each gear and then wait weeks for them to get submitted.

@Tomarty

Could updating gear be automated by simply replacing LoadLibrary("[library name]") with (function() [library source] end)() ?

They could simply make loadlibrary do this when called. And if that doesn’t work, there are many other methods to choose from.

[SenorSbeve (sbeve)]

It would still take time for the engineers to do all of that, and again, that time could be used to work on other projects, instead of maintaining a feature that is barely used. If gears were a largely used feature, then sure I could begin to see your point, but nobody uses gear anymore for the purpose of actually using it in game.

@ShelDev

If gears are so important to you, then you should take the time out of your day to update the gears that will be broken by the LoadLibrary removal, instead of asking the engineers to maintain an outdated library just so that you can keep your gears around (that might I add, are barely used and barely updated as it is) and keep playing your gear fighting games.

If it would only take a few hours to fix all the gears, can’t you easily do that yourself if you want to keep your fighting game alive? It isn’t like this is the first time gears have been broken. Along with the LoadLibrary issues, most gears would need to be made FilteringEnabled compatible, and that would take much more time than you think, so again, if you’re so passionate about this, then you should probably maintain specific gears for your fighting game so that when issues like this occur, you can easily go in and fix them.