How have you set up your interaction systems?

Help and Feedback Scripting Support
#1

I have a game with a large number of interactive objects. It’s necessary for the user to be able to interact with nearby objects by pressing a key (defaults to E). This is a common system that’s used across a lot of both Roblox and Triple-A titles. (Take Jailbreak as a popular example, when you approach a vehicle)

How have you implemented, or how would you implement this system? How would you bind functions to different objects, in a memory-efficient way? How would you find out nearby objects without a heavy impact in a user’s device?

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Help with E to interact system
#2

I use CollectionService. A good method of detecting if you are nearby is using a Region3 around the character with the CollectionService:GetTagged(“Interaction”) as the Whitelist in workspace:FindPartsInRegion3WithWhitelist. You could bind this to run every 20 frames, or even on a per-second basis.

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#3

I’m currently tagging them with Interactive too! How do you handle binding functions to an object?

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#4

For my interactions, I always have a BillboardGui with a StringValue called “Reference” which contains the BindableEvent name to fire upon being interacted with. All my BindableEvents for interactions are in a separate folder (PlayerScripts.BindableInteractions). My interaction system will look for and fire any bindable event inside of BindableInteractions with the name given by the Reference.

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#5

It would likely be easier and more efficient to have the server store a table for BindableEvents - Object reference table in your use-case, and just have the user fire an “InteractedWith” RemoteEvent.

#6

The server does not need to know when the client is interacting with something that may be 100% on the client. For example; an Interaction that opens a GUI, or toggles a client-sided light.

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#7

Very fair point, so in this case the string can also be a reference to a local BindableEvent?

#8

In my use case the StringValue is always the name of the desired client-sided BindableEvent to be fired. A separate RemoteEvent will be fired to the server afterwards if required.

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