How to make multiple functions run multiple times at once

[buoyant pumice]

I have a tower defence game in the making, and my issue is that when i place multiple towers they interfere with each other in the tower.CheckAttack and tower.Attack loop and in the functions received by remote events.

Above is all server side
Below is all client side

[dawn halo]

define "they interfere with each other"

[buoyant pumice]

When i place one tower and let an enemy go into range, the entire script works perfectly find. If i add a second tower somewhere else, the shooting sfx will play for other towers, the attack beams will be all over the place and be activated when they shouldnt. etc

this is as intended

[eager spruce]

task.spawn

[dawn halo]

how do u create new tower objects?

make sure you are creating new tower objects and not referencing the same one

[buoyant pumice]

this one is infinitely playing an sfx sound when it shouldnt

[buoyant pumice]

wait let me get the script for that

[dawn halo]

btw

[buoyant pumice]

i dont have that key on my kb can you send it me for copypaste

[dawn halo]

if you dont have ` in your keyboard hold alt+9+6 in that order

[buoyant pumice]

uhhhh

i got an error for trying to send it as text 😭

ill seperate it into 2 parts

[dawn halo]

POV: you dont have nitro

[buoyant pumice]

-- CREATES TABLE
local tower = {}

local isAllowedSpawn = false

-- CREATES NEW TOWER FOR PLACEMENT AND UPGRADES
function tower.Spawn(player, name, cframe, previous, isUpgrade)
    local map = workspace.Map1
    
    local allowedSpawn = isUpgrade
    if isUpgrade then
        isAllowedSpawn = true
    elseif not isUpgrade then
        local allowedSpawn = tower.CheckSpawn(player, name)
        local map = workspace.Map1
        if allowedSpawn    then
            isAllowedSpawn = true
        end
    end
    
    if isAllowedSpawn then
        isAllowedSpawn = false
        
        local newTower
        local oldMode = nil
        if previous and previous.Config.Upgrade.Value ~= nil then
            newTower = previous.Config.Upgrade.Value:Clone()
            if previous.Config.TotalCost then
                newTower.Config.TotalCost.Value = previous.Config.TotalCost.Value + newTower.Config.Price.Value
            end
            oldMode = previous.Config.TargetMode.Value
            stopAttack = true
            stopAttackEvent:Fire(newTower)
            task.wait(0.1)
            previous:Destroy()
            
        else
            newTower = ReplicatedStorage.Towers[name]:Clone()
            local totalCost = newTower.Config.TotalCost
            totalCost.Value = newTower.Config.Price.Value
            player.Towers.PlacedTowers.Value += 1
        end

why is it so messed up

its fine im sure its good

[dawn halo]

at this point just send a .txt file with the code XD

[buoyant pumice]

can i do that?

oh damn

[dawn halo]

what is a .txt file going to do to my computer?

[buoyant pumice]

thats how thats done

it only did the bottom half

BRUHH

1 sec

[dawn halo]

pro tip, press ctrl+a to select the entire text

and ctrl+c to copy it

[dawn halo]

and ctrl+v to paste it

[buoyant pumice]

i know these im not stupid

but ctrl a will give you 1000 lines of code

even after looking myself i cant see the problem in the code at all

[finite dust]

task.spawn / coroutine.wrap

i would use task.spawn

it’s easy

also if you’re going to add task.wait() inside that task.spawn

just use task.delay

[buoyant pumice]

iv heard of task.delay what does it do

[finite dust]

it’s like

task.delay(3, function()
print(“hey”)
end)

ts plays after 3 second

and it wont stop your function

it will go ahead

[buoyant pumice]

and for task.spawn, would i do it like "task.spawn(tower.CheckAttack)(newTower, player)

[finite dust]

nah

task.spawn(function()
— your script here
end)

this

do it

bye

ima go sleep

[buoyant pumice]

ill try it, cheers

@dawn halo you think this wil work?

[dawn halo]

i dont think the issue has anything to do with the task scheduler

[buoyant pumice]

what do you think it is

[dawn halo]

in my opinion it has to with something that should be unique to each tower but instead is a reference to the same object for every tower

but with this little code i cant really proove or deny it xd

[buoyant pumice]

how would i go around making them fully unique to each other

[dawn halo]

i dont really know what is not being unique, i know the newTower thingy is unique because its a roblox instance, the most sus thing is that tower.function() object

[gloomy bone]

** You are now Level 12! **

[dawn halo]

the biggest suspect is that entire module

[buoyant pumice]

whats up with it?

wait

this might help

all the towers attacked individually and worked until i changed something in these 2 blocks of code:

[verbal steeple]

yall going in loops here

[buoyant pumice]

wdym?

[verbal steeple]

show the firing side of this event

[buoyant pumice]

i already did

theres 2 in there

[verbal steeple]

yep this one

[buoyant pumice]

animateTowerEvent:FireAllClients(newTower, "Attack", target)

[verbal steeple]

i assume CheckAttack is called for every tower

[buoyant pumice]

once a tower is added to the game, it calls it

[verbal steeple]

does the enemy take bonus damage if you have a tower very far away?

[buoyant pumice]

let me check

no

[verbal steeple]

if it does then it is in fact attacking and your range check is broken

[buoyant pumice]

it doesnt take bonus damage, but it does play the attack sfx too many times and doesnt remove them when theres more than 1 tower

[verbal steeple]

so break down the problem, couple of things you can know with this

first off, we know the remote is firing multiple times. I assume this is the only way for the effects to fire like that. you can add a print in there to confirm

[verbal steeple]

second off, if the sound effect is stacking many times, then we can also infer you are creating multiple connections to something either on the firing side or on the receiving side (e.g tower is calling CheckAttack twice in one frame when it should only be once)

[buoyant pumice]

when there is 1 tower, all works perfect, when there are 2 towers, no matter how far apart or where they are or what they see, the tower that is attacking and the tower that isnt will both play attacking sfx and not remove them after. Then sometimes the beams also bug out

[buoyant pumice]

yes, but the sound is also playing from both towers when 1 is attacking

[verbal steeple]

i suspect you are cloning scripts. where is this script located

[verbal steeple]

and where is this one

[buoyant pumice]

So the script with the tower.CheckAttack and tower.Attack are both in my Tower Module script located in serverscriptservice under the Main script

the script that is recieving the event is my animations local script, located in starterPlayer under starterplayerscripts

[verbal steeple]

doesn't seem like any duplicates there so far

[buoyant pumice]

the issue has to be on the animation side, because the only problems im having are with the animations

[verbal steeple]

at this point it'd be faster to just test and debug. add some prints to the receiver here and see how many times it actually fires. that should tell a lot.

[buoyant pumice]

iv tried this already, thats how i got here

[verbal steeple]

and how many times does it fire

[buoyant pumice]

well

when i place a tower it does this

it will check for a target every 0.1s in the while loop in checkattack

then when an enemy comes into contact

it will spam this

every hit

[verbal steeple]

slow down

[buoyant pumice]

this is for 1 tower

and 2 towers:

[verbal steeple]

you have too many prints here i think, i dont know what the others are, only 'Found Target in Animation'

[buoyant pumice]

okay let me remove some

[verbal steeple]

the only prints you need are where the sound:play is, at the top, before any conditions

like if target then print() is not helpful

[buoyant pumice]

okay 1 sec

[gloomy bone]

** You are now Level 7! **

[verbal steeple]

although i must say, if this is only a single connection, pawnSoundIsPlaying is a debounce that is shared between all towers, but it shouldn't play the sound twice, it should just destroy them

[verbal steeple]

ya you only need that one print, disable the others and try again

maybe add teh tower to it

print("Sound is playing", tower)

[buoyant pumice]

ohhh

wait

im stupid

wrong function

1 sec

taht was checking for queen attack not pawn

okay

with 1 tower:

[dawn halo]

you should also print the tower, use Tower:GetDebugId()

[buoyant pumice]

with 2 tower:

[dawn halo]

to see if it is one or both

[buoyant pumice]

seems like with 1 tower it is recognising that the sound is playing

but with 2 its not

[verbal steeple]

that works too

[verbal steeple]

add the identifier to this so we can see which tower it is playing the sound for

[buoyant pumice]

okay 1 sec

do i do them seperate?

uhhhh

i need a plugin for this?

[verbal steeple]

lol

i didnt think that was accessible

[dawn halo]

right i forgor, that is only for plugins T_T

[verbal steeple]

just use tower:GetFullName()

and hopefully the 2 towers have different names

lol

[buoyant pumice]

with 2 towers:

[verbal steeple]

they probably have the same name lol

when you create the tower just give it a number on the end

like math.random(1,65535)

tower.Name = tower.Name .. math.random(etc

[buoyant pumice]

but that has a chance to give them the same identifier

[verbal steeple]

so use time() instead idk lol

it's unlikely enough to not matter

this is debug only

[buoyant pumice]

ill do math.rand for now and then sort it later

so just before i clone it?

no after.

😭

[verbal steeple]

after you clone it change the clone.Name bruh

[buoyant pumice]

bro i had a blonde moment

chill

[verbal steeple]

i assume nothing else relies on tower.Name

if you do, then give it an attribute with the id

[buoyant pumice]

like this

[verbal steeple]

ya good enough just remember to remove it later. now run test

hopefully only one tower shows up

if both show up then we have identified the problem

[buoyant pumice]

well we were wrong

let me print the newtowers name right after i give it the name

WAIITTTT

[verbal steeple]

where's the number wot

[buoyant pumice]

i may have found the problem with the creation

[verbal steeple]

why is it the same tower that's strange

[verbal steeple]

ya

you're welcome

[buoyant pumice]

it wasnt giving it a new id because it was creating the tower with the new id if its an upgrade

the whole issue isnt solved

😭

[verbal steeple]

aw

[buoyant pumice]

okay so lets test

yes to unique identifies

no to fixingthe issue

[verbal steeple]

no dude that wasn't to fix it, that was just to help identify the problem

[buoyant pumice]

i know just making sure i relay all information

[verbal steeple]

if the towers have the same name in the same folder we can't tell if it's both towers playing the sound here or just one

[buoyant pumice]

but i want both to play the sound, but only when that specific tower attacks

instead of only when 1 attacks

[verbal steeple]

just run the test with one tower attacking and the other not.

y'know, your fail condition at the moment

[buoyant pumice]

1 tower, works as expected

2 tower, my ears are hurting

[verbal steeple]

show the output..

[buoyant pumice]

oh shit my bad

[verbal steeple]

don't need a blow-by-blow

[buoyant pumice]

1 tower

2 tower

[verbal steeple]

seems like it's not coming from the attack then

[buoyant pumice]

should i print tower name before every print?

maybe clear the air a bit

[verbal steeple]

yes

you can include it in the print

like print(a,b) use a comma, not ..

print(tower.Name,"did a thing")

[buoyant pumice]

ah okay

my bad im used to html 😭

[verbal steeple]

ya i noticed you're working with things you dont understand

[buoyant pumice]

my ui is sexy tho

okay let me run test

they are both checking for target which is good

and the right one found the target, but the other pawn is finding the target in animation

when its not attacking

so its happening after the event?

[verbal steeple]

no its happening somewhere else

[buoyant pumice]

huh?

explain

[verbal steeple]

well there's no sound coming from that specific sound:Play() because you have a print right next to it

so maybe it's coming from a different one

ctrl+shift+f for :Play() and check all the sound ones

imo

like tbh at this point i would have a look at the project but you aren't paying me so

[verbal steeple]

and i doubt you can afford to hire anyone

[buoyant pumice]

this one but this is on the queen

[verbal steeple]

yep add a print with the name next to every single one

[buoyant pumice]

which only fires if tower is a queen

okay

theres 2

[verbal steeple]

that's the only 2 :Play in the whole codebase?

[buoyant pumice]

oh no, just in the animations

let me keep looking

[verbal steeple]

ctrl+shift+f

find all

[buoyant pumice]

should i do it for sounds that arnt even related to that one?

like the placing sound

in an entirely untouched piece of code for this

[verbal steeple]

honestly i'd only need about 5 minutes with your project and this would probably be over

[buoyant pumice]

😭

wanna jump in?

[verbal steeple]

not really

[buoyant pumice]

fair play

[verbal steeple]

besides i'd probably lock you out of your own project because age checks

[buoyant pumice]

why, your acc underage or something?

[verbal steeple]

no, yours is

[buoyant pumice]

???

[verbal steeple]

anyway best advice i can give you is just keep debugging

keep tracing code

[buoyant pumice]

bro im in my 30s 😭

[verbal steeple]

add prints next to sound:play()

[buoyant pumice]

alright

[verbal steeple]

it's a fairly safe assumption 90% of the time

being roblox and all

[buoyant pumice]

fair play

yes so

i did it

[verbal steeple]

but ya debugging is a whole entire skill set

[buoyant pumice]

and the only sound plays related to it are in animations

[verbal steeple]

writing code is more reading code than writing it.

[buoyant pumice]

other than that there are 3 more that look for audio.ErrorSound

completely unrelated

so its just the 2 :Play's

[verbal steeple]

another thing you can do as part of debugging is have a look through the explorer while the game is running to make sure everything checks out

[buoyant pumice]

true

[verbal steeple]

like honestly if the :play's are only running once as they should then i'm not sure where else it is coming from, short of you missed one, or you're cloning the sound while it's playing

[buoyant pumice]

anyways with the new prints its still only playing the pawnsound

[verbal steeple]

coz sounds don't magically autostart

and don't be afraid to write code just to test your other code

like for example generating a random number onto the tower's name just to distinguish which tower it was that was playing the sound

keep going with things like that

[buoyant pumice]

the pawn thats attacking:

[verbal steeple]

don't just guess or assume

[buoyant pumice]

the pawn tahts not attacking:

[verbal steeple]

well there's your answer

[buoyant pumice]

but it only clones too many when 2 towers

[verbal steeple]

your assumption of the problem was wrong

your code isn't running on both towers, it's just one

and that was shown earlier with the prints

[buoyant pumice]

ahh okay

so how do i go around making it run on both

im so shit with client stuff

[verbal steeple]

if the second pawn was attacking, there'd be sounds in there.

[buoyant pumice]

i see

so why is it running on both?

isnt*

[verbal steeple]

but ya just keep coming up with things to test, and then actually test it.

[buoyant pumice]

im confused

[verbal steeple]

there's also this fact...

the second tower is probably cancelling out the debounce only for the first tower to immediately start it again

like i said you can't just guess dude

[buoyant pumice]

ahhh

[verbal steeple]

you have to prove literally everything

[buoyant pumice]

im aware

[verbal steeple]

this is an educated guess but it's still a guess

[buoyant pumice]

so how do we check if thats what is actually happening

[verbal steeple]

just like you did before

add debug code to your code to prove things

prints go a long way

[verbal steeple]

e.g looks like the sound is playing every half second

mind you, i have no idea what this sound is, how long it is, or anything else like that

[buoyant pumice]

its like 4 seconds long, and its looped

its an electric sound

[verbal steeple]

well there you go

had i know that, this would've been easier

so you've got the tower repeatedly playing the sound while it's already playing

[buoyant pumice]

but the sound needs to be looped, thats how the effect works

[verbal steeple]

every 0.5 seconds by the look of it

now you know what's happening, you need to figure out why

my guess is bad debounce, you don't track the state of the sound properly (or at all)

but again thats just a guess you need to actually go in and prove it

ya believe it or not most problems i can't just glance at 1000 lines and go "yep there's the problem"

it takes a lot of time and effort to trace these issues, add prints to check everything, prove everything is or isn't working as expected.

sometimes this can take days, weeks even

[buoyant pumice]

never said you could

but its good to have a second opinion from someone who is more experienced when you are stuck

now im hella confused, how do you get multiple towers to know if a sound is playing for itself and not others

[dawn halo]

Pyro-Fire == best scripter ever

[verbal steeple]

turns out the shared reference was the debounce

i did spot that earlier but i couldn't confirm since the script might have been cloned per tower which would've made it not an issue

[buoyant pumice]

well i didnt know this was an option

bro im so lost

[stuck dock]

[buoyant pumice]

im using a bindable function to try and find out if the sound is playing, and i dont know how to get it to work

[verbal steeple]

you chose a tower defense game, you need to be able to work with stateful objects to make those

aka learn more OOP

[buoyant pumice]

iv tried, but i cant wrap my head around it

anyways, ignoring OOP, how do you clone a script per tower???

[verbal steeple]

lol if the sound is playing then it's a safe bet that the tower 1- has a sound object somewhere in it (probably wherever you cloned it to), and 2- that sound object .IsPlaying==true

that's a hint on how to do this the beginner naive way

the big brain method is to use proper object patterns

like if not towerObject:IsSoundPlaying() then towerObject:PlaySound() end etc you can do all sorts

but you don't have that, you only have the instance

[verbal steeple]

which is fine for beginner, but if you're going to write on that level you should learn to be more familiar with your instance hierarchy and reading it: this will work, it's not a great solution, oop is better for the game you're making, but you can still make a tower defense game relying exclusively on the instance tree instead of proper code objects

since the instance tree is a viable substitute for proper code objects

[buoyant pumice]

Whats the best way to learn OOP in your opinion, and also would you be able to give me a starting walkthrough, i watched like 14 different videos and literally get lost at meta tables

[verbal steeple]

just think of the instance tree as if it were an object

[buoyant pumice]

whats an instance tree?

[verbal steeple]

and the rest falls into place pretty much automatic

[verbal steeple]

root (model/folder/any instance)
|- head
|- rootpart
|- sound
|- body
|- humanoid
|- animator
etc

[dawn halo]

making things typesafe in a normal language:
making things typesafe in luau:

[verbal steeple]

don't get me started on the typesolver

[buoyant pumice]

im still lost

[verbal steeple]

the way folders are arranged in the explorer

this has a few names, roblox calls it the explorer, unity calls it the hierarchy. i think unity has a better name for it, but they're both referring to the instance tree

[buoyant pumice]

i undeerstand

[verbal steeple]

because it's structured like a tree

there are branches that branch into more branches and leaves at the end

all sorts of tree-like language applies, like a root, trunk, branch, leaf, etc

it's like your desktop and you have folders and those folders have more folders in them until there's files and whatever at the end

this can be arranged into a "tree-like structure", or just simply call it a tree

[buoyant pumice]

yes i understand that now

so how does this relate to OOP

[verbal steeple]

you can treat a root instance like an object, and all of its child parts as object properties

[buoyant pumice]

what is an object property

[verbal steeple]

anything that has a value

e.g attributes, intvalue etc

like object.MadeOutOfParts= { table_of_parts }

[buoyant pumice]

you mean like if i was to make a sword and the sword has values like "damage, durability"?

[verbal steeple]

sure, you could have an attribute for damage and durability, or you can write it in pure code like mySword = {} mySword.Damage=67 mySword.CharacterOwner = player.Character mySword.ToolInstance = player.Backpack:FindFirstChild("MySword") and so on

when people talk about OOP in roblox scripting, they're usually referring to the latter

but you can use the instance tree as a substitute

[buoyant pumice]

so can you give me an implimentation example?

[verbal steeple]

it's still, semantically speaking, an object

[buoyant pumice]

so i can get a better idea of it being used

[verbal steeple]

ya your towers are objects

so are the units on the path

[buoyant pumice]

ahhh

so for me i made a config folder in the objects that have "Price", "Damage", "Range," etc. Does that count as OOP?

[verbal steeple]

like the object has a target property, sound property, soundIsPlaying property etc. you could do all of that in pure code, or rely on the instance tree like does the sound instance exist, is the sound instance playing etc. same behavior. different technique to go about it

[gloomy bone]

** You are now Level 8! **

[verbal steeple]

yes exactly

you can do that either with instances like you do there

[buoyant pumice]

so OOP isnt defined to a table?

[verbal steeple]

or you can do it with pure code

[buoyant pumice]

ahhh so i am doing OOP slightly

understood

[verbal steeple]

no OOP is a concept

not a strict implementation

[buoyant pumice]

and when is the right time to implement

[verbal steeple]

it doesn't matter?

[buoyant pumice]

cause when i learnt about it online i saw it as this

they made it seem like all games were strictly ALL OBJECTS

and all code must be reusable

etc

[verbal steeple]

yeah i know some people make everything an object

it doesn't really matter

you can mix and match as you please

[buoyant pumice]

okay thats good

[verbal steeple]

in code, there is never one true correct way to do things

[buoyant pumice]

and what about metatables, because iv heard them ALOT when looking into OOP

[verbal steeple]

again, OOP is a concept not a specific technique. metatables are a useful tool in lua, and is a very good way of doing pure code objects, but the concept of an object doesn't change just because you used a particular technique or method to do it. a tower in your defense game is still a tower no matter how you implement it.

[buoyant pumice]

okay i understand, so why are metatables so discussed, what is the major benefit of them compared to traditional code

[verbal steeple]

anything that can be done with metatables can be done without them.

[buoyant pumice]

so why do people use them?

[verbal steeple]

(well.. almost anything, but let's not get bogged down on the nuanced details that don't matter 99% of the time)

[verbal steeple]

because it's a useful and convenient tool that has a lot of desirable properties

some people like em some don't, it doesn't matter

[buoyant pumice]

what are those convenient tools?

What makes them so good and useful

[verbal steeple]

i don't think that's relevant to this thread, i also dont want to spend the time writing it down, you're perfectly capable of googling it and learning about it. don't expect to get it in a day.

[buoyant pumice]

I understand, thanks for the help so far, i am gonna dig some research into this tho

[verbal steeple]

if you ever get stuck on something you can always open a new thread here #1020374354867007528
-# results may vary