I think most people who have tried scripting have at least gave up on it once. Most of us have a very specific objective in mind, could be making a custom fighting system, could be making an inspiration based another game, anything
But what you find on most tutorials on YouTube doesn’t really help much. Fine, they teach you the basics, but I can’t see how exactly knowing how to change the material from a brick to grass and the colour from blue to white after 3 seconds is going to help me make a game about being able to simulate energy affecting the game map, for example
I hope I’m not the only one that feels that way, even on the documentation there’s not much guidance on what to read. Fine, I have learnt strings, tables, etc, but how do I translate that into code that can be visible ingame?
I’d like some help on this matter, as scripting has been resisting to me for a few years
Learning Lua based only on YouTube tutorials or documentation is pretty difficult, yeah. I’ve had this issue for a while but have found some ways that made scripting a little easier or where I had more support.
Firstly, joining some Roblox Developer Discord servers helps A LOT. There you can communicate with tons of developers and ask for help with certain scripts, or how you begin with it.
The most straightforward option is just taking Lua Learning Courses online or In-Person. Some courses online actually are very helpful as they tie things into games that range from easy to difficult. That’s one of the most productive things that’s helped me, since they actually teach you and everything. Most coding programs online have professional devs to help you.
Another option is to study scripts that others have made and try to come up with reasons for why the code runs the way it does and the meaning behind the functions. I did that when I started, usually with easy scripts first and then studying longer ones. If I didn’t know something I’d first look at documentation or ask for help. Looking at other games and how they apply concepts can help you understand a little more.
For me, documentation sometimes only helps if I need to learn something little, not a full on lesson or concept. Of course looking here is always helpful and people might have the same issue as you, however it’s better to learn for yourself first. All of this has helped me learn without only basing my coding knowledge after Tutorials found online by others. Hopefully some of these tips can solve your issue and help you learn some more if you haven’t already tried these methods!
Don’t listen to people yappin’ about going to documentations, although useful, and asking people to teach you. It’s better to make a game that you may like to see in reality, then as you make the game, you use current knowledge of scripting and if you are ever stuck on something then look it up and you would correct your mistake and you know in the future that’s gonna break your code. So basically, as your making in the game your kind of experiencing trial and error, you attempt to do something with your knowledge and if it doesn’t work try a different way and see if that works. That is the best way to learn scripting, cause you are building up the knowledge of coding.
Yeah of course, I learnt all of my devving skills based on determination and wanting to get an end result. But my question was more like “where do I start?”
Because even if I read the entire roblox documentation up and down right and left, not even in 1000 years I could make a game like Jailbreak or Adopt Me
As you stated that YT tutorials teaches you the basics like changing materials, and colors of bricks. Although, this doesn’t seem all that useful, you take what you learn, and apply it somewhere else, it’s not specifically used for that thing. As an example, let say you do make something turn visible to invisible, you can take that info, and make a spawner. Yes, the document isn’t that helpful, but it can be. I personally, barely use the roblox document because it doesn’t help that much. They teach you the basics, and it’s your job to apply them, you mash up all the info you know, and make something. Well, that’s how I learnt by YouTube.
Probably just think of a simple game idea, use the dev forum to ask how to create stuff in the game, for example if you wanted to create an obby, search how to create a kill brick, or moving parts, then when you wanna create a more advanced game, repeat.
In all fairness, some people simply aren’t cut for the job of developing; specifically scripting. The basics teach you around studio and no logic quite yet; in more advanced later scripting videos you learn everything else, and from then on it’s purely experience.
Videos that aren’t geared directly at teaching you to learn programming are generally a terrible way to learn to program. A lot of them just have you copy some code and get a nice result that makes people feel good while in reality they’ve learned exactly nothing.
I would highly recommend taking a programming class if you’re in a school that offers them. The language doesn’t really need to be Lua/Luau either, learning a second/additional language is usually not the bottleneck. If you don’t have access to a programming class, I’d recommend maybe taking a free online one. (You might even find one Lua focused!)
It’s really hard to really know how to program without the fundamentals, like datatypes, logic statements, yielding, events, etc. YouTube videos outside of programming courses generally jump between topics (if they even cover any thing at all) and use programming that someone learning doesn’t understand.
Once you understand programming you can just look at a piece of code in virtually any language (that’s of a higher or equivalent level to the one you know) and understand what it does, how to modify it, and understand how the syntax for that language works. You can also understand documentation, which means you can write code to do basically anything (Roblox, Unity, data science libraries, computer vision libraries, etc).
Learn something new. Practice with it. Find a way to combine what you learned with what you already know. Think of something else you want. If you don’t know how to make it, repeat from step one. If you do know how to make it, repeat from step two.
There wasn’t a “How to make Jailbreak” tutorial before the game came out, those people had to learn all the things that made it possible and put them together. It’s about putting little things together to make something bigger.