Since the topbar update was announced all those months ago there has been a constant assertion that it was not a matter up for debate. I understand the need for unity in roblox games to an extent, although on a game creation platform where all games can be accessed from one site, through one system, where games can not be hosted outside of that system and can not be accessed outside of that system, I don’t really understand the call for the unity that the topbar is meant to accomplish.
Before this, users had a nice incredibly bright hamburger button in one corner of their screen, they could press escape at any time to bring up a menu over which the developers had no control, they could enable shift lock, change their graphics settings, and developers couldn’t do much about it. Now, they get all of this combined with the element of a nice transparent black bar across the top of the screen. And it’s not really all that bad looking of a bar. I don’t agree with putting everything a player “needs” to know on one element, but if you’re going for that, sure. But who says that in our games a player “needs” to know those things? Who says a player needs to even know his own username, as it is so gallantly displayed in the upper right corner for the whole world to see. What if we want to make games, as we undoubtedly do, that are against the grain of the classic ROBLOX-minigame scheme, games that aren’t murder or building or tycoon or obby. The thing is, these games are not the games that get the most attention on roblox and I think as developers the goal for us is not to create something that looks and feels like a roblox game but something that is a wonderful creation first and a roblox game second. The top bar asserts the latter constantly, and gives us no escape.
All of our loading screens, our backgrounds and our effects, our UI, our pictures. They are all obscured and overwritten by this bar which when transparent is almost more noticeable than it was otherwise. The hamburger button could be ignored, and maybe, sure, the topbar can be ignored too. It’s safe to say though that it’s not as easy.
ROBLOX has kind of a history of releasing UI updates like this for the sake of unity, and as a rule there’s never much we can do about it as developers. I remember that two years ago when I and the other rudimentality guys were working on our earliest games we did some very hacky things in order to escape the ROBLOX UI. And it wasn’t because the UI was awful looking or “unworthy” of our games. It just didn’t fit. Even at the ages of thirteen and fourteen we could tell that. Walking through a desert on the back of a camel, with a scimitar in my hand and a turban on my head, the existence of my username and a large black bar does not convince me of my camel’s existence, the length of the desert, the heat of the sun.
I understand that this is an exception to the rule. There are developers, safe to say almost all of them even, that don’t want their game to be immersive in any fashion. These games have as much merit as any other kind of game, and they deserve the easy access to unity and the familiar UI elements. But the thing is, we deserve to be able to hide those elements. ROBLOX has to know that not all of its games are of the same quality, the same genre, the same atmosphere. ROBLOX is built on the idea of being able to build the game that you want to, however you want to, and to be able to rise to success and fame in whatever way you can. When I joined ROBLOX, seven years ago, I was thrilled by the prospects that it offered, the potential that I felt I suddenly had when I was equipped with the lowly hopperbins of old, my gametool, my copy, my delete. And I still feel that way about this game after all of this time, though my tools require code and caffiene these days. I want to be able, as a developer, to pursue my vision of the universe I want to create. I wouldn’t expect the engine to cater to my needs as an individual, but when you have to specify from the beginning in a release post that a matter “is not up for discussion,” it’s safe to say that you know a large amount of people don’t want it.
The topbar is not evil. It is not a bad update, it was one made with a good amount of consideration and I respect the developers for giving it to us. But give it to us properly, give us an option. We need to be able to hide it. Make us keep the hamburger button, fine, but the top bar is such a large and in-the-way feature that it’s impossible to avoid seeing. Let us hide it, let us take away the name. Keep in mind that you are not taking away your default by doing this, almost every game will still have it. You don’t have to take away options to create more. And in return you will find better, more unique games. The horizons of ROBLOX game development, wide though they may be, can always be wider.
I am not trying to be snarky, I know that this has been discussed, that you are considering it. I just wanted to provide my input, and maybe sum up what a lot of developers are feeling in one big post.
