Coding Your First Project with Roblox and Lua
Roblox is the world’s most popular game development platform. All types of people come together to create amazing virtual experiences: artists, musicians, and—you guessed it—coders. Coding is what allows players to interact with the world that they see.
In Roblox, the coding language used is Lua. Lua is one of the easiest coding languages to learn, and when used with Roblox Studio, you can see the results of your code fast. For example, want to create an enormous explosion with a massive blast radius? You can do that with just a couple of lines of Lua.
Roblox Studio is the tool in which all Roblox games are created, and when paired with Lua, it offers seamless access to multiplayer servers, physics and lighting systems, world-building tools, monetization systems, and more. And even though Roblox provides the environment in which your program runs, you control the vision. You are the creator and artist. Roblox gives you the canvas and paints, and Lua the brushes and actions. But you, with some well-placed dabs of code, get to create your masterpiece. This first hour covers how to set up Roblox Studio, make your first script, and test your code.
Installing Roblox Studio
Before you get started, make sure you have Roblox Studio installed. It runs on Windows and MacOS, and you can grab a copy at https://roblox.com/create. Click Start Creating to begin. You’ll need to create a Roblox account if you don’t yet have one (see Figure 1.1).
FIGURE 1.1 You need an account to use Roblox Studio. It’s free and just a quick sign-up away.