You will still have the ability to save to file if you wish, as stated in the post:
Your experiences are available everywhere: Saving to the cloud allows you to continue working on your projects no matter where you are, by logging into Studio on any connected computer - no need to manually copy files between devices. However, if you so choose, you will continue to have the ability to save to file instead.
I do have some concerns about this, however it’s nice to see such improvements.
It looks like the answer to the first below question is yes, Ctrl S works as it did before if working in a local file. If you open or save a local file, the Save option and shortcut will save directly to that local file, you won’t even notice anything has changed. Thanks for being mindful of this!
As I’ve said before elsewhere, I rely on saving local files because I do not trust the Roblox platform not to terminate my account by mistake and lock me out of my projects, perhaps permanently. It sounds like you’ve just made it more tedious and error prone for me to save to a local file while I am working. Does this remapping of the Ctrl S shortcut change behavior to always save locally if I have previously saved to a local file for the current session of Studio?
Also to note, this is not a solution to game settings requiring a published place to function. These settings should not require cloud functionality whatsoever. They’re shortcuts for instance properties. Other features as well should not be locked to a game instance, there are many benefits to changing this behavior (e.g. spontaneous bulk import) rather than just forcing people to shove games into the cloud.
This is amazing, gone are the days of cluttering the develop tab with new places that I am only going to use for a few minutes to test something and need on multiple devices.
Actually with further thought and reading the comments of other developers, I have realized that this isn’t as necessary as a feature. I will still use it occasionally as I have often move where I develop or if I need to start a team create; though a flash drive is enough portability as is. Looking more into the wording of the post, isn’t quite clear if you are able to delete these games at a later time if you no longer need them or if it just won’t persist if you don’t save it at all. I have yet to test it out mainly over the fear that I won’t be able to delete it. In the end I will mostly stick to using my local files.
The rest of my unedited comment:
Though I still would love to be able to delete past published games. My inventory is full of these and about 2 of the hundreds of them are relevant. I know there is fear about someone breaking into a developer’s account and deleting all of their games but some simple checks and countermeasures could be put into place to prevent a game being deleted forever instantly.
As a professional developer, local files are a must, especially for critical external tooling (as Roblox will never be able to provide resources to the extent that the community can and does). This doesn’t even begin to cover working when there is limited internet connection; which will become more frequent as developers and studios professionalise (which Roblox itself wants mind you)
Additionally, I easily open half a dozen baseplates that I use to test something and then close (without saving anything). I don’t need this to clog my already cluttered develop page.
Roblox should focus on making life easier for offline developers – especially as more moves to Game Settings (which is completely blocked off with offline files).
“Additionally, you will notice some changes to the File Menu in Studio. We have simplified the options to Save, Save As which both save to the cloud and Publish and Publish As (which work as before).”
You’re still saving to both local and cloud, I’d like it if I could save to only local instead of both.
Now I’m considering what’s going to be worse: the “new textures” crap that happened a few weeks back or this whole affair. At least this time they’re providing an option for us to turn the feature on or not, but still.
As a professional developer, local files are a must , especially for critical external tooling (as Roblox will never be able to provide resources to the extent that the community can and does).
You can still save your game locally to file if you wish, as stated above:
Your experiences are available everywhere: Saving to the cloud allows you to continue working on your projects no matter where you are, by logging into Studio on any connected computer - no need to manually copy files between devices. However, if you so choose, you will continue to have the ability to save to file instead.
Additionally, I easily open half a dozen baseplates that I use to test something and then close (without saving anything). I don’t need this to clog my already cluttered develop page.
You won’t have to save it. See here:
Save only what you want to save: No changes have been made to when the file is saved, if you open a template in Studio to perform some temporary/transient action (for example: opening a model just to look at it), you can do that without a new Game being automatically saved to the cloud.
This is a really nice feature and I’m glad the process of saving a game to Roblox is simpler than ever! I’ve had some places I wanted to save before like if I’m working on a UI set for one of my games, but I always thought it took a bit too much effort to have to go through the process of creating a place as if it would be used as a live experience, when I think most of our games aren’t actual games, so thank you so much for this!
Do enjoy the quality of life changes such as the search bar and the renaming of the options in the context menu for file saving, it was daunting to read through “SAVE TO ROBLOX… SAVE TO ROBLOX AS… PUBLISH TO ROBLOX… PUBLISH TO ROBLOX AS…” haha.
But as @PeZsmistic brought up, I do rely on saving to local files and I’m glad that you don’t have plans to disable this functionality as with the direction you guys have been going with the cloud I was scared to be at risk of not being able to save or load files anymore.
I do just want to say that I also heavily rely on local files to save historical versions of my game to easily compare versions since Roblox doesn’t offer an easy way to go through your version history with assigned versions you can add yourself. I actually have an entire folder filled with historical versions of my game and it would be a shame to not be able to access them anymore!
Another important reason for me to use local files is because I, along with many other developers, fear our accounts may be suddenly deleted for any reason, even if we had no intentions to do anything wrong (Say a model thumbnail that looked inappropriate in the preview, when in reality the model was safe!), so I want to make sure I’ll still have files of my game to re-upload and manage on a new account in case if that does happen. I would’ve lost some of my older games that meant a lot to me when I lost my old account if local files didn’t exist!
I’m a little confused. How is this any different to the already existing “Save” feature?
Like, I thought we already had saving the game without publishing, so why is this announcement any different than before?
This is hostility towards professional developers (whom are the backbone of the platform) and who depend on local files to do their work. This is also adding a good 2-3 extra clicks every time to affirm that yes, I am not a baby and I would like to save a local file. I have to publish to a dummy place if I want to so much as edit the avatar settings on a baseplate.
I do not have any care for cloud saves. I do not want to use them. I trust my network drives more than Roblox’s servers, and will continue to only use Roblox’s hosted places for non-dev builds. It is appalling that Roblox is trying to make it harder for me to do this.
Exactly, it’s one more click in an action that you do constantly, not only that, but the builtins are notorious for being broken, and I don’t exactly feel at ease seeing all saving options tied to one.
Having the 2 actions separated was working fine, I don’t get why save to file has to be hidden.
I know that as you are replying to a response thereof akin to yours.
I should not have to make 2-3 extra clicks just to use local files. Especially given that, statistically speaking, Roblox’s servers fail more often than my hard drive.
Nearly every single professional developer (especially programmers and those employed in teams) will use local files over cloud saves. Anyone with more than a few years of experience will probably have a strong distate for cloud saves; I have found them to always be unreliable and shoddy.
Roblox is trying to reinvent the wheel by attempting to nudge people away from local saves, and making them harder to use to the point that people just give up and use cloud saves.