Collection Service - Roblox Advanced Scripting #10 — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00I want to make an obstacle course but let's  imagine this for a minute if we had multiple kill
2. 0:05bricks that we would be planning to use inside  of our Obby that we're trying to create we would
3. 0:10probably want more than one of these kill bricks  since these kill bricks are basically run through
4. 0:16a simple script if I open up workspace and open up  my part I made a script here where it's like if a
5. 0:22player that has a humanoid touches it then their  health is set to zero that's pretty much how you
6. 0:27make a kill brick so if we had one of these then  it pretty much works just as expected but what if
7. 0:32we wanted to add more kill bricks to our obstacle  course which is what we're most likely going to do
8. 0:37this is probably how you would do it okay so let's  take our part let's duplicate it put it over here
9. 0:44diagonally over here and then let's take another  one just duplicate that and put it over here let's
10. 0:48take all these three duplicate it and then just  drag it over this way okay so now it looks like we
11. 0:54have a sustainable stage for our obstacle course  so this should pretty much work as expected but
12. 1:01here is the issue now that we duplicated our part  that had our kilber script it also duplicated the
13. 1:08same script for all these other parts that are  contained here with our one stage now why is this
14. 1:15a problem it's a problem mainly because if we have  the same script being copied and pasted over and
15. 1:20over again to all these different parts it's going  to be very disorganized and very confusing to just
16. 1:27go back to each of these scripts and modify it if  I need to and it's also just bad for optimization
17. 1:32in general because through our obstacle if we  touch any one of them it should basically fire
18. 1:39that individual script for that individual part  but what I'm trying to get at here is that what if
19. 1:44all of these were run in the same script and not  with six individual scripts I think that approach
20. 1:51would definitely be a lot better than what we're  trying to do with individual scripts so that's
21. 1:55what I'm going to be showing you how to do in this  episode using a feature called collection service
22. 2:00so with that being said let's get straight into it  all right let's think about this for a minute so
23. 2:03in my example with these kill bricks that we want  to be able to kill the player whenever they touch
24. 2:09it we don't want the code for it like this code  right here to be inside of six different scripts
25. 2:16when we're trying to make each of these parts  functional our goal is to try and take all of
26. 2:20these parts and be executed by the same script  so it'll just run inside of one script and not
27. 2:26six of them so how do we achieve this we achieve  this through through a feature called collection
28. 2:31service and a good way to understand this is let's  say we have a collection of kill bricks we take
29. 2:37all the parts that are inside of that collection  as if this was its own table and we run the code
30. 2:43that we need to for each of these kill bricks  but but instead it could just be done through one
31. 2:51script when we Loop through each of the objects  in the collection that's cool and all but now you
32. 2:56might ask how do we make this collection of kill  bricks so the way we do that is by putting a tag
33. 3:03for each of these kill bricks to represent the  collection that it's a part of so and so here's
34. 3:10how we're going to do it we first need to figure  out how to create these tags and we can do that
35. 3:14using roblox's built-in tag editor uh which can  be found up here inside of view we can hit this
36. 3:20little button here that says tag editor and this  will pull up a window on the right side showing us
37. 3:26an empty list of tags because we haven't created  any tags yet and so in order to create a tag we
38. 3:32just need to press this button that says new tag  and it's going to highlight this text box in which
39. 3:38we're just going to insert a tag name so in other  words this is pretty much the name we're going to
40. 3:43give our kill bricks collection so we're just  going to call this kill bricks and we're going
41. 3:49to hit enter so now we have our kill bricks tag  and now we need to apply this to all of our parts
42. 3:55that we want to apply this that we want to add to  the Kil bricks collection so so let's just select
43. 4:00all of our kill bricks and let's press this check  mark here that says apply this tag to all selected
44. 4:06instances so let's press that and now all of these  parts should have the kill bricks tag attached to
45. 4:13it and we can see if this works by just simply  selecting one of them and if this check mark is
46. 4:20checked then that means it has the tag kill bricks  we can also check it down here in properties um
47. 4:26inside of our tags category and we can see that  it's inside of the kill bricks category and we
48. 4:32can see that it has the kill bricks tag so this  is how we use the tag Editor to how we add tags to
49. 4:38our instances so now let's go and create a script  to take all of these items and make it functional
50. 4:43we're going to do that by creating a script inside  of server script service so we're going to hit the
51. 4:47plus sign create a new script let's just rename  this to collection service okay and so the first
52. 4:54thing we're going to do is make reference to our  collection service service you know so we're going
53. 5:01to say local collection service equals game colon  get service open parentheses close parentheses in
54. 5:11quotations we're going to say collection service  so remember how I mentioned that when we tag all
55. 5:19of these parts inside of a collection this  collection is essentially a table full of
56. 5:25these instances where we can iterate through  all of these parts to then make the kill brick
57. 5:32active and so the way we're going to retrieve  this table of items from the collection is by
58. 5:38using a function called get tagged so this is  pretty much what it's going to look like so we're
59. 5:43first going to create a variable to store our  table full of kill bricks so we're going to say
60. 5:49local kill bricks equals collection service colon  get tagged and you have to remember remember that
61. 5:59it is get tagged specifically I will go over the  other methods that can trip you up a little bit
62. 6:04but just remember that get tagged is the method  of collection service that we're going to use to
63. 6:10retrieve a table full of the items that we're  looking for inside of the collection so inside
64. 6:17of these open and close parentheses we're going  to put in our collection name which over here we
65. 6:23set it to be kill bricks so we're going to say  kill bricks and I do want to note that this is
66. 6:29case sensitive so you have to make sure the name  is exactly what you made the Tag name to be this
67. 6:35is pretty much our tag name that we created kill  bricks and we're basically telling collection
68. 6:40service to give us a table of all of the kill  bricks that have the kill bricks tag that we gave
69. 6:48it so now that we have this table full of kill  bricks let's Loop through all of these kill bricks
70. 6:54so let's go down here and we're going to say for  I comma kill brick in pairs open parentheses Clos
71. 7:04parentheses kill bricks and uh I want you to  note that I made a variable here called kill
72. 7:10brick but this is referring to our kill bricks  table that we created so over here we're going
73. 7:17to say do and now what we're pretty much going  to do is take our code that we had here with
74. 7:23our touched event and basically just copy it over  to our for Loop so let's take our or script let's
75. 7:30copy it and then paste it into here and now this  kill brick is basically applied to this touched
76. 7:37event right here for each individual kill brick so  now it's pretty much looping through each of the
77. 7:43kill bricks inside of our kill Brick's table and  adding a touched event to that kill brick to do
78. 7:50exactly what we wanted to do so we don't have to  write six different scripts to put it all in each
79. 7:57of these instances instead instead what we can do  is create a tag and apply that tag to all of these
80. 8:05instances grab all of the instances from the tag  and then Loop through that table full of instances
81. 8:12and do what we wanted to do and that's pretty  much it let's delete all of our original kill
82. 8:16brick scripts that we had and let's try this out  in game to see if this works or not so let's go
83. 8:22into the game hit test and hit play all right so  let's try out our Obby uh I'm able to get through
84. 8:27it pretty normally but let's see what happens if  we step on one of them um so it looks like that
85. 8:34this one worked when I stepped on it now let's  try stepping on this one this one seemed like it
86. 8:38also worked too so our collection service script  should be running just as planned so we were able
87. 8:45to do all of this inside of one script after  looping through all of the items inside of our
88. 8:51collection to be able to do what we wanted it to  do rather than have six different scripts for each
89. 8:57individual object so what I just showed you pretty  much demonstrates the whole concept of collection
90. 9:02service but let me show you some other things you  can do with collection service so there's three
91. 9:07commonly methods that trip people up when they're  working with collection service that being get
92. 9:12tagged get tags and get all tags and I'm going  to be explaining the difference among all three
93. 9:18of these so get tagged is basically a method in  collection service that retrieves a table full
94. 9:27of all of the instances that have the tag that  we're trying to find and return so that we can
95. 9:34set this up into a variable and then we can Loop  through all of the instances that do have this tag
96. 9:40that we were looking for the next method I want to  introduce to you is called get tags which is not
97. 9:45the same as get tagged so get tags is basically  saying we want to know all of the tags that are
98. 9:53contained inside of one specific object that we  provide so you know how over here if we selected
99. 10:00uh one of our parts and we go down here we can  see in the tags category that there's one tag in
100. 10:06here called kill bricks we could even add another  tag in here by hitting this plus sign and we can
101. 10:11even create a new tag right here just by saying  something just by giving it a new name like new
102. 10:17tag or something so now this part has two tags  kill bricks and new tag so if we make reference
103. 10:25to that specific part so let's go in here and  rame this part to part one and let's go into our
104. 10:32script we're basically going to tell collection  service that we want to know all of the tags that
105. 10:37are inside of part one and we want to return it  as a table so let's go in here and let's make a
106. 10:42variable called part tags and we will set this  equal to collection service colon get tags open
107. 10:52parentheses close parentheses and we're basically  going to throw in our specific part that we want
108. 10:57to get the tags from which is part one inside of  workspace so we're going to say game. workspace
109. 11:04dopart one and what we can pretty much do is just  Loop through these part tags so that we can print
110. 11:12all of these out to let us know all the tags that  this specific part contains because what's pretty
111. 11:17much going to print out is it's going to print out  kill bricks and new tag but let's see how this is
112. 11:22written we're going to say for I tag in pairs  open parentheses closed parentheses part tags
113. 11:30do and then we're going to print the tag so let's  go into the game and see our change all right so
114. 11:35in the output we should see that kill bricks  and new tag is printed because those are all
115. 11:42the tags that are set Within part one specifically  so that's the difference with get tagged and get
116. 11:49tags but there's one more which is get all tags  which is a more Global more General method that
117. 11:56you would use so in our get tags example this told  us to get the tags from a specific instance but
118. 12:04what if we wanted to just get all the tags that  are available inside of the game then we would
119. 12:09just simply say local all tags equals collection  service colon get all tags open parentheses closed
120. 12:19parenthesis and there's no arguments that need to  be put inside of here and we can just do the same
121. 12:24thing with our for Loop here we can just say 4 I  tag in pairs all tags do print tag so this will
122. 12:37basically do the same thing as this but this is  going to get all the tags that exist inside of
123. 12:42the game so inside of our tag editor if we had  like five or 10 different tags it's going to
124. 12:49print all of those tags that exist inside of  the output so if we go into the game and hit
125. 12:54play then we should see all the tags be printed  into the output okay so ignore these first two
126. 12:59because this was for our first for Loop but for  our second for Loop it basically printed these
127. 13:05three down here which was new tag kill bricks and  tag editor tag container don't worry about that
128. 13:10one we did not create that one so that's basically  the difference between all three of them uh this
129. 13:15one is not used very often but I would say get  tagged is the most useful one to know about and
130. 13:21the one you're going to be using the most in your  scripts so with our tag editor we were able to
131. 13:27create tags and add our parts to that tag before  joining into the game while having scripts run
132. 13:34so I'm going to be showing you how to add these  tags and also remove them through scripting at
133. 13:40any point throughout the game's runtime so let's  add in a new part so let's just go into workspace
134. 13:46let's insert a new part and we're going to rename  this part to new part and let's make this special
135. 13:53just by changing the size a little bit let's even  change the color of it as well okay so here's a
136. 14:00new part and let's say we want to add this to our  kill bricks collection without manually doing it
137. 14:06in the tag editor because all we can do is just  select this and click the check mark and it's
138. 14:11already in the kill bricks collection but let's  say we want to do this through script we're going
139. 14:15to use a method called add tag so let's comment  out these print statements that we have here what
140. 14:21we're going to do is find this new part that's  inside of workspace and we're going to add it to
141. 14:27our collection using a function called add tag  so this is what it's going to look like let's
142. 14:33first find our new part by saying local new part  equals game. workpace colon wait for Child open
143. 14:43parentheses close parth quotes new part and we're  wrapping this in a wait for child just in case the
144. 14:49part doesn't load in fast enough during runtime  for the script so now what we'll do is we will
145. 14:55use our add tag function so we're going to say  collection service colon add tag and this will
146. 15:03take in two arguments so the first one is going  to be our instance that we want to add a tag to
147. 15:09which is going to be our new part comma and our  second argument is going to be our collection or
148. 15:17tag name which in this case it's Kil bricks so  in quotations we're going to say kill bricks so
149. 15:26this add tag method it's going to take our new  part add our kill bricks tag to that part and
150. 15:33of course we can remove the tag as well so let's  just make a task. we really quick task. wait for
151. 15:38about 5 seconds and we're going to say collection  service colon remove tag open parentheses close
152. 15:46parenthesis we're going to take our new part and  and we're going to remove the kill bricks uh tag
153. 15:56name from that new part let's also Al add this  task. weight statement behind here so that we can
154. 16:02really see the change when we load into the game  so let's add another task. weight statement right
155. 16:07before we add the tag let's actually make this 7  seconds so that we can load into the game in time
156. 16:13to see the change so let's go into the game hit  test and hit play and let me open up the workspace
157. 16:19so that we can see the tags inside of our new  parts so let's scroll down here we can see that
158. 16:23there's no tags and now we added the kill bricks  tag to our new part and after 5 Seconds it got
159. 16:31rid of that tag from our new part so it basically  worked as expected this is useful for at any point
160. 16:37during the game we want to add tags to to specific  parts to then do stuff to that part as part of a
161. 16:45collection there's also another function where  we're allowed to check if a specific part has a
162. 16:50specific tag that we're looking for so let's say  that after we add in a tag for our new part let's
163. 16:55make a check to see if this new part still has the  kill bricks tag we're going to say if collection
164. 17:03service colon has tag open parentheses close  parenthesis it's going to take in two arguments
165. 17:11the first one's going to be the instance which is  going to be our new part comma and then our tag
166. 17:16which is going to be kill bricks so if this new  part has the kill bricks tag then what we're going
167. 17:23to do is print out a statement by saying new part  has the tag and let's copy this and put it down
168. 17:33here after remove tag to see the difference so  what should happen is that this is going to print
169. 17:38because new part does have the kill bricks tag  but this one is not going to go through because
170. 17:45we removed the kill bricks tag from the new part  so as you can see we printed out new part has a
171. 17:50tag but then in about 5 Seconds we're not going to  see the other print statement because we removed
172. 17:56the kill bricks tag from the new parts so now  this if statement is not valid the new part does
173. 18:03not have the new tag so this is not going to run  so collection service has provided us two events
174. 18:08that we can use to check whether a tag has been  either added to a new part or if a tag has been
175. 18:15removed from a part so we can have this event fire  whenever one of these two instances happen and we
176. 18:23can do this using an event called get instance  added signal and get instance removed signal so
177. 18:29this is pretty much what it's going to look like  let's go into our collection service script and
178. 18:34let's drop two lines after our beginning for Loop  and this is what we're going to say we're going
179. 18:39to say collection service colon get instance added  signal and then inside of these parentheses we're
180. 18:49going to put in our tag name which is going to be  kill bricks and then this is going to be wrapped
181. 18:56around in a function by saying colon connect  function open parentheses close parenthesis
182. 19:03enter so this is pretty much what our header is  going to look like so we're going to use our get
183. 19:09instance added signal which is basically saying  if there is a new instance that this tag has been
184. 19:15applied to then we're going to execute whatever  is going to be down here inside of this function
185. 19:20so let's just make a simple print statement by  saying print kill brick has been added to the
186. 19:27collection and then we can pretty much do the  same thing with when we remove a kill brick tag
187. 19:35from an instance as well so we're going to drop  two lines down here by saying collection service
188. 19:41colon get instance removed signal and then over  here we're going to say kill bricks colon connect
189. 19:51function open parentheses close parentheses enter  print kill brick has been removed moved from the
190. 20:00collection and so there we go now we have two  instance signal events from collection service
191. 20:07that keeps track of when a kill bricks tag has  been added to a part and when a kill bricks tag
192. 20:14has been removed from a part so let's go into the  game and we should see our new change all right
193. 20:20so as you can see the event has fired to print  kill brick has been added to the collection and
194. 20:25in about 5 Seconds it should then say kill  brick has been removed from the collection
195. 20:31which is exactly what we wanted the script to do  before I end off the video I want to show you an
196. 20:35example of me using collection service alongside  other infrastructures for one of my games that
197. 20:41I'm currently working on so over here we have  these obstacles of these spinning parts and if
198. 20:47the player touches these parts then they basically  end up dying so in my game I have it set up to be
199. 20:53compatible with objectoriented programming and  also streaming instances don't don't worry if
200. 20:58you don't really know what that means right now  in the future we will go over more complicated
201. 21:03topics like them but what I wanted to show you was  that these parts work perfectly fine with the way
202. 21:08they're spinning and also when you touch them they  kill you so let's see what happens if I just run
203. 21:13all the way back here to where we can barely see  them and it'll basically just disappear from our
204. 21:20view when we walk far away enough so there you go  it's pretty much all the way back there and what
205. 21:25should basically be happening is that the script  that's running them is basically dormant right
206. 21:30now you can't even see or tell whether these are  running in the background or not and to tell you
207. 21:35the truth they're actually not running they're  completely still the scripts that's running all
208. 21:40of them are not even running right now because  they're out of view but once we go back into view
209. 21:45where we can see them again with with streaming  instances we can see that it's running again back
210. 21:50to where it originally was after the script had  stopped the functionality of these obstacles when
211. 21:56we went out of view so collection service comes  a long way uh when you add these inside of your
212. 22:02Roblox games there's a combination of things that  you can put together to create really powerful
213. 22:07stuff like with the use of instant streaming and  object-oriented programming alongside collection
214. 22:14service you can have really powerful Frameworks  that enhances optimization for your Roblox game
215. 22:19and that's pretty much what collection service  is all about improving and optimizing your Roblox
216. 22:25game not only for the players but also for the for  the devs as well so that's kind of the whole idea
217. 22:30here and you kind of have to experiment with  this stuff to really get collection service
218. 22:35and all these other Advanced scripting Concepts  under your belt so that's just one last thing I
219. 22:40wanted to show you so to pretty much summarize  collection service is a feature made by Roblox
220. 22:45that heavily optimizes the way we organize our  scripts when we're trying to pretty much make a
221. 22:52whole bunch of instances operate and function  the same way without having to to write the
222. 22:58same script every single time but instead do it  all inside of one script that's pretty much the
223. 23:04basic idea of collection service and I hope you'll  be able to implement these inside of your Roblox
224. 23:09games for the future to come if you found this  video to be helpful be sure to subscribe and join
225. 23:13my Discord server the link is in the description  and I will see you in the next episode take care