[New Member] Scripting Questions

Hello!

This is my first topic regarding scripting.

Newly being promoted to member, I have questions about everyone’s start in scripting.

  • Where did you start learning how to script and how well did you progress as you kept practicing?
  • What is a good lesson in scripting to practice, that is used in nowadays games?
  • Is there any sort of educating site that helped your success in scripting?
  • I know some basics to scripting, but I want to kind of progress into the hard stuff slowly. Are there any suggestions in what topics I should look at?

Thanks!

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I learned scripting from AlvinBlox on you tube, all of his videos are easy to understand. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp1R0TBvgM7gj0rwTYULmSA I recommend watching his beginner series as that will help get you started.

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Thank you. Do you have any suggestions for advanced scripting?

Advanced is relative. I do not know exactly what you consider “advanced”. If you can help clarify what you mean by that it would be of much help.

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Practice, Watch Turorials, Try something new. Make and work on projects or your first game, start with basic scripting than work on more advanced stuff that you may not be completely certain on how to do.

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Sorry, I’ll try to elaborate. In my eyes as of right now being a basic scripter, every game on the front page of ROBLOX or that has been featured there once are games that surpass that advanced level. I find it hard to retain every bit of information in scripting so what I am asking is if there is some sort of in depth education being videos, websites and such in that sort.

I would recommend learning from Lua’s Programmning in Lua “series”. It covers everything from top to bottom. (not really top to bottom, but rather left to right)

If you literally want to learn top to bottom, I recommend the Lua 5.1 manual.

Lua 5.1 is the version of Lua that Roblox allows us developers to use to interact with its engine.

No One can learn to script overnight, Its practice that gets you better, there wont be any tutorial on how to make bloxburg in 8 hours. These games are not 1 single script but hundreds of scripts working together for a smooth experience. Learn one bit at a time and not the most advanced of thing immediately.

Thanks. I’ll surely look into that sometime.

Yes I understand and I’m not trying to rush anything, just for future reference I can look back onto this.

The best way to learn to code is through practice. That means think of things to make, and try to make them. You won’t get very far watching or reading tutorials alone, you have to create things yourself. Use the wiki and tutorials as references on your endeavors.

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The best way would probably be to dive headfirst into creating something, it doesn’t matter what you create, the more you apply what you learn the better you will get.

If you want to get to the front-page all you need is dedication and the willingness to learn and adapt to whatever problem is thrown your way.

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Programming is used in a vast amount of contexts. If you’re looking into object oriented programming (Lua, C++, Python), below are some topics which outline programming practices in some roblox context.

Topics

Basics (Fundamentals)

  • If statements
  • For Loops/ Break Statements
  • Variable types/ String manipulation techniques
  • Creating/ Calling functions/ Return Statements/ Function arguments

Moderate (Data structures)

  • Arrays/ Dictionaries (multi-dimensional arrays too)
  • Client-server communication, API usage
  • Remote events/ listeners and events/ Custom handler functions
  • Datastore implementation

Semi-Advanced

  • Coroutines/ threading
  • Using modules/ classes
  • Using algorithms and equations in the context of the program

Anyone feel free to add on to the topics I mentioned.

You might also find programming challenges on HackerRank useful for practicing. And I can’t recommend watching videos to learn how to script, its a skill best learned by experience. But keep developing, you’ll need to pick up new and higher level skills every time you attempt a project. It’s a long journey, so best enjoy it!

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The best way to learn code is to do practice on EVERYTHING! Roblox Developer Hub provides all of the things you can code in your game. It has documentation on everything and provides examples too. It even provides you basic examples on how to do GUIs, Gamepasses, etc. Coding Kingdoms also partnered with Roblox and provides in-depth coding tutorials for free.

So right now, I am practicing in studio lol. I am trying to make a little idea of a small bridge breaking and the player falls down into a hole. I got that all done except I want to clone a screengui with a black background so you cant see as your falling down the deep hole. I am having trouble cloning and setting the parent into startergui. Heres the script.

local partsnap = game.Workspace.Ahh
local black = game.ReplicatedStorage.ScreenGui:Clone()

local function dark()
	wait (0.8)
	game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage"):WaitForChild("ScreenGui"):Clone()
	black.Parent = game.StarterGui
end

local function snap()
script.Parent.Anchored = false
print (“Oh nu!”)
end

partsnap.Touched:Connect(snap,dark)

If your looking to learn ROBLOX Lua then I DON’T recommend you to do what @sjr04 said if your a complete beginner if you don’t know Lua or ROBLOX Lua just learn ROBLOX Lua first then if you want you can learn Lua with your own will.

I’m saying this because ROBLOX Lua and Lua ARE NOT the same and shouldn’t be treated the same this is because ROBLOX Lua is a modified verison of Lua and it looks completely different from what Lua actually looks like, if you learn the two at the same time then it’s gonna be hell trying to learn the two because they have their own APIs too.

I highly recommend that you start off small and just learn ROBLOX Lua if your looking to learn ROBLOX Lua if not then you can learn Lua but both will take a very long time to master for a beginner but if you already know Lua then ROBLOX Lua will be very easy for you to learn.

Summary:

You better off just starting small and learning ROBLOX Lua first if your looking to script in ROBLOX, I’m just giving you a very good advice.

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90%+ of the contents that I linked are applicable to Roblox. I personally suggest it as it introduces proper practices and terminology. What you call “Roblox Lua” is just Lua 5.1 but with dependencies. The only exception would be it mentioning the C API which is impossible to use on Roblox, and would indeed be

Other than that, 100% of programs for vanilla Lua compile in Roblox, and mostly vice-versa if we do not add Luau to the equation.

The basis of how the language works (types, metatables, etc) are all applicable in the context of Roblox Lua. Roblox might have additional APIs to interact with, but the syntax of the language is essentially the same (until Typed Lua releases, lol). The basic syntax and concepts of the language are much more important to learn than memorizing every function and library that it provides you with.

This isn’t really true, as the io and os libraries are stripped down significantly in Roblox. (I mean, I guess you could argue it’ll error in run-time and not during compilation, but that’s such a nitpick it doesn’t really matter.) Regardless, the syntax is the same and the same code should generally carry over with a few tweaks.

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@LucuIence I believe at least 50 other entire threads will suffice as information on “how to script”/ all related posts.

These contain a lot of talk about scripting, and address your questions, check it out.

Please use the search feature before making posts in the future, this question has been answered multiple times already.