Currently Paste (Ctrl+V) has really useless and unpredictable behavior:
If you don’t have anything selected, Ctrl+V pastes into Workspace (this is fine)
If you have something selected that is not a descendant of Workspace, Ctrl+V pastes the clipboard into the parent of what you have selected
If you have a descendant of Workspace selected, Ctrl+V pastes directly into Workspace regardless of what you have selected???
Regardless of how you use Paste, pasting into Workspace regardless of what’s selected is useless and dumb. On top of that, having this behavior arbitrarily activate when the selection is a descendant of a certain object is even dumber.
Defaulting pasting to Workspace when nothing is selected is a good default since most objects in our game go in Workspace, but other than that, I suggest that the default behavior of Paste be Paste Into. Regardless of where the current selection is parented, Paste Into has the same, reliable behavior. Why Paste Into instead of removing the special Workspace behavior? Because pasting into the parent of what I have selected is also useless. If I wanted to paste my selection into its parent, I would have selected the parent – if I wanted to copy an object in place, I would have duplicated it. The only time I ever use Ctrl+V is when I’m pasting something that should go in the Workspace. If I’m doing anything other than that I use Paste Into.
Paste Into should be the default behavior of Paste:
No. Ctrl+D duplicates the object in place. Paste Into allows me to copy an object and paste it into the current selection, regardless of if that was where it was originally copied from.
A minor thing, but wouldn’t that stop you from pasting one model on top of another selected model? As it would be pasted into it instead. Unless this feature is restricted to selections made from the explorer window.
You should use Ctrl+D for that to achieve the same thing. When ROBLOX was designing pasting functionality way back when, that didn’t exist so what you’re mentioning made sense, but now with Duplicate it’s not. If it’s an entirely different model that you’re pasting, you should select the object you want it to be parented to instead of one of its children models.
I use Ctrl+D all the time, I wasn’t posting it for my benefit. Duplicating also has different results depending on whether you have collisions enabled or not, players who are new or inexperienced with studio most likely won’t know this.
It would probably be for the best to make this change as it makes sense, but I was just mentioning it as a few people might get confused about the switch over. Especially if they aren’t used to studio as a whole yet.
If anything, the current behavior is more confusing. I paste something, but it doesn’t get put into what I have selected but instead its parent? Pasted objects going into your selection is the natural behavior. If I paste files into my Documents, I don’t want them to be pasted to my user folder instead. If I cut and paste some emails into a different folder, I want them to be in that folder instead of the parent of that folder. Changing Paste so it pasted into what you have selected rather than its parent would result in less confusion for new users than the current setup.
All the examples you’ve given are only for hierarchy based situations, in regards to confusion for new players I’m talking about the actual 3D space not the Explorer window, as newer players often ignore the explorer until they feel more comfortable with studio.
Not sure what OS you’re using, but for me (w7) when pasting documents I have to make sure to right click on the folder and then select paste from the pop-up menu to paste into the folder. Simply selecting the folder and using the shortcut defaults to the parent, not the selected folder. This behaviour can be observed by performing the same action in the explorer window in studio.
If I cut a Fire object, select a part in the 3D viewport, and press Ctrl+V I expect the fire to be placed in the part – not the workspace or whatever its parent is.
And you would be right to expect that, as it makes sense with certain objects.
However this isn’t how Windows does their pasting functionality, nor does Unity which is a widely used games development platform. In fact both Roblox and Unity are exactly the same when it comes to this, copying and pasting objects from the explorer/hierarchy into the workspace/scene does not paste into the object unless you right click on said object then select paste into.
Actually after testing this, in Unity even that doesn’t work as you still have to drag the object into another object to make it its parent.
If someone else jumps off a bridge, should you too? Other software is a good role model that you can look at and find ways to improve your own, but it’s also useful for discovering bad behavior and avoiding it in your own product. And as far as we know, Unity behaving that way could just be because it relies on Windows APIs for its explorer internally. Telling a program to paste into one thing and then it pasting your clipboard into something else is bad – unconditionally. That bad behavior should be snuffed out on ROBLOX.
Bit of an extreme example there. Just because you follow the set standard does not mean you’ll follow people off bridges. This indicates you can’t think for yourself, whereas all Roblox have done is adopt a system that most people are currently used to using. Someone coming to Roblox who uses W7 will be used to the way it is now. Any developer that uses Unity and switches over or also learns how to use Roblox would be confused by the change. (Can’t comment on other game dev platforms as I haven’t tried any others but I expect them to behave similarly).
That is why it’s great people can discuss ideas on these forums. It should be thoroughly investigated as to whether this change would actually benefit the larger audience who uses the platform… After experimenting with the the OS and program mentioned above, it’s safe to assume most people are used to this kind of behaviour, as W7 alone is installed on a huge number of machines globally.
“Learn from others’ success but also from their mistakes” You can’t think for yourself!
???
If I select a folder in Unreal Engine and press Ctrl+V my clipboard is pasted into that and not its parent.
Any developer that uses Unreal and tries to learn how to use ROBLOX would be confused by the current behavior. You can try to argue which one is more important, but the only reason Unity (and ROBLOX) has this behavior is probably because it relies on Windows APIs for its explorer, and not because they intentionally wanted it to be that way.
Even if the totally-perfect Microsoft Windows has weird behavior, it’s easier to transition from learned behavior to natural behavior than it is the other way around. Pasted objects should go into my selection and not their parent – if I wanted them to be in the parent I would have selected the parent.
Was not actually meant to specifically be targeted at “you”. It was directed at the analogy you used, if you will blindly follow people off of bridges it shows you can’t think for yourself, not that EchoReaper can’t think for himself. I guess quotation marks might have made that sentence more clear. But I mentioned it as it was a bit extreme and didn’t quite fit.
Thanks for sharing another games platform, it’s nice to get other examples of how programs tackle this commonly used feature.
Unity is more widely used in comparison however, which is why I used it as an example along with W7. They may not be perfect, or even make sense in the way they do things, but they are widely used which is the whole point of my side of the argument. I want to make sure that the majority of users who are used to the current system, aren’t going to get too confused over a small change like this, and thus create a negative instead of positive change. As that is what is most important.
It is a small change. Something like this would be easy to adapt to. The difference in behavior is a non-issue – the only potential problem is whether or not the suggested behavior is better than the current behavior. The suggested behavior is better than the current behavior because the current behavior is unintuitive with its only excuse being “well other people do it so it’s not all bad”.
Is oversimplifying it somewhat. The “excuse” plain and simple; is most people are used to the way it is.
Looking at things from an entry level, from a person who has little experience with programs in general it’s easier if the tools they use somewhat resemble what they are used to. In the 3D space copying and pasting objects (the way duplicate does it) feels very natural to some people, which is why it’s like that in other programs.
Another argument could be made is that if you have a huge amount of stuff in the workspace, it could take a while to scroll up to click on the workspace to make your object be pasted in there. (A minor issue more related to organisation, but even these need to be thought about).
A TL;DR of the whole thing is this:
Current Paste option to be replaced with Paste Into
Pros:
Intuitive in certain explained cases.
Quickens workflow for intermediate-advanced studio users.
Cons:
Unintuitive with selected cases.
Not standard to quite a few popular programs, which could cause confusion for beginners or casual users. (W7, Unity, Adobe Products).
I have been using studio for years and I still can’t get used to the pasting behavior. I get annoyed every time I paste because most of the time the pasted copies are dumped somewhere unexpected. It ends up forcing me to drag an object through the explorer to get the result that I want because I don’t trust the current behavior. I do often remember that shift+ctrl+v is paste into, but I still end up pasting into the wrong spot a lot of the time.
As for Windows vs Roblox Studio and other tools, the behavior does make sense to an extent elsewhere because anything that isn’t a folder can’t have child objects. Users come to expect that if they have something selected in an opened folder that they should be able to paste into that opened folder, and not into the selected objects because a lot of the selected objects can’t have children. Roblox is completely different from that because any object can have any type of child, so the expectation becomes that you can paste into objects. This is reinforced by the fact that a lot of objects modify the behavior of their parent objects. If I went out of my way to select an object before pasting, it probably means that I want to put something into that object, not its parent or the workspace.
Except I’m not? That’s a completely different point then the one I’m making lol. Is it even a conversation anymore? Never had to reply to a single image before…
I’m kind of baffled how you didn’t fully understand the point I’ve been trying to make. If I’m using a video editor, I expect some common similarities between other video editors (like rendering options). What I think you’re missing is that I’m trying to talk from the side of users who are casual or new to the experience. It makes it easier if the tools they use feel similar to what they are used to. You seem to gloss over this in every post.
Now I might very well be wrong about my points, but that’s the point of forums; to discuss things between users and perhaps learn a thing or two. Don’t see any reason to post anything else, as there’s nothing more I can add to this conversation. Perhaps another user would like to share their thoughts?
I understood the point you’ve been trying to make. It’s something that has little effect and shouldn’t have been mentioned for more than a couple of posts.
It’s less of a discussion and more reposting the same thing over and over at this point.
Does MettaurSp’s post satisfy you? Just because behavior is present in other software does not make it good behavior.
