Is it possible to return a value from a heartbeat?

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#1

For my game, I need to use a heartbeat to check when a block reaches a position and then return it. Should I just assign it to a variable or is it possible to return from a heartbeat?

#2

You should be able to return from any function. Just make sure you have a bool check/debounce to make sure that it doesn’t return more than you intend since it will be constantly running with the heartbeat event.

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#3

Unfortunately Heartbeat only returns connection not the returned value unless I’m stupid and not doing it right.

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#4

If you’re referring to the RunService event named Heartbeat, the only argument passed from that event is the amount of time since the previous heartbeat event. So if you are using a function bound to heartbeat to check the location of a part, you would have to use some extra variable to see when a desired condition is met.

Here is an example that forces the script to wait until a part is in a specific place:
(the actual return value of heartbeat doesn’t need to be used here.)

local part = workspace.Part
local runservice = game:GetService("RunService")

while (part.Position.X < 10) do
	runservice.Heartbeat:Wait()
end
print("the part's X position has surpassed 10")

If the script is controlling how the part moves, that is a case where you could use the value returned by the heartbeat event:

local part = workspace.Part
local speed = 1
local runservice = game:GetService("RunService")

while (part.Position.X < 10) do
	local dt = runservice.Heartbeat:Wait()
	part.Position = part.Position + Vector3.new(speed * dt, 0, 0)
end
print("the part's X position has surpassed 10")
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