Is there a way to separate PC/mobile servers without making them two different games? If not, what are some tips for easily pushing updates out to both games and synchronizing them?
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I thought this was done automatically. Doesn’t Roblox already do this?
No. All devices use the same servers.
Why do you want to separate PC and mobile players?
Probably because of a skill gap / unbalanced controls.
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Couldn’t you just creaye one place compatible for PC and another for Mobile? (e.g. SB’s World (Mobile)
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I can understand why this could be useful for specific games, but I don’t think they should add support for this, it would just divide players which would never be good for the platform as a whole, however you could make a seperate game for each platform.
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How to:
- set Universe start place with logic to determine controls and separate users
- create different places to handle these controls
- sync with http for now and MessagingService later once fully released to all
You won’t be able to precisely sort players by platform as ROBLOX believes it ruins the unified experience (which I disagree with their logic, but digress). You’ll have to separate by controls if you really desire this, or risk incorrectly identifying devices. If the user is capable of switching control types may be problematic for UX. Maybe prompt asking before hand?
There’s no simple way but I believe it could be done using one of these methods.
To detect if a player is on mobile or PC, you can use a combination of these in LocalScripts to try to best guess what device they are on (although you should probably confirm with them):
https://developer.roblox.com/api-reference/property/UserInputService/TouchEnabled
https://developer.roblox.com/api-reference/property/UserInputService/KeyboardEnabled
In terms of teleporting them into separate servers, you could have a hub of some sort and wait for enough players to join and use Party Teleports (https://developer.roblox.com/api-reference/function/TeleportService/TeleportPartyAsync), although I assume you can not let new users join the server with this.
Another solution may be using ReserveServer (https://developer.roblox.com/api-reference/function/TeleportService/ReserveServer). This is probably a better solution compared to Party Teleports unless your game would work well with those specifically.
The other option is, you could just have a universe and a hub and separate those players using basic teleporting. In that case, you would just publish updates to both using “Publish to Roblox As” at around the same time.
Hopefully one of these help.
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There’s a huge skill gap between mobile and PC players and I would like to give player scripts optimized to their platforms.
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There’s a huge skill gap between mobile users and pc users. This comes down to controls and performance.
People with a keyboard and mouse have a significant advantage over a mobile user in terms of aiming and precision. Alternatively, mobile users have a significant advantage for things like tapping multiple areas as two fingers are wayy faster than having to move a mouse PLUS the screen is smaller on mobile. These unbalances make it hard to provide a consistent gameplay between pc and mobile users that does not favour one device over another. (Especially if it counts for say a competitive mode)
As for how to separate them, there isn’t really a good way to do so. You could always use UserInputService to figure out what they are using. Then send them off to a different server
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This should possibly be an option in place settings or even studio settings, I believe the said things above would guaranteed work but it is quite finicky to do so I would probably wait until it is an official feature unless you need it urgently.
Going to quote my reply to a similar thread:
TL;DR: don’t matchmake by platform, matchmake by input type
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Eh, I wish Roblox would provide us with an option to automatically separate by controls so that users don’t need to join two separate servers to play a game.
If I may add to this thread,
A lot of people who play on PC/console are looking for immersive experiences with detail and complexity. You can’t make these experiences for PC players when you are also trying to make the game perform for lower end mobile devices. It would be nice to segregate PC/xbox from mobile so that you can have two versions of the game available. One which can handle the spectrum of high end to low end PC/console and another which is optimized for all mobile devices. For the game I’m making, all the devices would be connected in the sense that your data from mobile gameplay would crossover into the PC/console gameplay.
This would allow otherwise only PC/console games to also have a mobile version!
You could make the game check if the player has Touch enabled when a player joins (if they are on mobile then they do) and then they’re teleported to a seperate world specifically for mobile players that do not allow PC players (simply by checking the option when publishing the game)
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That’s not good enough, computers can have touch screen too. I’d recommend a combination of checking controls and touch screen