Block coding system, new object BlockScript?

Feature Requests Studio Features
#10

Yeah, I taught a group of kids to use AppInventor before and for really simple stuff it can be good but if you go beyond that it just feels like you can’t do anything you want to do with it. Here is the code one of my “best students” ended up with for an app I helped him with.

bovb8SP.png1717×871 217 KB

It just feels like the limits of the visual editor make it really difficult to make anything that is the equivalent of even just 100 lines of code.[/quote]

That’s a great example as to why I hate it. I’d be able to read plain old code better than I can read that![/quote]

Look up UE4 nodemaps.

#11

Perhaps a block editor that actually writes real code, but just asks for inputs. Eventually the language syntax would just become simple enough to type out instead of fill out.

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#12

A drag&drop editor is the easy part. Take a look at that Blockly thing that was posted and observe how it handles Lua’s standard library and the ComputerCraft API. They’ve been meticulously broken down and grouped in such a way as to be convenient and simple to understand. I’m certain that most of the time and effort spent on that project went into just doing that.

Now ask, who wants to do the same thing for Roblox’s API?

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#13

I think the best bet is to just let people who have trouble learning text code to use GameMaker, instead of Roblox making from scratch a system that won’t be near as good.

#14

Its called blueprints and looks like this

N8HsIL6oiRu-gNuQqPWkVmnxQBpqHhlVyIgg4dY831NBlPUkGl8LUUusFLRi249nFnhtZrBUn_jyVLtHsvEfYqQXf8Y7qS6VvyuT6It9pe5WJzEto0xWjEpafWk-OcfvHg.png1600×1000 294 KB

Blueprints is really nice for simple things, but most developers recommend for you to use C++ for intensive or complex tasks due to C++ being faster and with the fact that blueprints can get confusing fast. The difference is that blueprints doesn’t necessarily act as a replacement for C++. It’s intended to work alongside C++.

#15

Yeah I’ve used blueprints in UE before. They’re nice to hook up stuff, but I couldn’t imagine orchestrating a full game with it. For instance, hooking up a door to open in intervals or by proximity is super easy with Blueprints and super practical. However, making a plane fly realistically with Blueprints would be a little crazy.

2 Likes
#16

My teacher is having us use Alice 3 for learning about Java and it is a block code system like TheGamer101 posted.
Sparker22’s looks super cool compared to Alice 3, which is laggy and has so much copying of blocks (and you can’t add whole numbers and decimals).

I would imagine someone could make it a very complex plugin and have it load/save as lua scripts though, or even another program compared to adding it directly to Roblox.

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#17

I asked on twitter using #ROBLOX and #ROBLOXDev and a few friends and the majority did vote for a drop-n-block style coding system

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#18

[quote] I asked on twitter using #ROBLOX and #ROBLOXDev and a few friends and the majority did vote for a drop-n-block style coding system

http://strawpoll.me/5502425 [/quote]

I feel like thats rather misleading.
"I’d rather learn coding by using simple drag-n-drop block scripts’
I’d argue that you aren’t learning coding at all. This block layout simply introduces you to a similar logical flow that programming languages have. While it makes getting into programming easier I wouldn’t call it ‘learning coding’ to the same degree that someone learns Lua or C++

Also, the total vote count is way too small for this poll to have any merit to it.

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#19

[quote] I asked on twitter using #ROBLOX and #ROBLOXDev and a few friends and the majority did vote for a drop-n-block style coding system

http://strawpoll.me/5502425 [/quote]

I feel like thats rather misleading.
"I’d rather learn coding by using simple drag-n-drop block scripts’
I’d argue that you aren’t learning coding at all. This block layout simply introduces you to a similar logical flow that programming languages have. While it makes getting into programming easier I wouldn’t call it ‘learning coding’ to the same degree that someone learns Lua or C++

Also, the total vote count is way too small for this poll to have any merit to it.[/quote]
It helped me to learn coding and I’m sure others would to. Whilst not hard coding everything off by heart they would still be able to understand everything. Scratch referred to it at one point as ‘providing easier learning for young kids with the ability to advanced their knowledge of coding’

I’m constantly promoting this poll right now and it’s still gathering votes, don’t give up on it just yet.

2 Likes
#20

Which is why we never ever want a block coding system. We don’t want to teach people how to code. We want to teach people how to program.

#21

[quote] [quote=“anon80475429” post=201319]I asked on twitter using #ROBLOX and #ROBLOXDev and a few friends and the majority did vote for a drop-n-block style coding system

http://strawpoll.me/5502425 [/quote]

I feel like thats rather misleading.
"I’d rather learn coding by using simple drag-n-drop block scripts’
I’d argue that you aren’t learning coding at all. This block layout simply introduces you to a similar logical flow that programming languages have. While it makes getting into programming easier I wouldn’t call it ‘learning coding’ to the same degree that someone learns Lua or C++

Also, the total vote count is way too small for this poll to have any merit to it.[/quote]
It helped me to learn coding and I’m sure others would to. Whilst not hard coding everything off by heart they would still be able to understand everything. Scratch referred to it at one point as ‘providing easier learning for young kids with the ability to advanced their knowledge of coding’

I’m constantly promoting this poll right now and it’s still gathering votes, don’t give up on it just yet.[/quote]

It helps you understand the logic BEHIND common features of programming languages. Thats about as far as it goes.

Also, considering how large the ROBLOX community is, that poll would need thousands of entries to be significant.

1 Like
#22

Which is why we never ever want a block coding system. We don’t want to teach people how to code. We want to teach people how to program.
-snip-[/quote]
I meant to say program

2 Likes
#23

[quote] [quote=“Sparker22” post=201322][quote=“anon80475429” post=201319]I asked on twitter using #ROBLOX and #ROBLOXDev and a few friends and the majority did vote for a drop-n-block style coding system

http://strawpoll.me/5502425 [/quote]

I feel like thats rather misleading.
"I’d rather learn coding by using simple drag-n-drop block scripts’
I’d argue that you aren’t learning coding at all. This block layout simply introduces you to a similar logical flow that programming languages have. While it makes getting into programming easier I wouldn’t call it ‘learning coding’ to the same degree that someone learns Lua or C++

Also, the total vote count is way too small for this poll to have any merit to it.[/quote]
It helped me to learn coding and I’m sure others would to. Whilst not hard coding everything off by heart they would still be able to understand everything. Scratch referred to it at one point as ‘providing easier learning for young kids with the ability to advanced their knowledge of coding’

I’m constantly promoting this poll right now and it’s still gathering votes, don’t give up on it just yet.[/quote]

It helps you understand the logic BEHIND common features of programming languages. Thats about as far as it goes.

Also, considering how large the ROBLOX community is, that poll would need thousands of entries to be significant.[/quote]
Which provides the basic building blocks for kids, once they understand that they may want to experiment and try having a go scripting a normal script.

It’s not like I can place a banner or do an official ROBLOX survey but I am asking a lot of my friends who have mentioned to me before that they have wanted to learn how to script or didn’t know how to as well and as many people as I’m able to reach.

1 Like
#24

I support this idea. Also, I made a thread with a similar request a week ago.

2 Likes
#25

[quote] I asked on twitter using #ROBLOX and #ROBLOXDev and a few friends and the majority did vote for a drop-n-block style coding system

http://strawpoll.me/5502425 [/quote]

That’s some nice question bias you got there. It would be a shame if it contaminated all your data…

2 Likes
#26

[quote] I asked on twitter using #ROBLOX and #ROBLOXDev and a few friends and the majority did vote for a drop-n-block style coding system

http://strawpoll.me/5502425 [/quote]

That’s some nice question bias you got there. It would be a shame if it contaminated all your data…[/quote]

My exact same thought. It’s basically setting up the questioning like so:

Would you like to learn to code games easily with blocks, or would you like to use the heavily stigmatized wiki to write code?

Obviously people are going to go with the option that says “simple” or “easy” rather than through the wiki, which is notorious for not being a good, standalone teacher.

2 Likes
#27

[2021 Edit for those still finding this]: I never worked on this project, but nothing stops this project from existing is no one has worked on this.

Question: Do you guys want me to try to make some form of block coding system as a plugin?
Bonus: Should I use the one by TheGamer101 where you would see in like Alice 3 or one like Sparker22 for things like Unreal and Mindstorm NXT?

5 Likes
Automatic programming/scripting in roblox studio, possible?
#28

[quote] I asked on twitter using #ROBLOX and #ROBLOXDev and a few friends and the majority did vote for a drop-n-block style coding system

http://strawpoll.me/5502425 [/quote]

That’s some nice question bias you got there. It would be a shame if it contaminated all your data…[/quote]
I didn’t mean for it to be bias, there’s still a chunk of people that voted in favour of wiki so I don’t think it’s instantly ‘contaminated’ all the data. If ROBLOX really wanted to they can do another survey anyway because apparently this survey doesn’t mean anything

2 Likes
#29

So, I’ve been learning Lua for quite some time, and I got all the basics down and I am starting to learn some of the more advanced things. And I find that such learning needs a lot of perseverance and time. So, what’s my point?

My point is that scripting is really hard to learn and to make it much easier, people would be better off developing games.

Some people have great ideas, but not the skill to do it. That’s the problem that many people face. And since ROBLOX is a platform to develop games and have fun. Why not spice things up and have more people develop games, having a better variety of games, and attracting new users to Roblox?

So, what’s the solution?

Roblox should develop a new way of scripting, sort of like the blocks they use on Scratch. Before ROBLOX, I used to work on scratch, and to be honest, scratch was WAY easier to learn than the scripting on ROBLOX.

Yes, it’s going to take time, but is it worth it?

In my opinion, yes. not only are more people going to develop games. More people would start to play ROBLOX because more games are being created that can match the taste of an exiting game that another cannot provide.

How will they learn code from this?

If you replicate the thing they do on scratch, then I would suggest this:
If you hover over a block, you can see how to script in Lua.
For example:
in scratch, there is a repeat brick, and when you hover it, it will show you how you would put that in real code. In this case, it would show:

for i = 1, number of times you want to repeat this

This topic might sound like a complaint, but it’s not, it’s just a suggestion.

Here’s a quick poll to see if you agree with me or not:

  • I agree
  • I disagree

0 voters

Thank you for reading this :smiley:

1 Like