What are rays, and could I use them to spawn something in front of the player?

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#1

Hello, I was wondering, what are rays, because I was using the new AI code in roblox studio, and it showed something like this

local uis = game:GetService("UserInputService")
local player = game.Players.LocalPlayer

uis.InputBegan:Connect(function(input)
	--player can click on the mouse to shoot
	if input.UserInputType == Enum.UserInputType.MouseButton1 then
		local ray = workspace.CurrentCamera:ScreenPointToRay(input.Position.X, input.Position.Y)
		local part, position = workspace:FindPartOnRay(ray, player.Character)
		
		if part and part.Parent.Name == "Enemy" then
			part.Parent.Humanoid.Health -= 5
		end
	end	
end)

(code doesn’t work for me)

Just wondering what they are.

#2

A Ray putting it simply. Its just a point where a line will go on forever until it intersects an object, within a specified Direction.

They are useful for things like firing a weapon Weapons, or spawning in objects at a certain position, and about much more.

#3

So I could use it to spawn something infront of the player?

#4

Yea that’s possible with rays, albeit in your case I don’t think you’d need a ray. In the example you provided, what it should do is make a ray with the origin being the X and Y of the input position, then it tries to find a part touching that ray, ignoring your character. Probably doesn’t work because the ray is too small to detect anything

For your case of making something spawn in front of you, you don’t need to use any raycasting or anything, you only need to position the object at the player’s HumanoidRootPart’s CFrame multipled with a CFrame offset

object.CFrame = character.HumanoidRootPart.CFrame * CFrame.new(0, 0, -5)
-- CFrame.new(0, 0, -5) would position the object 5 studs in front of the player