Studio generally unstable, dozens of bugs that hinder developers

[QALOLTHING (QA_LOL)]

Introduction

Recently, people have been seeing a lot of frame drops, crashes, and roblox studio being unstable in general. We have all seen that, when we try to close studio, it takes 5 minutes, and while playtesting, the entire layout forgets it’s self, things like that. In my opinion, these bugs are what costs a developer hundreds of hours every year. I will try to point out all my bugs that I personally experience, but since studio is so unstable, these bugs might happen to you, or they might not. Lets try to get all these little bugs to the staff, and help them improve the developer experience for everyone.

Bugs

Studio Layout resets during playtest with Load User Plugins in Test Mode is on.

This may or may not happen to you. This started happening a few months ago, but did not happen until I switched computers
As the title says, when pressing Play Solo, the entire studio layout resets. This is incredibly annoying, because it causes lag as studio opens a few dozen windows, and also destroys the use of plugins meant to be used during a playtest, such as PacketProfiler

[VERSION 2.0.0] Packet Profiler - easily measure all of your remotes!

[Icon] Packet Profiler by Pyseph [image] Get the plugin here Get the in-game profiler here Table of Contents Introduction Functionality In-Game Profiling Introduction Packet Profiler is a plugin which allows you to accurately read remote data sent by different contexts. Unlike the vague and uninformative Stats windows which only show the current KB/s receive and send rates, this plugin allows you to accurately see packet data each frame, along with precise byte size information. …

Attempting to close studio causes lag

Title says it all, pressing the close button on windows causes studio to freak out, and freeze for like 2 minutes. It can also cause severe lag, and hinder the developer. Studio will often look something like this:

and be like this for up to 5 minutes.

Letting computer sleep causes studio become unusable, and sometimes does not recover

When letting the computer sleep, or closing the lid of a laptop in general, studio becomes unusable for around 30 - 5 minutes, often looking like this, and often not reverting, forcing us to CLOSE studio, triggering the previous bug.

fun.

Test Mode is generally not performant

(oh look I just had to restart studio and wait 5 minute for it to close to get this picture)

For anyone that does not know, This is what I am referring to. Using this mode is highly not practical, as it takes around 5 minutes to start. And any of the above bugs can trigger. The server starts up, and than, there is like a 50 percent chance that one of the backup studios has a internet issue, and can’t log in, forcing you to restart and attempt to click the cleanup button in studio, while your computer is having a seizure. Not so much a bug, but it is very easy to accidently click this for beginners, and they might not know how to close all the windows, and why there are windows popping up. A confirmation button would have been nice.

Outro

This is just some of the many bugs that studio is currently facing. Others could tell you about lag spikes, usability issues, and others like that. Please read this post and look into fixing the developer experience, before adding on more and more features. Especially try to fix this before you redesign studio. We cannot be forced onto a program more buggy and unstable than we currently have.

Expected behavior

Honestly, I expected a lot more from Roblox, that the program that everyone creates games on would be more performant than what we currently have. But now we just have a bit a of a buggy mess that could be usable, or completely broken for some.

[WinterStorm_Meow (Winter)]

There is also the glitch that makes the file button not open correctly. Making it difficult to save work.

Whenever the “FILE” button does not open you must hold down on a different tab like “HOME” and that makes the file buttons show up, when you let go of the home tab the file buttons disappear as well.

Roblox seems to have a really hard time with the “FILE” button as in the next gen ui it also had some glitches.

[butterthebig]

Hi @QALOLTHING , thanks for the report. There’s a few issues here to unpack. In general its better to create a separate ticket for each independent issue. We can move that through the system in parallel and investigate each item on its own. There’s also generally back and forth to gather more data so its a bit easier that way. Even here our threads are likely to diverge as we dive into each problem.

There seem to be two categories of bugs here - layout problem and hangs.

On the layout issue, can you indicate what the value of “Load All Built-in Plugins in Test Mode” and “Load User Plugins in Test Mode” are? They are located in the Studio Settings dialog, under the “Studio” tab, at the bottom in the Test section. (See below picture). If they are off, and you enable them, does the behavior change?

It sounds like you have two variety of hangs - putting the laptop to sleep, and closing out a session. For each one of these:

a) How frequently does this occur?
b) Does the method of closing or sleeping matter in the appearance of the bug? i.e. if you close using the top title bar menu vs closing using the File Close Place vs closing using the tab close on the Place 3d View tab, does it matter? Same for sleeping, does it matter if you close the laptop, lock the computer then close, etc?
c) We will need logs for each scenario if you can provide them. To ensure a “clean” log, I suggest deleting the contents of the log directory, then reproducing the problem, then changing the name of the logs that s left- add something like “sleep issue” or “closeplace” to the front of it. You can DM the logs.
d) Are there specific places that this happens on, or does it happen in just a new blank Baseplate place? Baseplate is “better” in that we can easily replicate on our end, but if there are specific places that are giving you issues, the quickest way to get to a solution is to DM a reproduction file for us to use.

It’s also helpful to have HW information. A lot of times the hardware matters a ton. The type of hang you’re seeing, or Application Not Responding (ANR) is something we’ve been tracking seriously for over a year in Studio. (See this discussion) and while we’re aware there’s a way to go., we understand some of the underlying causes quite well. We’ve found ANRs are quite “sticky”, in that some users experience a lot of them, and some experience almost none. Sometimes that has to do with HW, but there’s always an underlying software issue that makes the problem in the first place and that’s what we’re trying to solve.

So that said, please DM your machine specs if possible, including GPU/driver info, CPU, RAM, OS versions, etc.

For the last question about Test Mode, this is another one where we see quite a variety of differing performances on test machines. depending on HW. We haven’t heard about the login issue from these, which is interesting as most of that data should be cached when starting up another instance of Studio. So again, logs here would be helpful - in this case sending all the logs from each Studio instance after reproducing the login issue would be helpful.

I 100% agree the UX is not great for beginners - we’re actually going to drop a completely remade version of test controls in the Next Gen Studio Beta channel in the coming weeks that we hope will make it clearer as to what does what, and less likely that new users will stumble into this. So keep an eye out for that.

Thanks again for taking the time to detail and send in your problems. With some more information I’m betting we can get to the bottom of some of them.

[QALOLTHING (QA_LOL)]

@butterthebig

On the layout issue, can you indicate what the value of “Load All Built-in Plugins in Test Mode” and “Load User Plugins in Test Mode” are? They are located in the Studio Settings dialog, under the “Studio” tab, at the bottom in the Test section. (See below picture). If they are off, and you enable them, does the behavior change?

when i turn on user plugins, the layout resets, and causes lag at the start of my playtest.

I have direct messages you my specs, btw

I will also direct message you the logs when I have time, thanks for the reminder. That was my bad.

Thanks for responding! Its just that I feel that the minor inconveniences cause a lot of trouble, and I want to help get rid of them, as they can cost an developer hundreds of hours over a period of time.

[butterthebig]

Still not clear on the behavior on the layout resetting when you enable the user option. (Sorry, missed the part earlier when you said you were having trouble with this flag on).

What actually resets when you turn the setting on/off? Is it the position of the user plugins you have shift from edit mode to “neutral” i.e. floating? If you set it in Play mode after enabling the option, then exit play mode, then exit Studio, then restart Studio, then restart play mode are you saying that the window has lost its position?

(I’m wondering if this is related to your issue with hanging, as Studio only saves layout on exiting, so if you’re force closing or something it may not save the layout changes you’ve made – would depend on how frequently the lag presents itself.).

[QALOLTHING (QA_LOL)]

@butterthebig

s it the position of the user plugins you have shift from edit mode to “neutral” i.e. floating? If you set it in Play mode after enabling the option, then exit play mode, then exit Studio, then restart Studio, then restart play mode are you saying that the window has lost its position?

All of my plugins just go to random positions, such as the sides and bottom. And some plugins open, and float. When i go back to edit, this reverts. And this happens every time. Consistently.