Recent improvements to the Roblox Installer

[mrdooz]

Hi y’all!

We’ve recently rolled out and enabled two improvements to the Roblox Installer on Windows that I’d like to briefly describe.

Improved Admin Install
As many of you know, if you launch the Roblox Installer by right-clicking on it, and selecting “Run as administrator”, then we would install the client/studio in your “Program Files” folder, instead of in your local user folder. This worked fine on the initial install, but on subsequent updates the installer would get confused, and forget about the original “admin” install, and start installing in your
user folder again.

We’ve just enabled a fix for this, so if the installer detects an existing “admin” install, it will assume that you want to keep using this installation, and it won’t create an additional user install. Because most of you don’t install Roblox with administrator privileges, you shouldn’t see any differences, and the installer will keep installing and updating in your user folder.

For those of you who do install as administrator, one difference you’ll notice is that when it’s time to upgrade, the installer will detect that you have an admin install, but because its not running as administrator, it will try to relaunch itself with administrator privileges, which will cause Windows to display a “UAC” window, asking if you allow it to make changes to your computer. If you select yes, then the installer will relaunch and your existing admin install will be updated, and if you select no, then the installer will fall back to doing a normal user install.

Bundled Installs
A feature request we get from time to time is the ability to be able to easily install the Roblox Client or Studio on a large number of machines without having to fetch everything over the network for each install (basically what you’d get with a MSI file or similar).

In the future we’d like to be able to provide a convenient way to allow for this from the web site, but in the mean time we’ve implemented a feature that will allow you to create a “bundled install” yourself, that you can then use to install Roblox from.

To use this, first open a command line prompt (by for example running “cmd” from the Windows start menu), and traverse to the directory where Roblox is installed (the exact location will depend on your user name and the version number of the client, but an example could be “C:\Users\mrdooz\AppData\Local\Roblox\Versions\version-3ee077f3d35243a7”).

Next, run the installer with the -bundle command line option, ie

RobloxPlayerLauncher.exe -bundle

The installer should display the familiar installation window, but it will say “Creating bundle…” instead of the usual text. It will also print progress to the command line (fun fact: this came as a feature request from the person doing the code review, because he wanted more of a hacker feeling!).

Once the installer is done, it will have created a bundled version of the installer, which will be a single .exe file (the name will depend on the version number, right now it should be “RobloxPlayerLauncher_version-3ee077f3d35243a7.exe”), that internally contains everything needed to install the client or studio. This bundled file can then be copied to a USB drive or a network drive, and you can use it to install client/studio onto other machines as you see fit.

If you have any questions, comments or observe anything weird, don’t hesitate to comment in this thread!

[Cherpl]

I would heart this twice if I could.

[ThatTimothy]

Always wondered why install times could vary so much. Glad to see that this problem has been fixed.

[FridgeArctic]

Checked it out! Pretty cool! I uninstalled roblox to try this.

[Maximum_ADHD]

Is this bundle fetched from setup.roblox.com?

[TheAddictPlayer (Garrett)]

Oh of all improvements the bundling install is really exciting!

Also I didn’t know that you could force the client and studio to install in program files… I am really tempted to try this

[mrdooz]

The bundle is created on the fly - essentially it just runs the normal install process, but instead of unzipping and installing files, it embeds them as resources into the installer, and this then becomes the bundle.

[TaaRt]

While some level of control is a begin (I personally wasn’t aware admin install did this), Roblox should get in line with the standard of having a variable installation location. Many people do not prefer to use their OS disk or standard install location at all times, and Roblox is the odd one out as many applications have had this functionality for years.

Relevant feature request;

Allow changing install location

As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible to install roblox or Roblox studio onto certain work/ school networks due to the files being installed into appdata by default. If Roblox was to add a way of selecting an install location, it would allow educational institutions to install the program on their network much more easily. Most programs already do this, with Roblox being the odd one out. There are also other issues such as:

[DataBrain (Amber)]

Not sure if this was related, but a flag was just flipped that reset all of my plugin settings (via the plugin:SetSetting API). It happened just a few minutes ago…

[mrdooz]

The flags here were enabled yesterday afternoon - have you used Studio between then and now, or is this the first time in a day or so?

[ForbiddenJ]

Hopefully this means I can create offline installers of Roblox Studio now; not that it’s usable without logging in, but this is another step towards becoming a normal, versatile game engine.

Also, I did not know I could install to my Program Files folder, or I would have been doing that on my shared computers a long time ago.

[DataBrain (Amber)]

I just started using studio today, and I kept the same place open—I ran test games both before and after the settings got wiped, so I know it was a few minutes before I posted that.

[Dekkonot]

Now that there’s some work being dond on the launcher and installer, is there any chance we can move towards keeping the same shortcut through updates? It’s getting tiring to disable DPI scaling every update.

[devSparkle]

Thanks!

I just managed to deploy Roblox to all my machines using AD Group Policy! This was one of the last apps that still required manual install whenever I added or wiped a machine.

[JohnnyMorganz (Johnny)]

Is it possible to stop the Roblox Studio Installer from creating a new shortcut on the Desktop every time it updates - I like to clear my desktop to prevent clutter, but it keeps coming back whenever Roblox Studio updates… [This also didn’t use to happen until a recent update earlier this year or late last year]

EDIT: just found a feature request regarding this as well:

Studio should not attempt to create a desktop shortcut every time it updates

As a Roblox developer, I access Roblox Studio via the Start menu on Windows or I just open a file directly. I don’t really use my desktop, and I prefer it that way. However, Roblox Studio creates a new desktop shortcut every time it updates on Windows 10, and I have to delete it every time since I prefer my desktop clean. It would be great if there could be a setting (preferably one that defaults to false, unless there is evidence that more people prefer it generating a shortcut than not) that …

[mrdooz]

Is this a desktop or a taskbar icon? We fixed an issue where taskbar icons weren’t getting updated properly after an update a couple of months ago, but I’m not sure if that also applied to desktop icons.

[ForbiddenJ]

I believe the desktop and start menu shortcuts still get replaced every update. Especially considering they still point directly to the latest versions of their launchers, which themselves are under folders with version IDs.

I pinned shortcuts to my start menu and moved the desktop icons to a weird spot. I should be able to update this post next time an update happens.

Edit:

I grabbed my other computer, which didn’t yet have its Roblox Player and Roblox Studio updated, pinned the icons to its start menu, and moved its desktop icons.

When I updated both, the desktop icons stayed in the same spots, but the icons pinned to the start menu disappeared. Windows considered them new programs.

[Xan_TheDragon (Xan)]

@TaaRt

While some level of control is a begin (I personally wasn’t aware admin install did this), Roblox should get in line with the standard of having a variable installation location. Many people do not prefer to use their OS disk or standard install location at all times, and Roblox is the odd one out as many applications have had this functionality for years.

I second this. In my case, My C:\ drive is a measley 150GB SSD that I intended to use for my OS and other super important stuff. I have a 2TB alternate drive and all of my applications install there. Needless to say, although Roblox is relatively small, the size it takes on that C:\ drive does matter a lot more than I’d like it to, so being able to install on my alternate drive would be more than amazing.

In regards to the OP, the changes appended are awesome and I welcome them with open arms.

[Dekkonot]

This is a desktop icon. It’s updating the shortcut just fine (it points to the right version and iirc stays in the same position), but the compatibility settings are being reset with every update.

[mrdooz]

Ah gotcha. It sounds like certain Windows settings are tied to the exact executable, which is a problem for us as we install each version into a new directory. I’m not sure there’s an easy fix for this, but it’s something we’ll keep in mind in the future.