Asphalt

Asphalt is a command line tool used to upload assets to Roblox and easily reference them in code. It's a modern alternative to Tarmac.

Features

• Syncs your images, sounds, videos, animations, and models to Roblox! See the supported asset types
• Generates Luau or TypeScript code so you can use them in your game
• Can target Roblox users or groups
• Processes SVGs into PNGs and alpha bleeds images for crisp edges
• Allows defining assets you already uploaded

Features Coming Soon

• Capability to pack your images into spritesheets for lower client memory usage

Installation

Mise

mise use ubi:jacktabscode/asphalt

Cargo (build from source)

cargo install asphalt

pesde add --dev pesde/asphalt --target lune

rokit add jacktabscode/asphalt

brew tap jacktabscode/tap
brew install asphalt

Commands

asphalt sync

Syncs all of your assets defined in your inputs.

There are three targets you can use to sync assets:

• cloud: Uploads your assets to Roblox. This will generate a asphalt.lock.toml file which you should commit to source control. This is the default target.

• studio: Syncs assets locally to Roblox Studio. This is useful for testing assets in Studio before uploading them to Roblox.

• debug: Syncs assets to an .asphalt-debug folder in the current directory. You can use this option see how Asphalt will process your files.

asphalt sync # Equivalent to --target cloud
asphalt sync --target studio
asphalt sync --target debug

You can also perform a dry run to verify which assets will be synced. This exits with a non-zero status code if any asset hashes have changed. You can use this for CI checks to ensure that your assets are up-to-date.

asphalt sync --dry-run

asphalt migrate-lockfile

Will migrate your lockfile to the newest format, if there is one. See asphalt migrate-lockfile --help for more information.

asphalt upload

Uploads a single asset to Roblox. See asphalt upload --help for more information.

Configuration

Asphalt is configured with a project file called asphalt.toml. It is required for the program to run.

[creator]
type = "user"
id = 9670971

[codegen]
typescript = true
style = "flat"

[inputs.assets]
path = "assets/**/*"
output_path = "src/shared"

[inputs.assets.web]
"some_sound_on_roblox.ogg" = { id = 123456789 }
"some_image_on_roblox.png" = { id = 987654321 }

Format

• creator: Creator
  • The Roblox creator to upload the assets under.
• codegen: Codegen (optional)
  • Code generation options.
• inputs: map<string, Input>
  • A map of input names to input configurations.

Creator

• type: "user" or "group"
• id: number

Codegen

• typescript: boolean (optional)
  • Generate a TypeScript definition file.
• style: "flat" | "nested" (optional)
  • The code generation style to use. Defaults to flat, which lets you index assets as if they were paths. You may consider using nested if you are not a TypeScript user as Luau does not support template literal types.
• strip_extensions: boolean (optional)
  • Whether to strip the file extension. Defaults to false for the same reason described above.
• content: boolean (optional)
  • Whether to output Content instead of strings. Defaults to false.

Input

• path: glob
  • A glob pattern to match files to upload.
• output_path: string
  • The directory path to output the generated code.
• web: map<string, WebAsset>
  • A map of paths relative to the input path to existing assets on Roblox.
• bleed: boolean (optional)
  • Whether to alpha bleed images. Defaults to true. Keep in mind that changing this setting won't invalidate your lockfile or reupload your images.
• warn_each_duplicate: boolean (optional)
  • Whether to emit a warning each time a duplicate file is found. Defaults to true.

WebAsset

• id: number

Authentication

You can specify your API key this using the --api-key argument, or the ASPHALT_API_KEY environment variable.

You can get one from the Creator Dashboard.

The following permissions are required:

• asset:read
• asset:write

Make sure that you select an appropriate IP and that your API key is under the Creator (user, or group) that you've defined in asphalt.toml.

Supported Asset Types

• Images (.png, .jpg, .bmp, .tga, .svg)
  • SVGs are supported by Asphalt by converting them to PNGs.
• Audio (.mp3, .ogg, .wav, .flac)
• Videos (.mp4, .mov)
  • When uploading videos, you must provide the --expected-price argument, which is the price you expect to be charged for the video. See the Roblox documentation on Videos for more details.
• Animations (.rbxm, .rbxmx)
  • Asphalt detects animations by looking to see if the saved class is a KeyframeSequence or a CurveAnimation. If it isn't, Asphalt will assume it is a Model.
• Roblox Models (.rbxm, .rbxmx)
• 3D Models (.fbx, .gltf, .glb)
  • Roblox does not offer control over the import settings through the web API. As such, this is not a route most should take. You should instead use the 3D Importer to upload these assets, then either sync them with Rojo or save them as Roblox model files.

Code Generation

The formatting of code generation (such as spaces, tabs, width, and semicolons) is not guaranteed by Asphalt and may change between releases without being noted as a breaking change.

Therefore, it is recommended to add Asphalt's generated files to your linter/formatter's "ignore" list. Here are instructions for the most commonly used tools:

• Stylua
• Biome
• ESLint

Attributions

Thank you to Tarmac for the alpha bleeding implementation, which was used in this project.