I’ve recently been working on an area-based audio system that plays different audio depending on the area that the character is in. The system is functional and working as intended, but I’m looking for some advice:
Right now, I track the player’s last “region” via a dictionary. Upon stepping into a new area, if the environmental data (audio & lighting) differs, it fires a remote which the client interprets and makes the intended environmental transitions. However, to track the player’s current region, I have tried two things: I’ve polled with GetTouchingParts (my regions are physical parts – working with a team that needs these regions to be modular and easily implementable) and have also, again via polling, used relative CFrame methods to track if the player enters/exits a certain region.
Wondering if there’s a better event-based alternative that I could look into. I experimented with Touched but the results were rather finnicky when standing between two zones, but perhaps I’m not implementing it correctly?
You’d be surprised how easy it is to make a lightweight system that behaves similarly to Region3, but in this case you only need to see if the character model is within a region, which makes this method ideal.
local function Player_In_Zone(zone) --//Determine if the player is within a specified zone
local zone_size, zone_pos = zone.Size, zone.Position
local player_pos = root.Position
local zone_min_X = zone_pos.X - zone_size.X/2
local zone_max_X = zone_pos.X + zone_size.X/2
local zone_min_Y = zone_pos.Y - zone_size.Y/2
local zone_max_Y = zone_pos.Y + zone_size.Y/2
local zone_min_Z = zone_pos.Z - zone_size.Z/2
local zone_max_Z = zone_pos.Z + zone_size.Z/2
if (player_pos.X > zone_min_X and player_pos.X < zone_max_X) and (player_pos.Y > zone_min_Y and player_pos.Y < zone_max_Y) and (player_pos.Z > zone_min_Z and player_pos.Z < zone_max_Z) then
return true --//It's determined the player is in this zone
end
end
And then what you can do is use a StringValue to contain the current region the player’s in, you can update it using a loop of some sort, and then if you want, you can use a .Changed event on the StringValue to update the ambient sounds when ever the region changes.
Your proposal is an almost identical implementation in tandem with what I created, but the issue still arises where I’d have to check the players position every X frame(s).
What I currently do is save the player’s region at a given point in time, cross-check to see if the current region is identical to the old, and update & fire the event (causing the environment & music change) when they step into a new location.
By no means is it a bad design choice, but I’m just looking for something that doesn’t involve running a continuous loop on the client/server.
If I can’t find a different event-based solution, I’ll definitely opt for this instead. While the current performance metrics are practical and won’t cause any issues in an isolated testing environment, I’m just looking for something that’ll minimize that script workload so I can allocate more intensive work on more intricate systems.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with updating this every frame or so. Assuming you’ve been using alternate methods up to this point, I’ve given you a lightweight method to achieve the same result but in a much more efficient manner, and also testing only the parts you need.
local RS = game:GetService("RunService")
local timer = 0
while true do
if timer >= 1/30 then
timer = 0
--//update region
end
timer += RS.Heartbeat:Wait()
end
It really seems to me you’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Mathematical comparisons are cheap and you should only care if they are significantly impacting workload.
Regions are pseudo locations in Roblox so there is no 100% practical solution to determining if a player changes your pseudo-locations.
To avoid loop-driven application, you should consider becoming event-driven (a common and efficient practice in game design and web design). You can either:
Listen to a changed signal on the character’s HumanoidRootPart Position (do not use animatable pieces)
Listen to the Humanoid’s Running event
Then compare the distance changed on the server to validate the movement if necessary. If you have a large location change (such as a teleport), then inform the server of the change to prepare for distance-checking disabling. Event driven programming is the default performance alternative to arbitrary loop checking.