Improve performance using lua and Roblox Studio

Question

I have finally finished my first script using lua and Roblox studio. The goal was to have a set of tiles change colour when the player steps on it.

Here is my code:

local parts = {}
for k, v in pairs(game.Workspace:GetDescendants()) do
    if string.sub (v.name, 1, 4) == "Part"  then
        table.insert(parts, v)
    end
end

local char = workspace:WaitForChild("localPlayer") 

local hrp = char:WaitForChild("HumanoidRootPart")

local newThread = coroutine.create(function()

game:GetService("RunService").Heartbeat:Connect(function()
    local charpos = hrp.Position

    for k, v in pairs (parts)do
        if (charpos - v.CFrame.Position).magnitude <= 6 then
            local pos = v.CFrame.Position
            for k, v in pairs(parts) do
                if v.CFrame.Position.X == pos.X or v.CFrame.Position.Z == pos.Z then
                    v.BrickColor = BrickColor.new("Really red")
                    print("touching")
                end
            end
            return
        else
            v.BrickColor = BrickColor.new("Medium stone grey")
            print("not touching")
        end
    end
end)

end)

coroutine.resume(newThread)

This works:

But my project needs more tiles and more colors. When I increase the number of platforms etc.. the program becomes very laggy.

The gif doesn't really show how laggy, but it gets worse and worse and after about a minute of playing you can hardly control the player effectively.

As you can see, I tried putting my function inside a co-routine but that didn't help. I am very new to lua and trying making games so I really don't know how to improve performance. The fact that the lagginess gets worse and worse seems to suggest memory is not being freed effectively? I assumed this happened automatically. Anyway, any help much appreciated.

After suggestions, I have tried this:

Hi, I have tried this:

    local Platform = {}
    local maPart = Platform.part
    local function makePart(pX,pY,pZ)
        maPart = Instance.new("Part", workspace)
        maPart.Position = Vector3.new(pX,pY,pZ)
        maPart.Size = Vector3.new(10,1,10)
        return maPart
    end

    local columns = {}
    local rows = {}

    for i = 1, 12 do
        columns[i] = rows
        table.insert(columns, rows)
        for j = 1, 12 do
            maPart = makePart(i*16,0,j*16)
            rows[j] = maPart
            table.insert(rows, maPart)
        end
    end

    columns[1].[1].BrickColor = BrickColor.new("Really blue")

As an exercise to see if I can get this new concept for me of 'multi dimensional arrays' to work. The last line doesn't work. How would I access an element inside an array inside an array? tx

Answer 1

Minor change - move out the loop the construction of new BrickColor. Its value doesn't change across unaffected parts, no reasons to repeatedly create it.

And see if printing lots of debugging information affects the performance, so comment out prints.

Secondly, probably you should reorganize the grid of the blocks into two-dimentional array. So then you don't have to scan all the parts to find the ones that has the same X/Z coordinate. This also will give you the way to quickly find the closest brick, it's trivial on a regular grid.