Roblox seriously needs to stop holding back its engine just to support outdated hardware that barely anyone uses anymore. They keep pushing this idea that every feature must work on every device, but that just doesn’t make sense, especially when developers can already restrict their games to specific platforms. If I can choose to make my game PC only, why am I not allowed to use more advanced features that clearly work fine on modern devices?
A great example is the 60 stud limit on lights. While there are technical reasons behind it, mainly related to how Roblox’s voxel based lighting engine handles performance and shadow fidelity, the cap still ends up limiting visual quality across the board. Even on highend systems where performance isn’t a concern, developers aren’t given the option to extend light range for more expansive or immersive scenes. Roblox has acknowledged this by planning to raise the cap to 120 studs, but the core issue remains: developers don’t have control over tradeoffs that should be theirs to make. Another example is how SurfaceGuis still can’t wrap around surfaces like Decals or Textures do. Yet Roblox already has the tech to rasterize UIs with things like CanvasGroup. The tools exist, but developers just aren’t allowed to use them in the ways that would actually improve gameplay and immersion.
Roblox claims to care about accessibility, but in practice, they’re just catering to a tiny percentage of users still running OpenGL or ancient phones. Meanwhile, the rest of us, most developers and players alike, are stuck with limitations designed for hardware that should’ve been phased out years ago. Roblox should stop trying to force a one-size-fits-all approach and instead give developers the freedom to build for the platforms their games are actually targeting.
In short, if Roblox wants to keep up with modern engines like Unity and Unreal, they need to trust their creators more. Let us decide what kind of experience we want to deliver and what platforms we want to support.
(This post was previously taken down from Development Discussion, and the moderation message advised me to post this here instead-likely because it’ll get less traffic here. Go figure.)
Do you have access to the same analytics Roblox has that would prove the “outdated hardware” that they continue to support is “barely used by anyone” on the platform?
are we talking about the same Roblox? maybe 5 years ago they did when they still supported XP, but the performance of the engine has tanked enough that anything less than my 45w 4c/8t laptop i7 is laggy enough to make some games unplayable and in the past few months my i5-6500 has started to have noticeable stuttering in games that didn’t have it before
the lighting limit is a holdover from when the lighting engine would completely die if you had lights that went over the limits we have today. SurfaceGuis CAN wrap its just locked behind a hidden property that does it manually (another case of no resample type for textures)
also OpenGL is a very capable rendering system as shown by the fact the same version Roblox uses is used by Minecraft and that has the craziest shaders I’ve seen in any games, plus every source game uses DX9 which is equivalent to GL2.1
the limits you described are more of a “roblox refuses to add property that they have internally and/or have implemented for other things” than a “roblos suport old device mean no features!1!!!”
If the money Roblox spends on supporting these devices turns a profit, not supporting them would mean they make less money. Why would they do that?
The more humane way to look at this is that pulling support for those devices is a lot of human happiness lost. Hundreds of thousands of people depend on Roblox to support the hardware, and by extension, the happiness and enjoyment they get in their day.
I understand the struggle for developers who want more complex, polished, and varied engine features, but the lack of these things does not mean our creativity is lessened any. It’s on us to make games fun. For most experiences on Roblox, the players are what make it fun. Less players is less fun.