How does the "tick()" function actually work?

[guisende_yt (guigui)]

I might be dumb, but what is the

  "tick()"

function REALLY used for in Roblox Studio?
I know I’ve seen that it’s useful for cooldowns and things like that, but I don’t understand how it works.

[cybercrazyyy (cyber)]

feel like the documentation explains it well

[guisende_yt (guigui)]

I tried to understand it through the API. I created the infinite loop and looked at the Unix website, I understood that much. But how can it be useful currently? For example, does it start ticking the moment the code is executed?

Like
Local thetick = tick() - STARTS TICK

Rest of code
If tick() - thetick… - ends the tick

[cybercrazyyy (cyber)]

it returns how much time has elapsed (in seconds) since the first january of 1970, thats it, nothing else

[guisende_yt (guigui)]

So if the player used an ability at 13:10 and that time is greater than that, it will be executed and will it go on cooldown?

[cybercrazyyy (cyber)]

did not understand any of that ngl

[wolfscouthello1]

tick() doesn’t execute anything if that’s what you’re asking, it just returns a number

[guisende_yt (guigui)]

Could you give a very simple example (Code or no code.), just so I can be sure of what I’ve understood so far, or so I can understand?

[cybercrazyyy (cyber)]

local unix = tick() -- does absolutely nothing besides give you this number
-- mysterious unit of time passes
local diff = tick()-unix -- how much time has passed since the last measurement
-- TICK ISNT DOING ANYTHING HERE, ITS JUST GIVING ANOTHER NUMBER

[guisende_yt (guigui)]

ooohhh i think i understand for now.
thanks

[East98]

You’re probably better off avoiding tick().

If you’re looking for a time difference during runtime, use time().

If you’re looking for benchmarking, use os.clock().

If you’re looking to sync a timestamp between server and client, use workspace:GetServerTimeNow().

The Roblox Learn YT channel made a great video going over all these use cases and more.