Roblox Performance
When to Load
Use for profiling and performance budgets. Pooling and lifecycle patterns: roblox-luau-patterns.
Quick Reference
Profiling Tools
- MicroProfiler (Ctrl+F6): Frame breakdown of scripts, physics, rendering.
- Developer Console (F9): Memory, network, rendering, and server stats.
- Script Profiler (Ctrl+Alt+F5): Per-script CPU and heap.
- Labels:
debug.profilebegin/debug.profileendmark regions;debug.setmemorycategorylabels memory. Gate instrumentation behind a flag.
Performance Targets
Optimize measured hot paths, not folklore. Throttle from measurements; re-profile after shipping.
Parallel Luau
- Use Actors only after profiling identifies isolatable CPU work.
- Workers compute; synchronize before restricted DataModel writes.
- Do not rely on shared module state across Actors.
SendMessagecopies data; SharedTable supports shared state and atomic updates.
Hot-loop cost model
- Luau optimizes global imports; avoid folklore function hoisting/unrolling. Environment impurity can disable optimizations. Profile allocations as well as CPU; GC cost may occur later.
Object Pooling
Pre-clone and reuse. Canonical pool code (token-lease ownership): roblox-luau-patterns.
StreamingEnabled Essentials
- On by default. Container-scoped: only Workspace descendants stream.
ModelStreamingBehavior = Improvedstreams non-BasePart descendants with their parent Model; Legacy streams only BaseParts. - Streamed-out = parented to nil, not destroyed. Luau refs persist if it streams back.
- Config (Studio): target defaults 1024, min 64; set
StreamingIntegrityMode; tune from data. - Gotcha:
FindFirstChild("DistantPart")returns nil if streamed out. Use WaitForChild with timeout.
Mobile
- Profile geometry, textures, particles, UI, shadows on low-end devices.
Full reference with code examples and API tables: references/full.md [blocked]


