Some textures though still look absolutely awful, namely Slate, Cobblestone, Brick, and Corroded Metal (which looks like a crappy jpg on a pbr brick)
Brick no longer is brick-y, and looks awful when discolored with other colors.
All the rock materials look like discoloured displacements of each other. Disgraceful.
Now lets tackle fabric.
Guess which is roblox’s?
Spoiler
The Left
There are textures very similar, if not, better on the platform that preform better that don’t interrupt how fabric/carpety the already existing carpet is. The new fabric texture leans too much on the carpet side, which makes it hard to use it in a furniture piece.
Brick would be fine if it wasn’t for the discoloration, most users actually wanted bricks to be bigger, and they definitely look more real now. Other than that, I agree.
I’d be ok with the new materials if I could enable the use of both old and new materials in my games. That would be great, if possible!
In a lot of my games people create their own things in the game by building blocks and changing any properties they like. I don’t want to change all old buildings to the new materials, but also don’t want to not have access to the new materials either. I’d love if there were options to use some of the old materials and new materials in the same place. That would be really helpful. Otherwise I likely won’t be able to utilise these materials in my games, which would be disappointing to be honest!
Is this the new bricks… they don’t really look that good to be honest and it looks more of a poorly made texture in toolbox from the classic days. This will ruin most of my builds sadly and the aesthetic of most builds will be ruined and we might have to switch towards toolbox textures if this isn’t toggle-able…
Colors are not final, and they’re baking the colors out of the textures. This is stated at the bottom of the original post.
Some New Part Materials have full color baked into them. We are currently removing some of this to give your more range while still allowing for color matching between terrain and parts
The bricks look better now, I just wish they would make them grayscale…
The old bricks were super low-res too… Have you not seen how many people complained that bricks were too small?
The new Cobblestone is great! but i kinda prefer the old one since it has 3D texture shading on it, the new one however does not really have that kind of 3D feeling on it feels like a normal texture. Overall great Update, Thanks ROBLOX!
While new materials and terrain textures is cool, I think the materials themselves should be much more similar to the originals while improving quality and detail. For example, grass doesn’t really look like grass anymore, it looks like green dirt.
I also don’t particularly like the new stone texture, it looks too much like Granite now.
To add to this, Metal looks extremely dark (I know colors are being baked out, but this is quite a specific issue given I primarily work with the metal material)
For example:
Old
New
Most materials look far too soft and lack detail at a distance. For example:
Old
New
And this is simply just not preferable for most developers - including myself. I don’t know what I’d do if this update carried out with the current textures, I would need to use Texture instances using old materials if I wanted to actually make any of my builds, greatly increasing the amount of time it takes to build and greatly decreasing my motivation to use Roblox as a development platform.
From what I see, these texture changes are geared towards smaller modern-styled games (For example, a subway station) - a category only a fraction of the entire community specializes in, and even then these textures make it extremely difficult to use materials in a larger-scale environment where you see objects from a further distance away than usual (i.e. 95% of builds on Roblox) or nature showcases.
I agree Roblox needs better textures, but these textures are not better.
Roblox is a platform best known for creativity and visual appeal in games and showcases. I’ve seen others’ feedback, and took the time to observe the developer’s intent for their game. I can conclude that no, it is not acceptable. The old textures should remain an option for those who want to have their map looking a specific way. No one wants to have to rebuild, abandon or manually retexture everything by themselves, just because of a forced update.
Yes, the new textures are a push forward in the future, and is certain to benefit many games in the long run. Some of them even look better. However, by forcefully changing the materials and textures of terrain and parts, this is also hindering creativity. By taking away the developer’s intent of past games, this also leads to some hideous environments, something that the developer never intended to be that way in the first place. And while some textures will look more realistic, this creates a problem when grass parts start leaning towards the green side. If you have to have grass parts, do not force them to be green. If grass colors are forced to be greener, then there’s no point in changing the colors for the other materials at all.
I agree that, yes. Roblox is doing this update in an attempt to stop clinging to the past and look forward to the next generation of gaming. And yes, technology is advancing and so should the current and last generation of computers. Unfortunately, not everyone has hundreds or thousands of dollars to blow on a gaming rig. Even for portable devices like mine being used today, there are games with a complex building style, and instead of the usual level 4 or 5 graphic levels, I’m forced to reduce it to level 1 or 2. Please, do not make my performance any worse than it already is. Remember, that, while Roblox attracts teens and adults, it’s also a place whose specific target audience is young children. And while there are certainly children who are fortunate enough to have their parents buy them an expensive or budget gaming PC, not every child is capable of running games beyond level 1 graphics.
And while there are certainly children who are fortunate enough to have their parents buy them an expensive or budget gaming PC, not every child is capable of running games beyond level 1 graphics.
Maybe I’m overthinking it. Perhaps this update might not actually affect performance in a major way. However, for those experiencing performance issues with things the way they are already, what Roblox should be focusing on is finding ways to innovate and reduce the strain of optimization issues. Everyone knows that smooth plastic is the way to go if you want a 100% fully-optimized game. But not everyone wants to stoop low to that level, there are people who want to create ground-breaking games, and revolutionary features in those games. That sounds more like scripting, but building obviously has a huge impact on games as well. If the game wants players to have a sense of mystery, or experience something that smooth plastic wouldn’t otherwise satisfy the need for adventure, exploration and what have you… I think they should be allowed to.
In short: Don’t force these new materials over the older ones. Like others have probably said, just like the “Compatibility” lighting feature, both parts, ANDterrain should have a dropbox menu that lets you switch inbetween. I also think that provided the option, you should be allowed to switch at ANY given time; If you can’t revert changes after selecting the option, and the developer hates how it looks, that sucks. But that should be understood already.
Going back to my point of performance optimization… if this update is made with the consideration of low-end devices, then good, I have no complaints. I would like to mention though, that if the colors being scaled to ends up making the entire material look ugly and out of place, it’ll still be an eyesore to look at whilst sacrificing visual quality for performance. Rather than having the materials not blend in at least a little, yes. That should be the case. If you’re gonna scale them to one color, the materials should be somewhat translucent, if it isn’t.
My answer? I haven’t tested it out in Studio yet, so I don’t have much to say about it. But as long as it looks good, feels right, andallows for lower-end devices to play most games smoothly, go right ahead.
The new materials lean more towards the realistic genre of games. I don’t think they serve much purpose for other genres, other than natural environments, showcases, that kind of stuff. I do like the realistic aspect, but if it sacrifices performance for quality (or vice versa) and takes away the rough visuals for games that intend to have them (provided you force the update without a dropbox menu), then I’d say it gives developers less options. In fact, the whole point of the dropbox menu feature… IS to give the developers more options for use in their games.
While I’m not a consistently active game developer like I once was, personally I find no problem using or not using them in my own games. I tend to make a lot of fighting stuff, and don’t care too much for the visual quality to be quite frank. But if there’s one thing I can say, less options are less options, and mean less options literally. So for me, I don’t see the problem in much of my own games, but I can testify for the silent majority that yes. They have more or less options. And yes, more options doesn’t mean you get more particularly, if it means sacrificing something that DID USED TO give you even more options.
Hope you’re still with me, heh. What I’m trying to say is the topic of materials is subjective. For me, I couldn’t care less, although I do protest that the dropbox menu should still be available if I absolutely need the option. But because it’s subjective that’s an even better reason for keeping older options available, even if they’re deemed by society “outdated”, or “obscure”, or “deprecated”. Heck you could go as far as dubbing it “really ugly”. So in short: if developers intend to have their games look “ugly”, for the sole purpose of mystery, or unease, or ominous, sinister feelings, or just because they want a feeling of nostalgia or to have their games look more classic, why stop them? They’re the ones shaping YOUR community! Not everyone wants to or can play GTA V on max settings, or Red Dead Redemption 2, name any graphic-intensive game. Sometimes they just want to play a game that’s clean, light on the eyes, and resembles ROBLOX. Not Ark, not Rust… Roblox. But, I digress.
For me, they might improve it to some extent, but also kill it to a degree. I think certain textures are just better left untouched, but instead of having the newer materials look like or act like the old ones, we should continue to have the option to revert when needed. Like I said, less options are less options… and mean less options. So by taking that away from us, you’re taking away some level of immersion from players as well. I’m not a popular developer, and I don’t build or code very often, so I don’t really know about myself much. But I’d prefer some over others personally, and I think that if I showed comparisons to people who visited my game, I’m sure they can agree or agree to disagree. Once again, everything is subjective, but some things are better left untouched yet still remain available.
I apologize for my mountainous text. I haven’t provided screenshots or video feedback to back up much of what I’m saying, and also because I’m rarely involved with Studio to begin with. Admittedly though, if others are complaining that it ruins the aesthetic, immersion and doesn’t fit the intention for their game(s), I’d say it’s best to still keep the option available. This is different from lighting, lighting can easily be fixed via compatibility, shadowmap and voxel. On the other hand, materials are controversial, since some like the roughness or smoothness or realism. Lighting is fine, but forcing textures is not. I’ll reiterate it a final time: don’t auto-update materials, and don’t prevent the developer from switching back and forth.
As a final point, this is Roblox, a GAME DEVELOPMENT ENGINE we’re dealing with. Not a complex game built by Bethesda, or EA, or Rockstar, or even Epic Games. Those are all games made to be played in a specific way. Roblox is a place made to grant the ability to develop said games, not make realism or a specific genre mainstream. There’s so much more potential for the platform, and by limiting developers’ options, you’re limiting that potential for gaming on said platform. Besides, isn’t Roblox also well-known for backward-compatibility? We know this, come on. I already dragged this out further than it needed to be, so I rest my case.
Hope that some of these changes retain the older variations a bit more, or even have them as options in the future. I get that you won’t be keeping the old ones but I feel that a lot of these newer textures are much poorer in quality and in design compared to the old ones.
If Roblox staff are going to release this new texture update. PLEASE! We need to have the option to use both old and new material textures. NOT JUST REPLACING THEM WITH NEW ONE. I have to agree with some peoples that some new material needs a rework!! For example, the brick part is literally too big compared to the small brick part material. The new foil material is literally becoming like metal material. I changed my mind. I was going to be expected that you guys are making this update good but then… I’m TOO disappointed. Some new materials having issues. You gotta LITERALLY have to fix them before releasing them to the public. Do not forget that we should HAVE the option to use both old and new material texture as I said at the beginning of my message.
