Do's and Don'ts

This section will help you steer clear of making your game look and feel like crap.

DO

use Meshes with SurfaceAppearances

Roblox loves dealing with Meshes. It's one of the few things that it can do extremely well.

ungroup Models as much as is feasible

Roblox handles its occlusion culling by culling as many models as is possible; not just their parts. This is done as a compromise to ensure that the performance overhead from culling is minimal. To ensure that Roblox culls as much models as possible, ungroup the models so that the culling is more precise. If this sucks for you, just use Folders instead.

DON'T

use Decals

Applying a decal to a part will make the part render twice; alongside the decal itself being a drawcall. It sucks.

use Billboards

There have been extensive reports of billboards sometimes halving FPS simply by adding one into the game world. They're also... a drawcall each. It's ok to use them if you have to, but if there's no application for it, then don't.

use Roblox's terrain

A single voxel of Roblox's terrain is definitely gonna take up a few drawcalls. Do not use them extensively.

ETC

Make extensive use of the MicroProfiler. Especially check the render portion of each frame; it can tell you what goes on with plenty of accuracy. If a scope takes too long for your taste, check the MicroProfiler tag reference in the Roblox docs.