I'm a very basic beginner scripter and am looking for help

[faint current]

Hello my name is T, and have been scripting for about 1 - 2 weeks and am having a hard time with certain thing's. Yes, their are videos on the internet as well as creator hub forums, but I have a very hard time understanding the actual mechanic of what certain things do and how to actually apply them. My first goal is to learn almost everything about scripting, then learn anything that requires scripting, then my end goal that I have set for myself is a fighting game. Not just any fighting game but something that is like DeepWoken with a reworked and smoother combat system, better VFX, and no perma-death, while keeping the feeling of always having to watch your back so you don't get void-walked, and keeping the large map design it has but with better graphics. My DM's are open so please feel free to message me. What I am asking is to allow me, a basic scripter, join some of the DEV's in this community in making games, as well as teaching me while on the job. I'm almost always active for at least 10+ hours a day, and have dedication to wanting to learn, I am also central time.

[gleaming niche]

** You are now Level 1! **

[violet loom]

can pretty much guarantee you won't be able to make "something that is like DeepWoken with .. smoother combat, better VFX, .. better graphics" on 1-2 weeks experience and being "taught while on the job". no one is going to dm you, and you certainly aren't going to get free access to people's high level projects just for the sake of "teaching you while on the ""job""".

If you are truly as dedicated as you say, then dedicate yourself: https://create.roblox.com/docs/tutorials/fundamentals/coding-1/coding-fundamentals read every page in this series, then read every other page in the docs: https://create.roblox.com/docs/en-us/experiences + https://create.roblox.com/docs/reference/engine don't expect to master this in a matter of weeks. it takes months, often years, to achieve mastery.

[lunar fern]

he did say his end goal was to be able to make smt like that, not with his 1-2 weeks experience

but i also have a question

apart from videos and the forum that roblox offers how else would you learn? ive heard alot of people create stuff like basic systems and go from there to smt bigger like a simulator but this still seems very hard for me atleast for someone whos also started scripting 1-2 weeks ago.
would you recommend any other things apart from this or is this basically where u have to learn it?

[violet loom]

making stuff is the way to go, it forces you to learn stuff and actually use it, that's how you improve.
if you can't make a +1jump/sec game, you aren't making the next grow a garden or tsb clone, so be realistic with your expectations, this stuff is very time consuming.

when you reach a certain point of proficiency, tutorials are not to get copy+paste code, they're to get an idea of the techniques and design patterns that go into making a thing work, that's what tutorials are good for. you then take the specific functions and whatnot being used and look them up in the docs. if you are trying to write code and don't have the docs open, you're doing something wrong - even if you've memorized the entire thing somehow, things change, stuff gets added and removed, always have the docs open. not using the docs constantly is probably the biggest mistake you can make. even if you think you already know how something works, there are often little details that you may have missed. you never know what you'll find in there.

the next best thing to the docs and tutorials is getting your hands on other people's code and projects and reading through how they work and are set up, or even re-writing it to work a different way in your own code style, adding to them etc, that'll get you practice too. stuff like maid, scriptsignal, profileservice etc are good places to start for that. don't just blindly use those modules and projects, read their code too 👍 e.g you could learn a lot from trying to understand how these are made, it's all there if you're willing to put in the work for it since no one can do it for you: https://create.roblox.com/docs/resources/plant-reference-project https://devforum.roblox.com/t/simulator-generator-plugin/2766801

and one more thing to note, don't be afraid of making bad code. your first attempts at something are always going to suck. working is always more important than efficient/performant. you can always iterate later, or put simply; you always do it better the second time. and don't worry about it, most people with skills worth their salt have attempted and made copies of things, and failed miserably, more times than the beginner has tried, so perserverence is important too. hope that helps 👍

[lunar fern]

thanks alot for all the help and the time you put into that paragraph, you dont understand how much this helps for a person whos passionate about what they want to do. but apart from everything here when do you think AI such as gpt should be a resort to help?
the AI assistant in the studio is decent i suppose, it explains the code somewhat thoroughly and GPT also does that but in a more of a dumber way?

and also, when starting projects where do i start because this is a thing ive been stuck on for a while, like is there a part where most people start on such as modelling the map or making the basic scripts first then modelling the map?

because i know what i want to make just not where to start

one thing i know i have to work on tho is how to use the explorer and where im going to make the stuff (the code etc) which might help with starting stuff aswell

what do you think?

[violet loom]

ai is almost on-par with tutorials. generally it's only good for things you already understand, but you can get similar direction from it as you would from a tutorial - use it to get searchable keywords, not to do it for you, same as a tutorial.

[violet loom]

that's what the plant project and the simulator generator is good for, took me a while to figure out how to structure everything reasonably. do keep in mind, all of those folders like replicatedfirst and startergui and whatnot have a docs entry, you'd be surprised what they can do https://create.roblox.com/docs/reference/engine/classes/StarterGui https://create.roblox.com/docs/reference/engine/classes/ReplicatedFirst

they only things i've found that are not in the docs is the roblox scripts like PlayerModule and the Animate script (in characters) which is a bit annoying but you can just read through those scripts to learn what they do and how they work.

[violet loom]

imo generally start with greyboxing https://create.roblox.com/docs/tutorials/curriculums/environmental-art/greybox-your-environment or making rough outlines. an artist doesn't start with coloring in, they start with very rough sketches to build from.

in fact, sketching is a useful tool too and can help you plan things out, particularly when you're trying to design a ui try drawing it in ms paint first.

[lunar fern]

you dont understand how much this actually helps but ill tell you that it HELPS ALOT with all this information i can look over, ill defo look this over with my friend or alone because me and him (the tond guy) have been wanting to create a simulator so we can learn stuff we encounter that we cant solve which will just generally improve of how we would put stuff together later on in the future when coding

i have alot to learn over all of this you sent so thank you so much now i actually have something to do 😭

because for me it was starting to get boring because i didnt know where to go or start

but this motivates me ALOT

[violet loom]

start with things that vaguely resemble what you want, like for scripts i tend to make a lot of empty modulescripts just to see how it would look, plan out folders, and then 90% of them get deleted because i didn't like how it was going.

tho my first game had like 100 regular scripts coz i just wanted to get it done, which can work for a first iteration, so you have an idea of the small stuff you want. i.e datastores and leaderstats is a very obvious place to start - savedata.

ui is good too

go for functional, not fancy.

i have the luxury of going for fancy these days because i have already done all the work making stuff functional.

keep calm and make bad code, coz eventually you'll start making good code 🙂

[lunar fern]

oh ill defo go for functional and if the game is smt i really like or i like how it ended up i might make it more fancy in the future but that will be depending on what happens

[gleaming niche]

** You are now Level 2! **

[lunar fern]

thanks alot again for everything and the time you put into helping me

[faint current]

Hey! Thank you so much for responding to my post and being brutally honest, again, I would like to take the time to appreciate your help in guiding me into the correct path and telling me what I should do. When I was writing the message I was not expecting to make that game with the 2 weeks of scripting knowledge I have, and meant it to come out as I want it to be a long term goal that would take me at least 2 - 3 years, the first year as a learning stage. Thank you again and will re-try with self teaching myself as well as watching the little amount of basic and advanced videos that BrawlDEV and TheDevKing have pushed out, I will be also looking over all the documentation I can find about scripting.