ROBLOX Game Development

ROBLOX (not "Roblox", which is incorrect, although very common) is a gaming website where the games are created by the users. ROBLOX games are created with the ROBLOX Studio, ROBLOX's game creation tool, and use the ROBLOX engine. Although this tool makes it possible to do very complicated things, it is also easy to use for a beginner. The ROBLOX game engine uses the Lua programming language, which is simple to learn and to use, powerful and widely used.

This book's purpose is to teach readers to use the tools and the scripting API ROBLOX provides so they can be used for game creation. It may be read by anyone who wants to learn to develop games, or by any ROBLOX user who wishes to be able to do more with ROBLOX's game development platform.

Contents

This book is divided into the following chapters:

ROBLOX

This chapter introduces ROBLOX, gives some history, explains how the website works and describes the ROBLOX studio. Readers who have already used ROBLOX should still read this chapter, as it contains important information.

Scripting

This chapter introduces the reader to scripting and presents basic notions about scripting, while introducing Lua.

Expressions

This chapter describes the different types of values, the ways they can be manipulated and other things about expressions.

Statements

This chapter describes the different types of statements.

Functions

This chapter describes functions, which are one of the core concepts of programming.

Tables (incomplete)

This chapter describes tables, the only data structure in Lua, but also a very powerful one, since it can be used to create arrays, dictionaries, objects, libraries and many other structures.

Algorithms (incomplete)

This chapter describes algorithms, types of knowledge and other concepts that are important in computer science.

[...]

12 other chapters are planned but not yet in this list because the planned outline may change by the point they are written.

Outline

A part of the book has already been written, but much is still left to write. A basic outline has however been planned, although it is still very subject to change. The outline below describes the part of the book that was already written.

1. ROBLOX
   1. Creating an account
   2. History
   3. The website
   4. ROBLOX Studio
      1. Standard toolbar
      2. Camera manipulation
      3. Game hierarchy
      4. Testing
      5. Saving games
   5. Building
      1. Models
      2. Manipulation
      3. Customization
      4. Terrain
      5. Other tools
   6. Help sources
2. Scripting
   1. Lua
   2. Scripts
   3. Hello, world!
   4. Comments
   5. Syntax
   6. Terminology

Writing and style

• All headers and titles, except the title of the book itself, should use sentence case.
• The book should be self-contained, but it's fine to add links to other books or Wikipedia, as long as these links are only used for supplementary material.
• Variable names should be enclosed in <var>...</var> tags.
• When terms are defined in nearby text, they should be enclosed in <dfn>...</dfn> tags.
• Keyboard keys that the user is instructed to press should be enclosed in <kbd>...</kbd> tags.
• Emphasis should be marked using <em>...</em> and <strong>...</strong> tags or using wiki markup for italics or bold.
• Code keywords or inline code should be enclosed in <code>...</code> tags.
• Code examples should use syntax highlighting with the <source>...</source> tag. Code should be indented and easy to read, and variable names should accurately represent their value.
• Code output should be enclosed in <samp>...</samp> tags.

Change log

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