How pro Roblox developers learnt to script

learning scripting on roblox can be difficult so i decided to ask some of the best roblox developers out there what they did when learning to script and whether they have any tips for upcoming developers as well as this i recently did a survey where i asked a hundred developers about how they learned to script and i'll show you the results later on in the video firstly we're gonna hear from both bomber he's a former roblox intern and he was on the winning team of the rdc game jam 2020 like most people i got started by analyzing and tinkering with free models in open source code once i had a little bit of knowledge i would just try making things i'd pick something i wanted to make and get started and i got stuck a lot and when i did i would google the specific error message mathematical question api or whatever and by doing so i wouldn't just be blindly following a tutorial on how to do this how to do that i was learning the guts and what made these programs tick and understanding it so that i would be able to use that knowledge in other applications and as time went on i got stuck less and less often until i crossed the line of knowing how to script something i want to pick up on which bomb i spoke about is that it's important to learn the code instead of just learning how to make something since learning the code and understanding what elements of code do will allow you to create things yourself and will make you able to visualize projects in your head lots of people struggle to plan scripts out because they don't fully understand the code basics and they don't know where or why elements of code should be used picking apart free models and open source code helps you understand why a developer has chosen to use code in their scripts because you get to see the decisions that they've made and this is a great way to learn if you're ever struggling to understand where you'd use some code always ask for help whether it's on the forums or just by asking a friend because you'll be able to see a practical example of where this code is used so thanks to both bummer for sharing his story you can check out his game lua learning on roblox is a great resource for learning to script i'll leave a link in the description next we're going to hear from wesley he created roblox deathrun which has nearly 300 million visits and has been on roadblocks since 2008 he's also been a roblox intern so over to you when i started out on roblox the first game that i wanted to make was a hide-and-seek game i had played a few that were popular at the time and i thought it would be quite fun to make my own twist with my own map and be able to build it myself but at the time i had no clue how to script it so the first step that i did is i went out looking for things that i could learn from so i went to the three models i found mini game scripts hide and seek scripts anything that i thought would be remotely similar to what i was looking for now with this it was not my intention to just take a script and use that as it was i actually wanted to learn from it and essentially piece together my own game script from all of these other scripts that i found so the first step was to actually start reading through every single script line by line word by word make sure that i understand every single thing that it did and my number one resource for that was the roblox wiki which nowadays is the developer hub and essentially just looking for the api reference for every single thing that i did not understand it was a very tedious process but while doing that i actually got quite a good hang of what every single bit of code did and i think later that week i was able to take the best pieces of code from each script i understood how to tie up all the variables together and in the next week i had a working height in c game it wasn't perfect but it worked now the reason why i wanted to tell you that story is because i still use this same approach today whenever i want to do something that i haven't yet done or i want to work with a new api or want to do anything that i haven't had experience with the first thing that i do is i'll look up a practical example of someone else who has done it to see how they implemented it to see the types of decisions that they made when working with that feature or mechanic and with that approach you get a lot more experience and you really start to understand a feature or mechanic or a new api a lot better than if you were to just read through the api documentation by looking at what someone else has done with a piece of code or a certain mechanic you already get a good idea of how this can be used in a game or in a script or wherever you want to apply it and if you're watching alvin's videos you're already applying this on a daily basis because you're seeing someone else work with the code you're seeing someone else work with the feature and then after you've seen it you go and try it yourself already having seen what it can do just really sets you up for success and really helps you to understand how this can benefit your own work in your own games and at that point if you come across a piece of code or a snippet that you don't know how to work with you at least have a better idea of what you want that snippet to do so when you go look it up on the developer hub or the api reference it's a lot easier to understand it because you have a much bigger sense of context so that's how i started 10 years ago and it's still the same approach that i use today and i hope it also helps you to get a much better understanding of your code as you're writing it even when you're working with things you haven't worked with before thanks wesley you can find wesley on twitter at wesley rblx i'll leave a link in the description did you notice that he said he started making roblox games for fun back then there was no devx the only incentive was to earn roe bucks to buy hats and items and so most developers were just creating games as a hobby my advice to you would be to treat roblox development as a hobby as you get started and make small projects which you find fun because learning scripting shouldn't be a chore it should be something you enjoy okay so earlier in the video i told you about a survey that i did of 100 roblox developers so i asked them what they did when learning to script and what the best resource they used was 65 of the developers used free models to pick apart code inside and 58 actively made small projects to help build on their knowledge many of the respondents mentioned how they used tutorials and the roblox wiki which is now called the dev hub to gain initial basic knowledge and once they had that knowledge they began to start making basic games and they'd go online to ask for help whenever they got stuck a good quote which i'd like to mention is that your first game may be awful but you can't make your 50th game without making your first so as bad as that first one might be you can always improve on what you didn't do well at in the future finally let's hear from am also known as mister a former roblox accelerator intern and developer of my droplets she also recently began posting roblox development videos on her youtube channel and i'll leave a link to that in the description if you want to check it out when you have an idea that you want to script try to break it down into the smallest bits and pieces as much as you can and look up how to do those individual things if you're trying to do something math related try to figure out what exactly you're trying to calculate look up if anybody else has already solved it that helps for one thing if you want to make a menu look up how to manipulate a button on roblox look up how to use user input service that kind of stuff just look up small bits and pieces of the whole idea that you have and try to figure out how to do those pieces whether it's taking code from other people and putting into your game and manipulating it or starting completely from scratch and just looking up each individual piece that you want to make sometimes it can be hard because searching for keywords can be difficult but usually even today i just look up the exact thing that i want if nothing is coming up for this specific idea that you want you want to break it down further and simplify it uh so that you can explain it better to the internet eventually you will find some bit of code that in the end you can manipulate and figure out how it works and script exactly what you want and in that sense you're going to learn a lot from that experience and grow as a programmer so it's really helpful to just look up any kind of small ideas that you have sometimes people have like like if you've heard of uh inktober there's things for scriptures too i think it's called a coder advent calendar um you can look up that kind of stuff if you're lacking in ideas and kind of try your best to try these challenges and make these things that people want you to make that can also be pretty fun so that's another way for you to get small projects but really the goal here is just to apply what you learn as much as you can through different small projects that you create that's how i personally was able to get really far as a programmer because i had ideas that i actually wanted to implement and i was passionate about them and so it was really motivating for me to actually like see my work coming to life and happening so yeah just try to apply everything you can as often as you can another great reason why you should create smaller projects as an said is so you can see the progress that you're making which will help you to stay motivated in the long term personally when i was a beginner scripter i tried to make huge games which even now would take me months to do since they're so complex and it would just totally knock my motivation as i soon realized it was too much for me to do back then a big thanks to boat bomber wesley and mister for featuring in the video all of the links to their social channels will be in the description smash a like on the video as you're leaving if you enjoyed it subscribe for more content by clicking on my logo on the screen now anne's logo is also on screen so click that to subscribe to her and check out my old video where i played my old roblox games by clicking on the thumbnail thanks for watching i'll see you next time

Channel: AlvinBlox

Views: 790,746

Keywords: roblox, alvinblox, roblox scripting, how to script, how to script on roblox, roblox coding, roblox programming, roblox lua, boatbomber, myzta, wsly

Id: fivk8yp-VT4

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021