As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to make sure I’m saving my game where I expect to save it, which is dangerous and can lead to data loss.
I currently edit my game by loading it from Roblox, and work in Studio. I save periodically to a local file by using Save As (it’s much faster, is more visible and assuring when it succeeds, and I prefer this also for other reasons), and then use Ctrl-S from then on as I work. When I’m ready to publish, I will publish to the website via File > Publish to Roblox, and then I will continue working. When I’m done working, I will publish and close Studio.
However, after recent changes to how publishing works in Studio, when I publish to Roblox, this will reset my Ctrl-S location so it will save to Roblox instead of to my local file.
This is confusing and causes me to very frequently accidentally save to Roblox without realizing, which is extremely bad because if I assume I’m saving to a local file but I’m actually not, this could cause me to lose a lot of work depending on what I do next. Studio does not communicate that a save has succeeded properly, nor where it is being saved to. The output widget is extremely out of the way, and is not always focused. This should never change without me explicitly changing it.
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because I would always know where I’m saving to. If I explicitly choose to save to a certain place with a certain saving mode, I don’t expect it to ever change unless I explicitly change it.
Part of why I save to a local file is because I value ownership of my own files (i.e. I don’t trust Roblox to keep my game due to concerns about moderation, cloud availability, I want redundancy, etc). Roblox needs to be accommodating to users who don’t want to work directly out of the cloud.
The cloud is much slower than my local drive as well, taking multiple seconds to save during which time if I use Studio, I’m unsure which version of my game is getting published, or if me using Studio will mess it up.
There’s also very minimal feedback when a cloud save succeeds. It feels unsafe and flimsy.
