Weekly Recap: November 4 - November 8, 2024

Updates Announcements
#1

Hi Everyone! :wave:

Back with the weekly recap — your favorite, we know. :wink:

This recap brings together all of our announcements and updates from the Developer Forum into one convenient post. By doing so, we hope it’s easier for you to stay up-to-date on the latest news and developments from Roblox.

Remember - we keep information at a high level within these recaps. For more information or to leave feedback, please comment in their official announcements linked below.

Let’s dive in:

Betas, Alphas, & Updates

[Studio Beta] Introducing Occlusion Culling

  • Occlusion Culling is an optimization that prevents the rendering of objects that are hidden behind other objects.
  • It doesn’t require any work from you; the engine will automatically detect which objects don’t need to be rendered.

[Studio Beta] Introducing VR Emulator

  • The controls emulator now supports VR!

[Alpha] Next Gen Studio Update: Custom Tabs

  • We’re rolling out the alpha version of a new custom tabs system in Next Gen Studio.
  • This is a very barebones, JSON file-based workflow. We wanted to let you customize sooner so we can get your feedback.
  • Next year, we will be releasing an interface that will make it possible to visually customize your toolbars without ever editing text files.

Announcements & Updates

Avatar Merchandising for Creators: Curate and Sell Full Looks in Marketplace

  • Creators who are eligible to publish and sell in Marketplace can now merchandise and sell entire avatars

[Full Release] New Base Materials available in production

  • Our eight new Base Materials are now fully released and out of beta.

Updating Experience Guideline Policies to Keep Our Younger Users Safe

  • We are updating our policies to address user behavior that can potentially pose a risk to our youngest users. Starting November 18, experiences with certain types of interactive features, specifically social hangouts and free-form 2D user creation, will only be playable to users over the age of 13.
  • By default, users under the age of 13 will not be able to play, search, and discover unrated experiences. This will ensure that parents and users have more clarity into the types of content available on Roblox and will help them make more informed choices about what they want to play.
    • All creators must complete a questionnaire for each experience they want available for users under 13 by December 3, 2024.

Channel Tabs & UI Gradient Now Available in TextChatService

  • Channel tabs are now available in TextChatService. Channel tabs will allow you to split chat conversations into different tabs, rather than having all messages all appear in a single window.
  • UIGradient can now be used to customize chat messages. This means you can use color and transparency gradients to stylize text in the chat window.
  • Guide docs on how to send messages from NPCs in chat are now available here. We know NPCs play a big role in making experiences immersive, so we want to make sure creators can use existing TextChatService capabilities to simulate NPC dialogue.

Analytics: View acquisition sources for curation, continue play, charts, and search ads

  • Updating our acquisition page to break down four key sources that were previously grouped under broader categories:
    • Continue Play sort on the Home Page
    • Curation sorts on the Home Page
    • Charts page
    • Search ads

Release Notes

93 Likes
#2
#3

This topic was automatically opened after 10 minutes.

#4

No thanksgiving emojis? You aren’t fun!
Finally we are getting chat channels in the new chat service! And the new materials are out of beta.

32 Likes
#5

Are you going to change <13 users to be able to message in their own groups? My friend has a development team that I help in and he is unable to moderate his group.

28 Likes
#6

Please release some update on Introducing Improved Genres and New Subgenres, radio silence and we were told it’d release near the end of October :smiling_face_with_tear:

37 Likes
#7

Please add an offset to change the text chat service default window relative to the corner that is chosen

22 Likes
#8

But thanksgiving isn’t for another 2 weeks! Tbh I’m still in :ghost::jack_o_lantern: spooky mode :bat::man_vampire:

27 Likes
#9

Very nice updates this week.
Probably the best of 2024.

So far… :wink:

17 Likes
#10

Occlusion Culling may be the biggest W here.

22 Likes
#11

How dare you! It is christmas now that it is the 9th of november!

you can travel forward in time 357 days if you wanna have halloween again :wink:

This was a long-needed feature to improve performance and such. It is still in beta though, which means it won’t be perfected yet. But we all know it is actively being worked on.

Channel Tabs feel rushed - because if you add a player to a channel tab, it works properly, but there is no function to remove them from it. That is a major issue; as I won’t be using it until this is a proper feature.

Huge news. VR is the hardest mode to work with as it’s completely different to any other device (such as PC, mobile, console etc…)

The base materials were cool, but I think it’s not enough for a “Full Release” unless material service got an update aswell.

This is actually a really good update, as unrated games are usually scam games.

Overall, this week was a good week - it’s just some features feel rushed and maybe not worked on enough. Feel free to critise me for these opinions - I don’t mind!

15 Likes
#13

week 1 of asking for dedicated linux support
macOS also uses Unix, it wouldn’t be hard to port it over and change a few APIs in a flatpak package

11 Likes
#14

why would they? only a tiny portion of player base even uses it

8 Likes
#15

it’s essential to anyone who is serious about developing, the tooling is simply unmatched

5 Likes
#16

When are you guys releasing the genre update? It was said to release end october, altough it’s mid november and there’s no more word about it Introducing Improved Genres and New Subgenres

7 Likes
#17

I’m absolutely loving these updates! As efficient as Roblox is already, improvements are always a positive, so my favorite here is by far the occlusion culling. Does Roblox plan to make improvements on reflections and light leakage? I’m really looking forward to any sort of lighting rehaul.

4 Likes
#18