Roblox pet system script development is one of those things that looks incredibly daunting from the outside, but once you break it down into smaller, bite-sized pieces, it's actually a lot of fun to put together. If you've spent any time at all playing front-page games like Pet Simulator 99 or Bee Swarm Simulator, you know that pets aren't just cosmetic flair; they are the literal engine of the game's progression. They give players something to grind for, something to show off, and a reason to keep coming back. But how do you actually go from a static 3D model in Blender to a living, breathing companion that follows a player around and saves their progress?
It's not just about copying and pasting a block of code and hoping for the best. To build something that doesn't lag the server or break the moment two players stand near each other, you have to understand the relationship between the client and the server. It's a bit of a balancing act. You want the pets to look smooth on the player's screen, but you also need the server to keep track of who owns what so people can't just "cheat" a legendary dragon into their inventory.
Why Every Simulator Needs a Solid Pet System
Let's be real for a second: simulators would be pretty boring without pets. They provide that essential "dopamine hit" when a player finally hatches a rare egg. From a developer's perspective, a roblox pet system script is your best friend for player retention. When a player sees a "1% chance" pet, they aren't just looking at a cool model; they're looking at a goal.
Beyond the psychological stuff, a pet system adds layers to your gameplay. You can have pets that multiply the coins a player picks up, or pets that help fight enemies. The script is the glue that holds all these features together. Without a well-organized system, adding a new pet would mean manual labor every single time. A good script makes the process automated—you just drop a new model into a folder, tweak a few variables in a module script, and boom, your new pet is ready for the world.
The Foundation: Folders and RemoteEvents
Before you even touch a line of code, you've got to get your workspace organized. I've seen so many beginners try to jam everything into a single script, and it always ends in disaster. Usually, you'll want a folder in ReplicatedStorage named "Pets" where all your actual models live.
Then, you need to talk about RemoteEvents. Since the server needs to tell the client "Hey, you just hatched a dog," and the client needs to tell the server "I want to equip this cat," RemoteEvents are your communication lines. If you try to do everything on the client side, the moment a player leaves, their pets vanish into the void. If you do everything on the server side without considering the client, the pet movement will look choppy and laggy.
Making the Pet Follow the Player
This is where the magic (and the math) happens. You want the pet to follow the player, but you don't want it walking through their legs or flying off into space. There are a few ways to handle this in a roblox pet system script.
Back in the day, everyone used BodyPosition and BodyGyro. They worked, but they're technically deprecated now. Nowadays, most devs use AlignPosition and AlignOrientation. These are much smoother and give you more control over how "snappy" or "floaty" the pet feels.
The Logic of Positioning
You generally don't want the pet to be exactly where the player is. Instead, you calculate a point slightly behind or to the side of the player's HumanoidRootPart. If the player has five pets, you'll need some basic trigonometry to arrange them in a circle or a grid behind the player. It sounds scary, but it's basically just telling each pet, "Hey, stand at this specific offset from the player."
Smooth Movement with Lerping
If you're going for a more "low-poly" or stylized feel, some people prefer using CFrame:Lerp(). This basically calculates the path between Point A and Point B and moves the pet a tiny bit every frame. It's great for performance if you have a lot of pets on screen, but it can get a bit tricky when you have to account for obstacles.
The Hatching System: RNG and Eggs
The "gacha" mechanic is arguably the most important part of the script. You need a way to pick a pet based on probability. This usually involves a ModuleScript that stores all your pet data—names, rarities, and percentages.
When a player clicks "Buy Egg," your roblox pet system script should: 1. Check if the player has enough money (on the server side, obviously!). 2. Generate a random number between 1 and 100. 3. Loop through your pet table to see which rarity that number falls into. 4. Clone the pet model and put it in the player's inventory.
Pro tip: Always do the math on the server. If you let the client decide what pet they got, someone's going to find a way to make sure they "randomly" get the 0.01% secret pet every single time.
Saving Progress with DataStores
There is nothing more heartbreaking for a player than spending three hours grinding for a shiny golem, only to log back in the next day and find it's gone. This is where DataStoreService comes in.
Your script needs to save a table of the player's owned pets. Usually, you don't save the whole model—that would be impossible. Instead, you save a list of strings (the names of the pets) and maybe some extra data like their level or nicknames. When the player joins the game, the script looks at that list and "rebuilds" the pets from your master folder in ReplicatedStorage.
Keeping Things Optimized
One thing people often forget is that pets can be heavy on performance. If you have 50 players in a server and each one has 3 pets, that's 150 moving objects the physics engine has to calculate. To keep your game from turning into a slideshow, you should handle the actual visual movement of the pets on the client side.
Basically, the server just keeps track of the "state" (Player A has Pet B equipped), and each player's computer is responsible for moving the pets they see. This makes the movement look buttery smooth because it's not waiting for information to travel back and forth across the internet.
Customizing the Experience
Once the basic roblox pet system script is working, that's when the real fun starts. You can add things like: * Pet Levels: The more a pet is equipped, the higher its multiplier gets. * Evolutions: Combine three of the same pet to make a "Neon" or "Golden" version. * Animations: Use an AnimationController to make the pets bounce or wag their tails. * Names: Let players give their pets custom names using TextBox inputs (just make sure you run them through the Roblox chat filter first!).
Final Thoughts
Building a pet system is a bit of a rite of passage for Roblox developers. It forces you to learn about data management, client-server communication, and basic physics. It's okay if your first script is a bit messy—most of them are. The key is to keep iterating. Start with a simple "click button, get cube" system, and slowly add the following logic, the UI, and the saving mechanics.
Before you know it, you'll have a system that feels professional and adds a ton of value to your game. Just remember to keep your code organized and always keep the player's experience in mind. After all, a pet is supposed to be a friend, not a laggy block that gets stuck in the floor! Happy scripting!