Hello everyone, my name is ForgottenJokes and I recently decided to hop on the huge obstacle of scripting. I have got the basics down such as functions, variables, and loops but what I struggle the most with is what do I script to expand my learning.
I have come to a dead-end when I think of something new I can script that will both teach me new things, be simple enough for me to understand, and be interesting for me to script.
I would love some suggestions from the scripting community.
Also if you have any advice for beginner scripters that would also be helpful.
Start with a small project in mind. Accomplish that and along the way you will find lots to learn. Use google, the roblox api and YouTube videos to aid you in the direction of solving your problems.
Find a topic you’re passionate about. It can be anything small or big. Maybe you want to make a simple gun, or some cool wizard staff. Use that passion project as your motivation to learn. However, we all learn in different ways, but I suggest you explore this avenue. That’s what makes Roblox so great, you can make what you want into a digital reality.
As for advice regarding beginner scripters, this is a pretty frequent question and there are various tutorials on the forum, wiki, youtube, etc. that will provide great advice. It’s all just one search away.
Think of something simple to script. Now, take that vision of that thing and attempt to program it using what you’ve learnt. When you’re stuck on something, search it up on Google or any other search engine you use. Look on the Lua Reference Manual or, a more relevant solution, the Roblox API Reference Manual (Developer Hub). Once you’ve found something to solve your problem, continue on until you finally finish that thing.
This can help you understand what various keywords, functions, events or more can do and should build up your knowledge on programming, more specifically on how Lua works. That’s kind of how I self-taught myself.
All in all, just read up on the reference manuals for Roblox API and the Lua manual. However, you can also look on YouTube for tutorials on Roblox. I particularly don’t advise doing this, because most of the time YouTubers that do tutorials for scripting commonly spoon-feed you how to do a particular thing rather than explain how it all works.
Think of a cartoon or a game outside of Roblox and strive to recreate it on Roblox.
As difficult as it may seem, the more you will learn along the way. Let’s say something like, umm GTA 5 right?
So when you start you will not even have a clue where to begin. This will teach you the ability to picture your project, where to start and so on. Let’s say you decide to start simple, you decide to make a car dealership.
I am assuming that you cannot make cars since you’re starting out. Why not start now then? Ask yourself, ‘Why don’t I know that already!? It seems so easy and fun!’
You then search on google or devforum, how to make cars on roblox or related. When you finish your car system? Congrats! You learn about constraints and surface inputs! You learn about body positions and forces! You learn about UserInputService! Oh you just finished making a simple car!
You then want to make guns. Search how to make guns on Roblox or something of the like.When you finish your gun system? Congrats! You learnt about Network Ownership! You learnt about sounds and sound replication! You learnt about tools and ContextActionService or even the mouse object!
You get excited, you wanna make more, how about, your first MISSION! When you finish it, congrats man! You learnt about camera manipulation! You learnt about AI and Pathfinding! Yo learnt about leaderstats!
if you follow a trend similar to this, as you can see, you acquire infinite knowledge along the way.
And if you get stuck on anything, or even bored, do the fun aspect of it first then do that hard part later.
Honestly, this builds your attitude and problem solving in large projects!
Remember, not everything has to turn out as you expect it to.
You should make a game that you’re interested in making. While making the game, you should incorporate different programming methods. There are many ways to code, messy and clean, but most beginners do not grasp the concept of clean code.
If you have not made an game beforehand, I recommend starting your game with normal, procedural code. After you feel comfortable with coding, you should dive down more deeply into functions, tables and use these components in your game. Instead of repetitive code, use for loops. Instead of repeating multiple blocks of code, put it into a function and use it every time you run that code. Write code until you feel ready for more advanced challenges.
Lastly, you should learn about OOP. (Object-Oriented Programming) OOP is the core of advanced roblox games, thus you should learn them if you want to make professional games. Practice with OOP. Try to duplicate some popular games in roblox with OOP, (bee swarm simulator is a good example) or duplicate your existing games using OOP.
I’m gonna stop you right there. OOP is a paradigm with its use cases and it’s do not use cases. It’s not advanced alien tech all games should use, and the userbase should stop perpetuating this as if it is. It’s good to learn different paradigms but don’t go around trying to drag new users into exclusively using one when it may or may not be the most efficient for the problem you are trying to solve.
It really depends on the amount of time you have. When i was learning i always enjoyed going into games, finding something in a game and then making it my goal to recreate it. Lets look at a gun for example, guns involve things like raycasting or projectiles, animations, remote events and more. Just by making one object like that you learn everything involved and at the end you have something that you could potentially use in a game later on.
What about something like an arrest database? You can learn things like datastore, UI development, storing and updating data using remotes/bindable events.
Just look around and you’ll be hit with millions of different things to learn from, make and maybe even sell or use!
AlvinBlox isn’t the right person for this situation, no offence. He just lays the code and barely explains it to a beginner.
If you would like someone that explains the code beautifully, I recommend peasfactory.
However, @ForgottenJokes. If you want to achieve something, yet you don’t know how to, just use the Wikii for it. Extremely useful for situations like this.
I’d like to dispute that, I have a full 2019/2020 beginner series that goes in depth on everything beginners need to know and am constantly adding to it, some of the videos are long and in detail such as last week’s 53 minute Events tutorial. Loads of people, including many on this forum, have told me how useful and helpful they have been to them. I would encourage you and the OP to check them out as well as the other resources listed on this page.
I would also like to add to OP, that this question has been asked many times already. A simple devForum search could have yielded the same resources listed here.
Understandably so, I wasn’t trying to say your tutorials aren’t teaching people anything. However, I just feel like PeasFactory goes the extra mile to further explain his code. His videos are 5+ years old, so that could be a big part in it.
Furthermore, when I attempted to watch your series, I didn’t really get much out of them. (Could just be me). But, I didn’t want other people to also experience this and not understand anything, so I suggested PeasFactory to make things easier.
Hope you understand, you’re still an amazing content creator.
