First, let’s establish the problems. Every time you go to test out a gametest build, you have to install the gametest builds which overwrites your production version, and then whenever you want to go back to production, you have to re-install the production builds again. Why is this bad? It’s bad for us because it’s annoying to have to continually re-install ROBLOX, and it’s a problem for ROBLOX because it’s so much of a hassle, and the reward isn’t very much, that you’ll have people like me who won’t even bother testing it out until it hits production.
I say the reward isn’t much because you can’t do really anything on the gametest build – part of development is testing your work, and then when I want to test it in online mode I have to download the gametest client which overwrites my production game client. Then when I want to play games like Impulse or Phantom Forces, I have to re-install the production client, and if I want to continue work on the gametest build, I have to install that again. So in addition to having the people who don’t even test the gametest build to begin with, you now have people who go check out the gametest, re-install the production version, and then never touch the gametest again. This is even worse because now you have no one actively testing your gametest builds and then it hits production, oops there’s a bug that wasn’t found because not enough people tested it on production, and then oops iOS delays the release another two weeks.
It’s a dangerous snowball problem that starts off as an inconvenience, ends up with nobody testing the gametest builds enough, and then ultimately results in updates being delayed by at best 2 weeks because a bug wasn’t found by people using the gametest build (because nobody was using the gametest build), and that’s not as bad as it gets. Woo! We fixed the bug that was on production and it made it through Apple’s approval queue finally! NOOOOOOOOO!!! THERE’S ANOTHER BUG!!! and you have to wait even longer. (How long was CSG delayed? Over a month, right?)
The solution? Allow users to install multiple versions of the client/studio so they can run production and gametest builds at the same time without having to continually re-install ROBLOX. This will net in more people to test gametest builds, will lead to a lot more bugs being found during the gametest cycle (since you actually have people actively using it now), and you won’t have hardly as many “crap there’s a bug – now we have to wait for apple approval process” because of the bugs being caught during the gametest cycle. Preferably you wouldn’t have to go to the gametest site to install the gametest build either and studio would open up a launcher that would let you select which build you wanted to use (There are 5 gametests, right? So it’s not just “choose studio or gametest” – there’d be multiple to choose from)
Edit: No, Clonetrooper’s launcher will not fix the problem because it’s not widespread enough
Gametest is meant for testing, so you’ll spend a day or two playing around with a feature, then spend a while making something with it, and then a week or two later when it hits production you’re ready to go and you can immediately add what you made on gametest into the production game. It’s really useful, but never used because of how obnoxious it is to use. It’d be amazing if it was as easy to access as production studio.
