I don’t know how to really classify myself in terms of basic or intermediate at scripting. One of the things I have realized is that of course videos don’t teach you everything. After searching through forum and API I was wondering what are useful things that videos don’t teach you about coding. I’m asking for your feedback. What are some useful things you have learned while scripting that videos don’t teach?
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It is extremely aggravating at times.
Well there are lots. I never learnt everything from videos what I know today. Of course, I’m not the best scripter in the world, but I know quite a bit. First, I wrote the script in a way that it was a complete grammatical sentence. And I explained myself what each of the line had to do by commenting it (Basically -- this thing). Still I didn’t know much. So, I searched a lot on the forum, got almost every answer I needed. There are a whole lot of useful stuff that videos don’t teach, for example GuiService. There aren’t that many videos explaining this service but you do find it on the forum. And you can join discord servers such as RoDevs, because it’s incredibly an amazing helping server.
And by my knowledge to your question, yes videos do not explain everything.
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One of the first things I suggest you get acquainted with, is the server-client model roblox uses. You’ll eventually get to a point where you’ll see the terms “client” and “server” constantly pop up, along with “RemoteEvents” and “RemoteFunctions”. The server-client model plays a crucial role in all aspect of coding. You need to understand what the client does and what the server does as there are several internal and external factors that will impact your game (e.g exploiters, etc).
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Familiarize yourself with tables. You are going to use tables A LOT. They will be one of your most powerfullest tools. You’ll also encounter many built in functions that return different kind of tables (arrays, dictionary’s, etc). Learning this early will make your life much easier. You should also learn
for loopsalong side it, as tables and for loops go hand in hand together. -
Always try to simplify things. For example instead of change every individual parts color in a model line by line → you could instead use a for loop and loop through all the children of the model. This is just a basic example but everything you write should follow this format.
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This relates to the first point but don’t repeat code. If you see yourself constantly retyping the same couple of lines in multiple scripts/places, you should instead create a function (in a module if other scripts need to use the function or otherwise leave it within the original script) and simply pass certain arguments through it.
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Read the API’s and experiment with properties listed. The more familiar you get with roblox API’s the easier it will be to understand and use them. The best way to learn is through trial and error, so if you see a property for an instance that you don’t recognize → search it up → then mess with it to see the results.
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When using 3rd party resources (basically stuff you didn’t create), whether that be tutorials, free models, devforum post, don’t just copy and paste what you see. Try to understand line by line what is happening and if you’re having a hard time making sense of it, just make a post and someone will help you out!
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Avoid bad variable names. By this I mean don’t just make a variable with a single character called “a” or name the variable something totally unrelated to the value/purpose you’re going to assign it. Later down the road when you start writing more complex and indepth scripts, you’ll get confused on what each variable does due to the very bland names.
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Try to add comments to your code. This will not only help you but also help others who might potentially read your code. You might want to comeback to previous code you wrote ages ago, and without any proper details on what the code does, you’ll simply have to waste time reading the entire script to understand it. Another thing that relates to formatting. Indents… Always indent your code so its easier to read, will help you a lot.
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If you don’t understand something, don’t give up! Never give up if you’re struggling to understand or write a piece of code. There are so many resources to help you out! Never feel shy to make a post on devforum asking anything. Regardless of the complexity, you’ll always find a bunch of amazing individual who don’t mind helping you out!
These are just helpful tips in order to speed up and/or improve the learning process. Hopefully this helps or gives you insight. There may be typo’s as I’m writing this on my phone at 1 am lol. Goodluck!
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Haha I really appreciate you writing this especially at 1. Thank you for the encouragement and I assure you I am not gonna give up on this.