Optimisation — mobile first
Roughly 70–80% of Roblox sessions are on phones and tablets, many of them low-end Android. If it doesn’t run at 30fps on a cheap phone, that traffic bounces and your revenue halves. This is a monetization document as much as a technical one.
Server load
The rule that matters most: one loop for all players, never one loop per player.
-- BAD: 30 players = 30 coroutines all waking up independently
Players.PlayerAdded:Connect(function(p)
task.spawn(function() while true do task.wait(1) ... end end)
end)
-- GOOD (what EconomyService does): one loop, iterate players
task.spawn(function()
while true do
local dt = task.wait(1)
for _, p in Players:GetPlayers() do ... end
end
end)
Other server measures already in the code:
- Throttled state sync at 4 Hz. Firing a remote on every change would be hundreds per second per player. 4 Hz is imperceptible because the client smoothly interpolates the counter.
- Gamepass ownership cached at join.
UserOwnsGamePassAsync is a web call; calling it inside a multiplier function would rate-limit you within minutes.
- Leaderboard writes every 2 minutes, staggered. OrderedDataStore limits are strict.
- No physics, no NPCs, no pathfinding. The genre’s biggest performance advantage — use it.
Client / mobile
- Tap batching: 5 remote calls/second maximum regardless of tap speed.
- Local prediction: the counter moves the instant you tap. Latency is invisible.
- UIScale-based scaling: one number handles every screen size. No per-device layouts.
- Thumb-zone layout: main button lower-centre, nav on the left edge so a right thumb never covers it. Every tap target ≥ 44px.
- Capped pet rendering (60 cards): a player with 800 pets would otherwise create 800 frames and freeze a phone.
- No
while true do in the client render path — only one RenderStepped doing cheap arithmetic.
Load time
Roblox’s algorithm is sensitive to join-time drop-off. Targets:
- Under 6 seconds to interactive. Achievable trivially here because there’s almost no geometry.
- Keep the baseplate small. Delete decorative parts you don’t need.
- Set
StreamingEnabled = true in Workspace only if you add a large 3D map. For a UI-driven game it adds complexity with no benefit — skip it for v1.
- Avoid
WaitForChild without a timeout in critical paths.
- Compress/resize any images before uploading; a 1024×1024 icon is plenty.
Studio settings to change now
- Rendering → Quality Level: Automatic (respects the player’s device).
- Lighting → Technology: Future looks best but costs mobile fps. Use ShadowMap, or Voxel if you’re targeting the lowest-end devices.
- Workspace → turn off
GlobalShadows if you’re not using them visually.
- Turn off unnecessary particle emitters when the player count is high.
Built for future updates
- All content lives in
GameConfig — adding zones/pets/upgrades touches one file.
DataManager.reconcile() means new save fields appear automatically on old profiles.- Store name is versioned.
- Services are modules with
init(), so adding a new system is one file plus two lines in Bootstrap.
Skip these (they won’t move retention or revenue)
- Custom character animations
- Fancy lighting / post-processing (costs mobile fps, gains nothing in an idle game)
- A large explorable 3D map for v1
- Voice chat, custom chat systems
- Cross-server trading (huge dupe-risk surface for near-zero revenue at your scale)