Which method would be most reliable for Touched?

[LocalWE (WilliApple)]

Hello! So @ForeverHD has this system called ZonePlus, and he uses an example for a Coin Spawner:

However, he is using it as an alternative to BasePart.Touched.

Also recently, I saw a DevForum post (Couldn’t find it) about developers using Raycasts instead of .Touched.

Should I use ZonePlus for an alternative to .Touched or no?
I use ZonePlus for projects that require zones.

If you have an answer, please let me know. Thanks! WE

[ForeverHD (Ben)]

I highlighted some of the caveats in a post from a few years back:

@ForeverHD

This kind of question has popped up a lot of times over the years so I thought I’d finally address it:

What’s the best method of retrieving players within an area/zone on the server?

Common solutions

• "Using touched/untouched events! " - This was actually how I handled zone checking when I first began developing. Not only do these work incorrectly (untouched often fires before touched, untouched sometimes never fires at all when leaving a part, etc) but they can cause lag when complex shapes enter them .
• "GetTouchingParts!" - The one major flaw with this function is it doesn’t work with uncancollided parts. If the player jumps off the part, they won’t be registered. buildthomas and evaera have created a solution for this if you’re interesting in exploring this path.
• "Magnitude checks!" - Sorry circle worshippers, but the square lovers are going to have something to say here.
• "Region3" (by itself) - Polgons hate him . Scientists at Cambridge university have found out… no.
• "Raycasting" (by itself) - Fire ray below player’s character, check if part below, bam! Polygons and circles are happy bunnies now. Shame the server isn’t . This method is fine for small servers, but fails to scale effectively for servers with increasingly larger amounts of players with recursive checks.

tldr: Touched and Untouched events are unreliable and can cause intense lag.

Hence I made ZonePlus to address them.

I’d just like to point out, it’s still okay to use .Touched events for scenarios where you disconnect the connection right away and don’t need to listen for TouchEnded. Take the Coin video above for example, I use .Touched to listen for a coin touch and destroy it right away if by a player (whilst using ZonePlus to handle the random spawning of the coins within that zone).

For everything else though it’s certainly worth considering resources such as ZonePlus and Swordphin’s Raycast Hitbox module until Roblox improve their events.