Terrain


 * For the class type, see .

Terrain is a feature in Roblox that was introduced in 2011. It features a special object in that integrates voxel-based terrain into Roblox.

Historically, it used a preset of meshes to render its terrain. In May 2015, smooth terrain was introduced, which later replaced the old style of terrain in 2017. Consequently, all places that were still using the legacy terrain were converted to have this new terrain.

History
In an update, more Terrain Voxel textures were introduced, bringing the number up to sixteen.

On June 5, 2012, water was added to terrain, which introduces part-water interaction to the physics engine.

On December 7, 2013, an update was added that increased the size of the Terrain from 512x64x512 to 64000x64000x64000. This allowed players to add Terrain Water to existing places that are very large.

On April 24, 2014, one day after Egg Hunt 2014 was closed, the appearance of Terrain was updated to match the regular Part materials.

On May 31, 2015, a second type of terrain, Smooth Terrain was released. Smooth Terrain has higher graphical fidelity than blocky terrain, and is more detailed than simple 4x4 blocks.

In August 25th 2016, the deprecation and coming removal of old terrain was announced, and in January 2017 all places were forcibly converted to smooth terrain.

Smooth terrain
Smooth terrain is an update to terrain released in 2015. It is the current terrain type. Smooth terrain is more smoother and more realistic compared to the blocky legacy terrain. Like legacy terrain, it still uses voxels. However, the voxels are subtle due to advanced technology used to produce smoother terrain.

As it is based off the BasePart class most properties the Terrain object inherits are not modifiable. An explosion will lower the values of cells in its blast radius if the explosion is set up to do so. This provides a simple way to create craters in-game.

Materials included

 * Air
 * Wood Planks
 * Concrete
 * Grass
 * Rock
 * Snow
 * Mud
 * Ground
 * Asphalt
 * Salt
 * Pavement
 * Slate
 * Brick
 * Sand
 * Water
 * Glacier
 * Sandstone
 * Basalt
 * Cracked Lava
 * Leafy Grass
 * Limestone
 * Ice

Old terrain
The original terrain system, known as old terrain or legacy terrain, was a terrain type that was made up of many individual cells with simple shapes such as ramps, cubes and corner ramps. Compared to smooth terrain, this terrain type was more suitable for building as the shapes were mostly flat.

Original materials included

 * Grass
 * Sand
 * Brick
 * Granite
 * Asphalt
 * Iron Plate
 * Aluminum Plate
 * Gold
 * Wood Planks
 * Logs
 * Gravel
 * Cinderblock
 * Mossy Rock
 * Concrete
 * Red Plastic
 * Blue Plastic
 * Water

Deprecation
On August 19, 2016, Roblox deprecated old terrain, due to its low usage and high maintenance cost. It was scheduled to be removed on January 1, 2017. This was later restated in a blog post. Roblox encouraged usage of smooth terrain by giving developers an option to convert existing old terrain. In January 2017, it was officially replaced, as games with old terrain were converted. Games that still relied on old terrain were negatively impacted from this, such as Zombiesdale, which was known for its extensive use of old terrain.

Criticism of old terrain
The old terrain was criticized for the amount of lag in games.

Minecraft resemblance
Many people thought that the legacy terrain resembled Minecraft's terrain, however they were barely similar in any way, both in textures, and the fact that most Roblox terrain cells were shaped differently from blocks unlike the terrain in Minecraft.

Exploits
Terrain was vulnerable to exploiting, since terrain could be manipulated by any client. Game owners were able to solve this by turning on FilteringEnabled. This was ultimately fixed by Roblox with the forced FilteringEnabled update.

Triva

 * By default, when spawning terrain, the deepest part of the terrain will always be cracked lava. Possibly this is to make the terrain generator more realistic.
 * Using the terrain generator and selecting the "caves" option will generate caves inside the terrain using rock. It is known that these caves are very deformed and that when entering, it is very difficult to get out of them.