This is a welcome change. Streaming enabled should be the default, most game genres out there don’t need the whole map loaded.
You can still disable SE.
15 Likes
I like this change, before i did not know what streaming was but now I do! Idk if my experience had streaming enabled, but if it doesn’t I will be sure to enable it! Overall I think this is a good update so uses on older and lower-end devices can play in an experience smoothly!
13 Likes
Doesn’t make it not annoying to disable every time. I’d like a setting to toggle this instead of being forced into it.
17 Likes
There is a setting. It’s under the workspace and it takes 2 seconds to change. Why do you need a setting for the setting? That’d mean doubling the amount of templates + a very beginner unfriendly experience…
18 Likes
One of the first steps of creating massive worlds would be allowing devs to upload heavier places. Right now the publish would just fail if that place file is too heavy or has too many voxel.
21 Likes
Anyone sold on streaming from these 3 bullet points clearly has been mislead into believing that streaming doesn’t come with downsides.
Downsides
As some devs know, streaming is not all peaches and cream. Roblox, ever since streaming left beta, has been intentionally turning a blind eye to these downsides and has made zero progress towards ameliorating them.
Streaming is presented as a “one size fits all” solution
- This is a flawed assumption on Roblox’s part owing to the fact that their very platform is built around “Powering Imagination”. Streaming can be thought of as a glove; inherently, it doesn’t fit everyone like a glove. You’ll never hear the devs of uncreative cookie cutter games complaining about streaming not quite suiting them/their game.
The developer has next to zero control over streaming
- When it comes to control, you as the developer, at runtime, have… none. In edit mode, it offers about as much control as a light dimmer, maybe even less. At runtime, you are simply at the mercy of streaming, a backseat passenger, never the driver— a hard pill to swallow for anyone creative.
A codebase needs to be redesigned to work after toggling streaming on/off
- This somewhat parallels with the “zero control” point, nevertheless if you have a game in development for some amount of time and you (or another dev) wants to adopt streaming, the scripter(s) is going to have to halt development to convert the codebase (mainly the client side) into being “tolerant” of streaming enable. So that leaves the scripter(s) with 2 obvious choices + a bonus choice:
A: get a fat migraine
B: quit
C: Choice A and later Choice B
22 Likes
Update:
I have a Capture The Flag game and when enabled streaming it made everything invisible.
11 Likes
Doubling templates? I’m talking about a Studio setting. Just a simple “StreamingEnabled by default” setting is all I’m asking for.
16 Likes
It just makes more sense to use streaming. Most big games (GTA, Red Dead) use some sort of streaming to create their massive worlds.
13 Likes
Thats true, though most points everyone has here is that the streaming system we have is… not exactly great while games like GTA and Red Dead have streaming systems fully built from the ground up, designed for said games to work perfectly. On roblox this is sadly not the case.
15 Likes
It’s not great but it sure helps with creating bigger games, even smoother experiences. I’m sure there will be a big improvement to streaming in the future.
12 Likes
Not entirely the case, streaming does not help that much even with bigger games. It may actually be even worse to use in bigger games mainly because the server has to take all of said load of managing the streaming system to work in any way for each player. One example i have is one of my places with a “Truly massive world” that just so happens crash on server boot whenever streaming is enabled at all.
11 Likes
They have complete control over when things stream in and out.
Exactly.
10 Likes
ok cool now fix CSG so we can actually make these things
11 Likes
Roblox has continued to take the approach of treating devs as too stupid to give more advanced options.
The result of this is discouraging advanced and creative developers creating groundbreaking experiences.
Streaming needs more APIs so that devs can manage what is shown, and when it is streamed out. We can’t rely on Roblox’s systems to predict what we want.
This has been a common pattern across Roblox’s tools and features recently. I understand simplicity makes an easier entry point for new, young developers, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give the option for those who are looking to push the boundaries and make something unique.
18 Likes
When I say, “bigger games” it does not necessarily mean “massive worlds”. It just simply implies that you can space things out instead of creating the typical lobby area with teleports to different places, because you are now streaming instead of having everything be persistent at all times.
Also, when it comes to streaming, it is not a “one size fit all solution”, it all depends on how you code around the technology. And when I say how well I mean knowing the stress involved for loading and offloading assets, your streaming setup because you may need to fiddle with it to get it right for your size world as well. If it’s crashing on boot that means you may not have it setup properly to load or the size of your world is just stupendously large (as large or larger than big game AAA worlds). I don’t think Roblox is ready for that right now as they are just now rolling out this by default, we are a long way away from the streaming to be improved for massive worlds. For instance, a truly massive world may need to have a smaller radius, Roblox may not be able to handle such a large radius (for viewing pleasure). Take a game like RuneScape, it’s streaming tech is probably better but the world is massive, and the radius of sight is by default a small range. You can adjust the setting to see further but by default it cuts off in a shorter range to reduce lag. All you see a black background outside the paused area, but it helped them build a massive world that can be explored without loading scenes.
10 Likes
Miscellaneous streaming fun fact:
If an exploiter equips an excessively large amount of items and walks/teleports into the stream radius of another player, they’ll corrupt their datastream due to the sheer packet load.
This is effectively a kick aura exploit. 
As if we needed another reason as to why distance based streaming is awful.
12 Likes
What do you mean exactly?
Yeaaaa im not coding anything around some arbitrary automatic “technology” that i have 0 real control over. Roblox themselves also has to build “one size fit all” features every time just because they do somewhat understand that new games built around said features do take a while to release, so it’s probably best to just have the feature “just work”. The “just work” concept isn’t exactly bad by any means, but it DOES become an issue when theres 0 other alternatives along with said feature being more and more pushed in our faces.
What setup is there anyways? The whole place i have is just a giant baseplate. Still yeah it’s true, its pretty big! However simply dismissing the entire world or whatever else just because said hidden proprietary, automatic (crappy) tech does not handle it (and realistically will not be able to handle it in the future too) is not a good idea. I don’t think the current system roblox provides is just bad because is, i think its bad because theres 0 alternatives along with 0 way for me to create something on a deeper level that would actually work for my kind of places.
10 Likes
The streaming game is on top!!! I love server sided streaming systems and not client ones! I love reduced server performance on average!
11 Likes
Precisely. The funny thing is this shows how tonedeaf streaming’s implementation is, it literally will ddos the client with packets just so they have a “better”, more “memory performant” gameplay experience.
11 Likes