Terrain loads before PlayerGui -> Impossible to make custom loading GUIs

  • Describe the bug. Describe what is happening when the bug occurs. Describe what you would normally expect to occur.

My game has a lot of terrain, and as such takes a while to load in. To make sure my players don’t give up, I planned on having a nice custom loading screen which will atleast give some visual feedback that they’re about to get into the game. Problem is you have to wait for the PlayerGui to load in. The catch is this loads in after the terrain, so you can’t have a custom loading screen for the terrain itself, which makes it pointless. Optimally I’d be able to use a custom loading gui for the terrain as well.

  • How often does the bug happen (Everytime/sometimes/rarely)? What are the steps that reproduce the bug? Please list them in very high detail. Provide simple example places that exhibit the bug and provide description of what you believe should be the behavior.

Every time, it’s just difficult to notice on games with less/no terrain. With a lot of terrain however, it’s very noticable. Pretty much any game with a lot of terrain will display this. I made a repro place using the biggest size in the Terrain Generator plugin that Roblox offers, which you can check out here:

  • Where does the bug happen (www, gametest, etc) Is it level-specific? Is it game specific? Please post a link to the place that exhibits the issue.

This is on production build.

  • Would a screenshot or video help describe it to someone? If so, post one.

https://im2.ezgif.com/tmp/ezgif-2-56841a6a3b.gif

The blue screen that appears for a second is my custom loading screen, very clearly after the Terrain has loaded

  • When did the bug start happening? If we can tie it to a specific release that helps us figure out what we broke.

This has most likely been around since the beginning, but can’t possibly be intended behaviour.

I could be losing a lot of players who give up because they don’t have that feedback that “hey, you are connected to the game, just wait a second”. With the current behaviour, it ruins the point of custom loading screens, as they’re not doing the loading in the name justice.

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Shouldnt your loading gui be in replicated first? I’m pretty sure that loads before anything else

It is, but you need the player’s PlayerGui to actually show the UI. ReplicatedFirst won’t show UI elements on screen.
Edit: As shown on the wiki page for custom loading screens: Documentation - Roblox Creator Hub

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It doesn’t make any sense that this would be the intended behavior. This is definitely a bug and will definitely cause issues for many developers who don’t want to ruin the immersion by having a player watch terrain chunks load in.

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Related:

Supposedly, it’s being fixed:

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I have been using BillboardGuis to get around this for Ultimate Boxing. Has been working pretty well as much as I hate having to do that right now.

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Had to disable my custom loading/teleport screen entirely since players would leave when they kept seeing a static teleport gui instead of the nice loading screen I made. Now they see terrain chunks loading instead. :frowning:

Can we get an update on the PlayerGui behavior changes @0xBAADF00D ? It’s been quite a while

Sorry, been away for the holidays. I think I’ll try to turn it back on soon.

4 Likes