I think it’s worth pointing out why attributes aren’t optimal because they get replicated to all clients and hence OP is just wasting resources doing that when no client really need to know whether the train is coupled or not. Btw good call, I didn’t catch that.
1 Like
I’ve read it.
How could I save the newCar table for later?
Do I have another table for Vehicles and then add the newCar table into that or can I find the newCar table from the metatable that it saves to?
I want to be able to find it like Vehicles[VehicleModel] and then be able to change things from that. I would like to create the class for the vehicle when the vehicle is spawned not when the player enters the seat.
I’ve probably made this reply very confusing but let me know if you need me to add more details for what I mean!
The attributes there because the server needs to know weather the couplers are already coupled or not so it doesn’t couple again.
Yes, the key point being server, the clients have no business in knowing about it but using attributes replicates the state to every client, since the train will be parented to workspace. Attributes aren’t as bad as ValueBases as @ValtryekRBLX pointed out, but there really isn’t a reason to use it here as you can just create a property called IsCoupled which will reflect the state
1 Like
Ok.
This train system is really just one I’m remastering from my original one… my original one was probably a bit silly the way I did it though lol.
Would you suggest using the meta tables way though or would you suggest a different way?
How would I get a reference to the newCar table?
Do I save the newCar table to a normal table or can I find it from using metatable?
And what is the index of the metatable its in?
So basically how to find the newCar table from the trains Model?
Modules save their state so you can just store all the classes in a local dictionary and have a static function called Get which returns the class with corresponding model.
What do you mean by that? That confused me.
local TrainMap = {}
local Train = {}
Train.__index = Train
function Train.new(model)
local self = setmetatable({...}, Train)
TrainMap[model] = self
return self
end
function Train.Get(model)
return TrainMap[model]
endThe … was underlined red inside of roblox studio. What do I change?
P.s would using metatables be the best way to code the vehicle system?
Send screenshot, also
It’s all personal preference
Would you say its the most optimized way? My personal preference is more what other people would suggest for me to do.
Heres the screenshot.
Hovering over the … says cannot use “…” outside of a vararg function
I’ve managed to fix it.
Here’s the code
–Module
local TrainMap = {}
local Train = {}
Train.__index = Train
function Train.new(model)
local self = setmetatable({}, Train)
TrainMap[model] = self
self.Thing = "OOF"
return self
end
function Train:Get(Model)
print(#TrainMap)
if not TrainMap[Model] then
print("New")
return Train.new(Model)
elseif TrainMap[Model] then
print("Find")
return TrainMap[Model]
end
end
return Train
–Server script
local Module = require(script.ModuleScript)
--print(Module.new("123").Thing)
print(Module:Get("123").Thing)
Module:Get("123").Thing = "Lol"
print(Module:Get("123").Thing)
print(Module:Get("123").Thing)
Module:Get("123").Thing = "Lol"
print(Module:Get("123").Thing)
The server script just shows how I call it and its just firing random things to test and it works ok. Would using metatables be the most performant way to create a vehicle system or another way?
mb I shud have left it as blank but the … was just a placeholder for the properties of the class.
I would use OOP because I’m more familiar with it and tbh it’s pretty good way to go about this. As for optimization, I don’t recall OOP having any performance overhead and I have seen many top devs use the OOP pattern so it should be just fine. But just like I said before, don’t sacrifice readability over optimization in such cases. Using OOP or generic tables here would essentially just harbor the same results with little difference in performance which half of the time won’t even be noticeable
I’ve also seen a lot of developers use Metatables but I’ve never really used Metatables myself so its kind of new to be knowing normal tables and reading other developers code really does help you learn it though!
To be honest, I don’t really have a problem reading the code. I know the code I’ve provided probably isn’t the cleanest but I normally test things first before I go make it better to read because its a waste of time if it doesn’t work.
Just a question, when I used normal tables in the first code I’ve provided what would the difference be between that and using metatables?
Absolutely, I have done that myself countless times. However one thing to note is that most of the devs use metatable primarily for OOP but not usually for other hacky functionalities which is possible with it (except for a few features like lazy loading).
There is essentially no difference, except that you are creating properties + functions every time you create a new object (train) whereas in OOP you only create the properties (and sometimes call some function inside .new for initializing and such).
Also, if you are interested, another pattern might be the component/binder pattern. It’s not necessarily ECS, more like a mix of OOP and CollectionService tags to define behaviour for components. There are various modules which provide this behaviour namely Binder by Quenty and Component by sleitnick. Basically you tag one of your train models “Train” and the class would automatically instantiate a Train component/class for the model.
To be honest, its probably easier just to do it the way I sent in the most recent code. Probably easier to just forget about performance all together but then that could make the game annoying for people to play so I won’t do that.
As I said multiple times, the performance boosts earned are so small that players won’t even notice it. Rather than overoptimizing your code, you should instead try to optimize parts of your game which when optimized will give noticeable performance boosts such as physics, animation and so on.
Ok, alright thank you for your time today!
