Summary of the Creator AMA (RDC 2024) with Nick and Tian [September 19, 2024]

[MightyDantheman (Fate)]

Continued Asked & Answered

Q:

@Hycheese

I was very excited about the Studio Luau File Sync Beta feature announced at RDC 23, and I’m disappointed that it still hasn’t been released to this day. I know you both addressed this during RDC 24, and the new timeline is “Late 2024,” but I’m a bit skeptical about this timeline given what has happened so far.

Could you provide more details on the current stage of development for this feature and what work remains? Can we realistically expect it to be released later this year, or is there a chance the goalposts will continue to shift?

A:

@skywise84

Our goal is to build great support in Roblox Studio, out of the box, for working on your code as files. This means letting you use your favorite IDE, and its plugins to edit the code in any Roblox project.

Before the end of the year we plan to share the first preview of our new approach, as an opt-in Studio feature. As this is a very early preview this won’t support all of your workflows, but we want to make sure we are developing this transparently and sharing our progress as we go to continuously get feedback. This build will include basic support for right-clicking on a script, and syncing it bidirectionally with a file on your disk when you save.

Like you said - we’re late on this. The real reason for this is - we weren’t happy with our first attempt and went back to the drawing board.

For those of you who are interested in why - I’ve included some more info in the drop down below.

What was wrong with the first version of File Sync 1

• File watching is hard, bidirectional sync with file watching is even harder when you factor in Team Create. We tried to skip this by making the file sync manual (i.e., click import / export). This led to a pretty janky workflow with a high risk of data loss.
• We tried to provide one tool to sync scripts in the whole DataModel to files. The challenge is that the DataModel is not a file system. Tools like Rojo have invested a lot of time building practices / conventions for this. Our attempt to do this in a way that would work on any Roblox project was not convincing.
• File sync was some widget with controls you needed to operate, rather than being something that fit into your workflow more naturally

For those of you who don’t need the details - the short of it was, the feature didn’t feel right. Those in the community that volunteered to test it told us the same.

As we gather feedback from this first preview, and build out our full roadmap, we’ll release our progress regularly.

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Q:

@Spectaqual

What plans are there to increase user privacy over the next year? At RDC, a Streamer Mode was teased for Star Creators, and while it’s a great first step, I’d love to see this mindset applied across the entire platform. The amount of harassment I’ve gotten for having a little blue Verified icon next to my username is ridiculous.

A:

@skywise84

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. We take the privacy of our users very seriously and are evaluating changes to our verified badge feature based on what we’ve been hearing from the community. We will share more in the future, but would love to hear your thoughts around what functionality you’d be looking for here.

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Q:

@TheMemerMonkey

When will we be able to use Instances as values for Attributes?

A:

@skywise84

We are not currently looking into this, but thank you for the feedback. We’ll add this to our feature request list, and we note all the interest during this AMA!

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Q:

@ThoughtSpinnr

Hey guys! Thanks for doing another one of these. It’s always awesome to be able to ask the both of you questions directly.

While answering a question during his Q&A at RDC, Dave brought up the possibility of Luau being used as a shader language in the future. Allowing developers to author shaders using Luau is something that’s been requested time and time again, year after year after year. The last “official” statement we have regarding it is from @zeuxcg’s 2016 devforum post where he basically said “this is probably not happening, ever.” This RDC marks the first instance (to my knowledge) that Dave has ever publicly acknowledged this feature as a possibility and so there’s this renewed sense of hope that it may happen at some point.

Has there been any additional effort, research, investigation, or development put into “LSL” internally at Roblox? If so, is there any information you can share on it at this time?

A:

@skywise84

We want to improve our material system over time, which may involve shaders or other approaches (e.g., parametric materials), and we want to ensure that our solutions work performantly across all platforms. While we do not have anything related to shader support in active development, we may potentially revisit this in the future. Thank you for the feedback.

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Q:

@ATanooki

Hi all!

Is there any more information of the Shopify X Roblox intergration?

A:

@lowercasecreator

In Q4, we’ll pilot our Shopify commerce integration with a small number of creators and brands. Early next year, we’ll expand to enable any eligible creator to sell physical merchandise directly from within their experiences to users in the US ages 13+.

Creators will be able to attach a digital benefit like an avatar or in-experience item from Creator Hub when you set up your commerce products. You’ll also have access to in-experience APIs and webhooks to help you manage merchandising, checkout and order confirmation.

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Q:

@Reditect

Since my other question was not about what was announced, here’s an on-topic one:

With the new updates on Paid Access, can they finally be allowed on Xbox? If not, why?

A:

@lowercasecreator

When we launch paid access experiences in fiat later this year, users will be able to buy on desktop and play on any platform (including Xbox).

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Q:

@HealthyKarl

This question here is not directly related to what was IN RDC, but I noticed that in the RDC Summary post there was a Table of Content that looked like this one:

Click here to view the Table of Contents

• The Question

The Question

And I was wondering whether this was made manually or not, because I liked the concept and make it a thing so that anyone can generate one through Markdown here.

But seen that there was a Table of Content, I was wondering if this Plugin could be added to the Forum one day. https://devforum.roblox.com/t/table-of-contents-discourse-plugin/1464352/7

A:

@skywise84

Hey, thanks for the suggestion! This is not currently on the roadmap, but we will certainly look into something like this if we end up doing more mega posts like the RDC wrap-up in the future.

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Q:

@younite

Hey, thanks so much for doing another AMA.

Creator AMA (Economy) - with Antoni and Enrico [May 22, 2024] Announcements

The lack of communication between UGC staff and creators is abysmal in comparison to communication between other developer roles and staff. When can we expect this to improve and have more of a direct channel to directly discuss issues with moderation, false takedowns, bugs, etc.? Can we also expect to see a private ‘Top’ UGC creator Guilded where top earners and experienced creators can have a safe environment to talk about issues with UGC that reflect the opinions of the community, set up mon…

Back in May I asked about the possibility of more transparency between UGC staff → creators, and opening up a ‘top’ UGC creator server where we can forward issues, set up office hours, etc.

UGC is currently extremely volatile and once again we have an even worse lack of communication from staff. Has there been any developments on the UGC teams end in fixing this connection since we last spoke?

A:

@lowercasecreator

Thank you for this question! We are piloting an avatar creator feedback group now and hope to roll out a broader channel in the near future. More generally, we’ve been trying to spend more time with UGC creators at events, such as at Gamescom LATAM and RDC, and I’ve definitely been learning a lot about the challenges facing the community.

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Q:

@apenzijncoolenleuk1

What is the plan for further development of dynamic clouds?

A:

@skywise84

We are not currently working on dynamic clouds, but could you let us know if you have specific feature requests? We’ll make sure they’re on our radar for consideration and future roadmaps.

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Q:

@katthakitty

Will immersive ads in the future show apple inc ads?

A:

@lowercasecreator

We welcome advertising on our platform from all brands and creators that adhere to our Advertising Standards, Community Standards, and Terms of Use.

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Q:

@DJX_D

Are there any more details about the Open Cloud Engine API for Executing Luau that can be released? Is this the universe scripts that was planned in the past or more limited?

A:

@skywise84

The Engine Open Cloud API for Executing Luau will allow you to run a Luau script against a place in the Roblox game engine via Open Cloud. You specify a command, we spin up a server, load the place and run your code. You can then request the logs and return values.

We’ll have more details on this very soon as we are close to announcing our Beta.

Note: the term ‘universe scripts’ has been used in a few different ways over the years at Roblox. This isn’t something we’re actively working on right now, but we’d love to hear more about what you are looking for in a feature like this.

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Q:

@metatablecatmaid

Regarding the Open Cloud Engine API, my question revolves around the API itself, how you would provide an execution environment to the API, and how would a response from this API be generated from said execution environment.

(If this is considered to be two questions, I would prefer an answer to the latter)

A:

@skywise84

Thanks for your question! Here’s how the Open Cloud Engine API for Luau execution works:

1. You make a request to create a task - including the universeId, placeId, placeVersion and the string you want to run as Luau.
2. We launch a server, load the place, and execute the code with DataModel and Engine Luau API access.
3. You poll for the operation status, and upon completion, receive the script’s return values and logs.

We’ll provide sample Python scripts to make this all nice and easy, and more details soon!

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Q:

@PysephDEV

Thank you for giving us this opportunity again! For my question – will we see any new lighting effects soon? I understand concerns for performance and ensuring that the shaders can run on all devices smoothly, however I’d love to see more ‘minimal’ and widely-adopted effects such as color quantization to be added.
Due to the engine restrictions imposed to keep our development experience smooth, it’s very hard to implement such effects ourselves, without abusing existing lighting properties in ways that are not guaranteed to remain consistent as Roblox updates.

Here’s a list of missing widely-used post-processing effects that would be lovely:

• Tonemapping
• Quantization/posterization
• Color curves
• Midtones

A:

@skywise84

As part of sunsetting Compatibility Lighting, we recently added a ColorGradingEffect instance, which can be used for tone mapping. Thank you for the feedback around the other effects – we’ll add them to our feature request list, but we’re not currently working on them.

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Q:

@MYOriginsWorkshop

Will you add functionalities that allow us to use and control hardware level instructions such as SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data)? I would like to have faster numerical calculation speed for tensor and matrix operations. I think it would be extremely useful for running deep learning libraries that was written in pure Lua like mines, named DataPredict Neural.

Imagine the in-game recommendation systems, in-game generative AIs and extremely performant learning AIs that improves user experience!

A:

@skywise84

Those use cases are great, and things we aspire to support over time. However, as related to direct access to specific HW, one of our core principles is that the experiences you build should be able to run wherever Roblox runs, from Playstation to low-end-mobile to high-end PC. Using specific hardware instructions could prevent an experience from running if the hardware isn’t available, so we would approach this from a higher level of workload mapping to available HW.

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Q:

@GreenPigXD

When can we expect to hear more news regarding Avatar Auto-Setup using Partially Complete models and modesty layers being required or not when using Classic Clothing?

A:

@skywise84

Thank you for the question. We are enhancing Avatar Auto Setup to run on partially complete models, and hope to release this by Q1 2025. We are really looking forward to seeing how the community uses it!

Additionally, we’re working on a long-term plan for modesty layers and 2D clothing, but we can’t share a specific timeline at this stage.

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Q:

@ItsKoiske

I know the BanAPI was briefly mentioned during RDC 24 but I got a question that could probably use an answer. Currently, in order to bypass the alt detection, you can simply use a VPN and a new account. Will Roblox consider hardware UIDs for alt detection in the future?

A:

@skywise84

Thank you for your question. We are working on improving alt detection using multiple techniques to make it as reliable as possible while still carefully protecting our users’ privacy. Unfortunately, we can’t comment on specific approaches at this time.

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Q:

@Rainbo1239

Thrilled to see that UGC Creators on the marketplace are still getting more features, like the analytics (one of, if not my favorite thing to be announced at RDC24!) I see that “Avatar Item Thumbnail Improvements” are slated on the roadmap, and I’m super excited to see support for a feature like this built into studio!

How do these improvements look specifically? (e.g. Does this mean that the rules regarding thumbnails will change at all, such as how much of an item must be shown in the thumbnail? Will we get a native tool similar to Onogork’s plugin UGC Makers Toolbox which won the Innovation Award for Best Plugin this year? Will we get the ability to control layered clothing’s thumbnails?)

A:

@lowercasecreator

We are very excited to make these improvements. We know they’ve been a long-time coming and want to make sure we get them right. In the near future, we plan to roll out visual improvements like alignment (i.e., the zoom and border padding) and lighting improvements that would be standardized across each category.

Looking further ahead, we are exploring giving creators more control over these thumbnails (such as selecting camera angles, background colors, and poses).

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Q:

@hya123456h

Will audio assets be uploadable from in game?

A:

@skywise84

Thanks for this feedback. Presently, we have no plans to enable uploading of audio assets from within an experience. Creators can continue to upload private audio that complies with our policies, or use the growing library of public audio from the Creator Store from distributors like DistroKid and Monstercat.

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Q:

@idelww

With the new affiliate program coming to Roblox, is there any bonus after the first 6 months of inviting someone to the website? maybe like a yearly earning or something?

A:

@lowercasecreator

Great question. For the pilot of our affiliate program, creators will earn up to 50% on qualified Robux purchases from new users for the first six months. You can expect that over time, we’ll tune all the parameters by refining the long-term incentives and payout window based on data and creator feedback to ensure the program is both rewarding and sustainable.

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Q:

@althruist

Are there any plans for UIBlur? I think it’d be a great addition for UI design! Thanks for making these AMAs by the way!

A:

@skywise84

Thank you for the request, and we are definitely aware of the demand for UI blur! Right now, our UI team is focused on improving the performance of our UI system. When we switch back to feature development, we will definitely be investigating blur.

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Q:

@TrotswithBugs

I’m most curious about accessory positioning customization and when we can expect that to go live for a broader user group and eventually the public. With so many body bundles out there now and Roblox’s desire to continue adding to them, this feature really had me excited last RDC and this year’s. It was said that some people already have this feature enabled. Can we get an approximate timeline for this dropping for the public, please?

A:

@lowercasecreator

Thanks a lot for the question – we’re excited about the accessory refinement tools too! As some of you may have noticed, we’re currently testing our accessory refinement tools in the Avatar Editor with a select number of users.

The plan is to roll these out to all users and launch them as APIs for you to implement in your own experiences. Our current tests are the first part of the rollout and the developer APIs will launch later this year, so stay tuned!

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Q:

@wallofgarlic

Is it possible to have UIBlur, UIShadow or other common elements for effects & what is currently preventing Roblox from adding it for creators? Roblox already uses some type of blurring mechanics for certain parts of the CoreUI

A:

@skywise84

Thank you for the request, and we are definitely aware of the demand for UI blur! Right now, our UI team is focused on improving the performance of our UI system. When we switch back to feature development, we will definitely be investigating blur.

Shadows are in a similar place. We’re aware of the demand and have it on our feature requests, and we’ve noted the interest from this AMA. Our primary challenge is ensuring everything we provide is done in a performant, cross-platform way that works for all of your use cases.

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Q:

@idelww

With the proactive moderation announced at rdc that helps finding copyrighted material UGC accessories and clothing and automatically delete it for you, is there any chance we could get self served removal for UGC character bundles?

A:

@lowercasecreator

In addition to the proactive moderation work, we recently launched a stop-gap solution for creators to request their avatar items be removed. It’s true that this form does not support bundles as of now, but we plan to launch a self-serve way for creators to remove their items and bundles in the coming weeks. We will let the community know when this is ready when we get closer to launch.

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Q:

@althruist

Are there any plans to support the .SVG file format? This would be great for reducing quality loss with different screen resolutions and may be more performant!

A:

@skywise84

Thank you for the idea! We have nothing currently planned, but vector scaling definitely lines up with our goals around content that easily scales to different devices, especially for UIs.

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Q:

@GamersInternational

At last years RDC, the CEO of Roblox mentioned that he would be open to a pay what you want system for plugins. Is this still the case?

I can’t benefit from it since Roblox prohibited under 18s from selling plugins but I have a few friends that would greatly benefit from it.

Thank you!

A:

@skywise84

We investigated a few options to enable ‘pay what you want’ for plugins, but ultimately decided that a more traditional pricing program was best for Creator Store. Good news though - with the support of a parent or guardian creators ages 13 to 17 are able to sell plugins.

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Q:

@PolarisWasInDenial

With the stated intention to work to fit our existing workflows and tooling better, are there any plans to release more software integrations (such as importers, presets, or templates for tools like Figma, EmberGen, Quadspinner Gaea, ect) that you can share at this time?

A:

@skywise84

We are working hard to make Studio work better with the other tools that you use. We will soon be releasing an early preview of Script Sync in Studio that makes it easier to work with external code editors like VSCode. We’re also having internal discussions about how we could extend to other file-based applications like Blender or Photoshop, so stay tuned.

We’re also looking closely at how we can give plugins better access to our DynamicImage and DynamicMesh APIs (including publishing to an asset) so our community is not bottlenecked by our progress.

Sorry if anyone gets pinged from this edit, I realized that my script made quotes incorrectly and I’m having to correct all of my topic summaries that were done incorrectly.