The irony of this whole situation is that outlines aren’t even “old school roblox” - they are, uh, “Roblox circa 2013” style…
18 Likes
Are there any plans to deprecate Enum.SurfaceType.SmoothNoOutlines, or deprecate SurfaceTypes altogether?
The most common instance type in Roblox has 24 surface-related properties that are almost never used:
LeftSurface, LeftSurfaceInput, LeftParamA, LeftParamB, RightSurface, RightSurfaceInput, RightParamA, RightParamB, TopSurface, TopSurfaceInput, TopParamA, TopParamB, BottomSurface, BottomSurfaceInput, BottomParamA, BottomParamB, FrontSurface, FrontSurfaceInput, FrontParamA, FrontParamB, BackSurface, BackSurfaceInput, BackParamA, BackParamB
Most of these properties don’t even make sense for instance types like WedgePart, MeshPart, UnionOperation, and Terrain.
If we want to be able to let some of these go someday, similar long-term removal notices (or deprecation) should be done sooner rather than later.
At the very least, developers shouldn’t be required to set part.TopSurface and part.BottomSurface to Enum.SurfaceType.Smooth when creating clean parts. As a programmer it feels essentially the same as being required to set FormFactor to Enum.FormFactor.Custom.
6 Likes
SmoothNoOutlines will be deprecated. We’d love to deprecate everything else, and we have internal plans to do this somehow, but it’s challenging due to the need to support legacy content. We’ll need to do some design work internally to figure out how to approach this, and there’s no bandwidth for this this year.
14 Likes
I don’t mind this, I thought outlines were ugly, but then again, some people might like them.
Like sometimes I just ask this question. Why remove features? Having it as an optional choice only makes sense.
7 Likes
Although this update is for the benefit of improving the rendering of our games on ROBLOX and that its unused by the majority of the platform, this feature is still a useful asset in Studio for modifying Parts or Models in Lighting settings which would otherwise make it impossible to identify corners, edges and points of Parts of the same colour. (they blend together on my view-port so those outlines really help)
It sucks but I would sincerely appreciate if we could keep this feature on Studio or reinvent it into something similar to Blender’s “Wireframe” view-port! I’d really like to continue to build with some peace of mind that I haven’t forgotten to connect two surfaces, edges or left a part about in my builds 
just because I literally couldn’t see it.
7 Likes
Its official… I DONT HAVE TO UNION STUFF DISABLE OUTLINES NOW!!! 
1 Like
Outlines have been disabled by default a while ago…
3 Likes
A wireframe mode is coming soon to eliminate the need for outlines: Roblox Platform High-Level Roadmap
Updates like these that improve performance are great because they improve the overall experience. Outlines weren’t pretty and definitely weren’t worth the cost. It’s scary to think that at one point every Roblox game looked like a beginner’s one-time SketchUp project:
10 Likes
Please, don’t be Apple. Don’t call a large number small just because it creates a small percentage. Over 20,000 games is still a lot. True or not it comes off as you downplaying the important of outlines.
Even so, it was for the best. How they were implemented just didn’t work. Very thin and no way to set the color or thickness. I hate to see any feature be removed without an alternative (a decal is not an alternative for anything but simple shapes), but it wasn’t a useful feature to begin with. I hope to see Roblox support custom pixel shaders in the future, so developers can create their own outlines.
7 Likes
I joined ROBLOX to build, in 2012/2013, and it has been my childhood in sandboxes from the baseplate surivals, to spaceship build explorations, to build to survive dracobloxxers, to ship building, and to the glorious feature I built dozens over a hundred places on, Build Mode. I was very used to using outlines, it became the identity I associated ROBLOX with. I helped build other groups up with Build Mode, and legacy outlines became a foundation over all of roblox, as we were all just kids.
I am sad to see Legacy Outlines going away. If more people knew how to turn them on, people probably would. Those few that saw the DevForum posts, or figured it out, did turn them on. I’d have to say for 20k, a lot of people noticed and spread the information for others to see. It was important to many people, developer or not. My nostalgia is still high above for its removal.
6 Likes
Very pleased with this change. Outlines were a mostly useless feature that mostly bogged stuff down behind the scenes for everyone. Thanks.
Just replicate it with scripted outlines.
1 Like
Not everyone has the time or knowledge of scripting to do that 
It’s a simple script.
local function addOutline(part)
local outline = Instance.new("SelectionBox",part)
outline.Adornee = part
outline.LineThickness = 0.05 -- You choose
outline.Color3 = Color3.fromRGB(0,0,0)
outline.Transparency = 0 -- You choose
return
end
for _,v in pairs(workspace:GetDescendants()) do
if v:IsA("Part") then
addOutline()
end
end
workspace.DescendantAdded:Connect(function(v)
if v:IsA("Part") then
addOutline()
end
return
end)
6 Likes
Don’t deprecate scripts.
Jokes aside, I will miss outlines, they were useful when building, and for nostalgic games. I feel that using decals won’t work, if the part is more bigger, the thickness of the decal outline is bigger. But yeah, that’s our only solution, I guess. Also, why not convert this into a Studio-only feature for building? Yes.
5 Likes
The above reply I made is a better solution than decals.
Yeah, I saw it after I have uploaded my reply, thanks!
1 Like
I’ll miss outlines, but I’ll admit that I haven’t used them often. Oh well, guess I’ll use SelectionBoxes when I need them.
2 Likes
That’s not a “just apple” thing, typically any person would call that small by comparison. So no, 20-30,000 games wouldn’t be a big number compared to millions.
4 Likes
A feature that was annoying and honestly, made games look a lot more ugly is gone.
3 Likes