I am looking to kick-start my passion for scripting on ROBLOX, I’ve been on the platform for a while and have picked up a little of the basics. I’ve also watched YouTube tutorials and have completed the ROBLOX tutorial.
I find these tutorials to be lacklustre and they often don’t go into depth about why they’re doing what they’re doing. I admit, I lose patience some of the time whilst watching them too.
From your own experience, what would you say is the best way to learn?
Really just try your best and script what you can. I starting knowing nothing and as I started to script and challenge myself to make harder things, I’ll learn along on how a thing works.
Another good way is to search into free-models and see how they do their code and get a basic idea of how they script their things [ofc don’t steal it or copy the code]
When I started coding in Roblox, I searched tutorials in YouTube. I practiced every-day. I even made like 10+ unfinished games. 3 years of experience and I might say that a good start is to practice. A good YouTube Roblox developer is AlvinBlox. I learned to code because of him.
I have had people tell me to analyse free models but there’s also the debate of picking up bad scripting habits from them too, is that something I should be concerned with early on?
Well, I wouldn’t know why it is a bad habit. I understand if you don’t know how to do something or just wanting a little help it can be a habit. But if you just go ahead and practice and never use free-models again after you feel like you master scripting, go ahead!
Best to start is watching tutorial on YouTube but don’t just copy code inside video try writing you own code with the knowledge you got from it
I don’t recommend much on learning from free model code since most of them are outdated
This is just optional tip but don’t fear on making error every code I made when starting always error atleast 3 times search forum for relative problem and find where did you mess up
Just slowly learn it it’s not as hard as you think(?)
I used Scratch as a base to learn coding so I knew the structure of how to code. Then I made a game straight off a tutorial and tried to change its structure using my Scratch coding knowledge combined with Roblox Lua. A few times of practice later, voila! Now I know the intermediate structure of Lua and can code a lot of stuff on my own! Lua is easy to learn but really hard to master!
The simple answer is practice. Just keep making things. Start small of course because you don’t want to overwhelm yourself. Make lots of projects. Once you are done with a project it can also be helpful to look back on it and ask yourself if you were to do it again if you would do anything differently. Almost every problem can be solved in many ways. Some are better than others, some are equal. It really depends on the projects. Just always prioritize understanding exactly what your code is doing over just getting it working when you are learning. If something you used still confused you after implementing it go and build a few more projects with that concept.
I know a lot of people will recommend free models. I would avoid those. They can be a good source, but there are so many free models that are very poorly written. And especially when you are starting out it can be hard to figure out if something is done well or not. Then there are models that though they aren’t badly written will be taking advantage of many more complicated aspects of scripting making them very difficult to decode with limited knowledge and experience with the language. Either a too complex script or a badly written script can really just give you bad experiences in trying to figure out what’s going on. You could also learn some bad habits from them.
Keep in mind bad habits aren’t only learned from free models though. Tutorials are made by many individuals of varying skill levels. Some will be great, some will be badly made and most somewhere in between. You are almost certainly going to pick up some bad habits along the way unless you are only learning from the best of sources. Just always be willing to learn and adapt and you will be fine.
And I guess last but most important. Make sure you really understand all of the basics. They build up everything making the foundation of your knowledge. Make sure you know what variable types are available to you. Make sure you know your control statements like if or loops. Make sure you know what loops will be best for what you are doing. Make sure you really understand tables and dictionaries. Make sure you understand functions and events. This type of stuff makes up everything to some extent.
Also as a little side note, browse the roblox documentation from time to time. When you are trying to solve a problem relating to an instance, look it up and find the documentation on it. Sometimes the problem you are trying to solve has a built in function that either does it for you or is super convenient for making what you want. The Roblox documentation is a really good resource that you should be using.
depending on your most favorite or interactive type of genre in developing such as competitive fighting, platformers, tycoons, story games and more examples;
you can try learning bool values (values that can be modified to be true or false) for either global interaction within the server or client (individually to optimize connection) when it comes to checking if that object should be able to turn to a color or not using the term (if statements) which format is this
if obj ~= nil and obj.Name == "joe" then --checks if the part is currently existing and matches its exact name to a keyword
obj.Name = "true joe" --a random result that you can modify
end
if you are trying to learn full on combat systems, watch guides on youtube especially the ones with professional critiques in the comment sections since this is considered a basic advanced (depends if the system has complex laws such as parrying and dodging) and if you seem to be very well have ease understanding the followup in that specific content creator’s videos, those are some examples
also one of the most common studio tutorial creators is AlvinBlox which has been going at it for 4 years and longer and thedevking which sometimes create challenge posts but has some videos on roblox studio education
Hey there! As a rather “fast learner” when it came to scripting/programming especially in Roblox here are the steps I took:
YouTube, I watched a lot of YouTube tutorials on just the basics of scripting in Roblox
More YouTube after watching basic scripting tutorials I found it even more helpful to watch tutorials that show you how to make specific game (like what my channel does) this helped me learn a lot because I was putting my little knowledge to use, and if I got stuck on something I would look it up, and instead of copy and pasting I would read what it does and try to tweak it for my use.
Finall there was just me trying to build a basic game with no tutorials and as mentioned in the previous step, when I’d get stuck I’d look it up and usually get sent to either the DevHub, DevForum or ScriptingHelpers
I’ve really found that drawing a little diagram of what I want my code to do and how it looks in my head has helped me a lot. I’m a visual learner so everytime I code things I will always draw a mind map of some sorts.
