I am interested in making NPCs move and testing this out so far I have tried using the Roblox Rig Maker but when I try to use it I seem to have difficulty.I have looked at tutorials and the roblox Wikipedia of developing and they both lead to disaster.Can someone explain it to me if I’m missing a script or something to make the npc move?
Moving an NPC can be used by 2 simple ways. If your NPC is containing a Humanoid you can use Humanoid:MoveTo(), otherwise you can use pathfinding service, so your NPC would move “smarter”, by that I mean that he will turn somewhere or go up etc. if the path exists for him. Try searching again on Roblox Developer Hub about this.
Here’s a useful link explaining the features and documentation of PathfindingService.
Here is a youtube video looking over the basics of Pathfinding Service by Roblox.
If you want to see a demonstration, I recently made a game using Pathfinding Service and Mouse Position to move the player. Please mind the building aspects, made it in a rush.
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What specifically are you requesting? The title asks for how to move NPC joints and the content asks for how to move NPCs themselves. This strikes confusion. Please ensure that your post is concise for what you seek, otherwise a clear answer can’t really be provided.
If you seek to “move joints”, I think the proper term you’re looking for is animations. Animations are the process of making your character “come to life” with various movements and such that you see in games. Animations can be created through the animation editor built into Roblox Studio or an equivalent plugin (such as Moon Animation Suite). There are various tutorials floating around on how to use each. The key concepts:
- Each part of a character is welded to a root using a Motor6D object, which is a motor weld
- Motors are used to, of course, move things around while connecting parts together
- The animation editor changes the position of these based on your liking
There are tutorials on the Developer Hub that you can use to find out how to make animations. Two that come to mind that are very useful:
- Using Animations in Games, which describes the process of applying animations
- Using the Animation Editor, which shows you how you can create animations
Of course, if you’re interested in other plugins such as Moon Animation Suite, they also have their own unique tutorials. This assumes you have some knowledge of how animating works and is more of an introduction to the plugin and the unique features it possesses over the standard animation editor.
As far as moving an NPC goes, the Humanoid object is what you seek to use within your NPCs. This NPC sports various methods for moving NPCs, such as its very own MoveTo method. With the various functions in Humanoid, you’ll be able to make Humanoids move around.
The PathfindingService is an addition to moving NPCs. The PathfindingService is used when you want characters to follow a specific path, without explicitly coding that behaviour yourself. What it can achieve is a strong difference, such as characters running straight into walls if you use only MoveTo or it can walk around obstacles to get through doors and open walls with PathfindingService.
The PathfindingService itself just facilitates the creation of paths. Pathfinding itself is a broad topic which you can find many different topics on. To be specific, pathfinding is a form of a character movement algorithm. Here are some topics you can review regarding pathfinding and algorithms:
Developer Hub:
Wikipedia:
I would advise getting the basics of character movement down first before you delve into pathfinding, since it’s a relatively advanced algorithm (made simple with PathfindingService, but still relatively difficult to get into once you start accounting for other technical details!). If you are interested however, there are various scattered tutorials around the net. Video tutorials are very helpful in the case that you want to follow along, pause and be right on point with how you’re learning it. How you find those is up to you, but make sure you’ve got an updated tutorial on hand!
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Yes. I’m so happy you brought that up. Pathfinding in particular has many decaprecated functions, and have been superseded with much more effective options. Make sure to find a reference that is not decaprecated/outdated, and uses generally accepted methods.
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