Introduction
Welcome to the Tungsten documentation site! In this topic we’ll discuss on what is Tungsten, it’s features, and whether you should use it compared to other tools.
What is Tungsten?
Section titled “What is Tungsten?”Tungsten handles uploading and packing assets for Roblox projects. It was built during the making of LucideRoblox, when I was frustrated with the existing tools. Tarmac is completely unusable, and Asphalt (while great) doesn’t support spritesheet packing.
Tungsten combines the best of both:
- Spritesheet packing from Tarmac
- Modern Open Cloud API from Asphalt
- Helpful error messages from neither
Not sure about Asphalt but Tarmac sucks at error messages
Tungsten aims to become a more modern alternative of Tarmac and Asphalt, while maintaining its ease of use.
Features
Section titled “Features”Available
Section titled “Available”- Syncing images directly to Roblox (packing spritesheets supported)
- Generates Luau code for you to reference your assets in your projects
- Target between Roblox users and groups
Planned
Section titled “Planned”- Support for more asset types like audio, animations, models and more.
- Ability to process SVGs to PNGs similar to Asphalt
- Defining assets you already uploaded
- High DPI detection similar to Tarmac
What should I use then?
Section titled “What should I use then?”Choosing which asset management tool depends on what your project needs, here’s a little comparison between the three:
| Feature | Tungsten | Asphalt | Tarmac |
|---|---|---|---|
| Status | ✅ Active | ✅ Active | ❌ Broken |
| API | Open Cloud | Open Cloud | Legacy Web API |
| Packing | ✅ Supported | ❌ Not Supported | ⚠️ Supported 1 |
| Codegen | ✅ Supported | ✅ Supported (with TypeScript support) | ✅ Supported |
| Asset Support | Images (more coming) | Images, Audios, Videos, Models, Animations | Images only |
If you still don’t know which to use, choose:
- Tungsten, if your current priority is image assets and you need the spritesheet packing feature.
- Asphalt, if you need to upload multiple asset types, the ability to use TypeScript for codegen, or just a reliable asset management tool.
- Please, do not use Tarmac. It relies on the Legacy Web API and because of that it is broken and is currently not even usable as it breaks on one bug while syncing.
Hope that helped you make up your mind!
Footnotes
Section titled “Footnotes”-
If your input images are not in the RGBA color format Tarmac will not accept your files and panic. ↩