Getting your character to stop sliding across the floor usually involves tweaking a roblox friction script or messing around with CustomPhysicalProperties. It's one of those things that seems totally simple until you're actually building a map and realize your player is ice-skating across a concrete parking lot. Physics in Roblox can be a bit of a wild beast, but once you figure out how to manipulate friction through scripting, you gain a massive amount of control over how your game actually feels to play.
If you've ever played a game where the movement felt "floaty" or unresponsive, it was likely a physics issue. Friction is the silent hero of game design. It's the reason racing games feel fast and snappy, and it's the reason platformers don't feel like you're constantly walking on a banana peel. Let's dig into how you can use a script to get these settings exactly where you want them.
Why You Should Care About Scripting Friction
Most developers start out by just clicking on a part in the Workspace and changing the properties in the side panel. That works fine if you have three parts, but what happens when you have a massive city or a procedurally generated mountain range? You can't manually click every single rock to make sure it isn't slippery. That's where a roblox friction script comes into play.
Using a script allows you to apply physics rules dynamically. You might want a specific zone in your game to be slippery—like a frozen lake—but only when it's "winter" in your game's day-night cycle. Or maybe you want a power-up that gives players "sticky shoes" so they can run up steep ramps. You can't do that by just toggling boxes in the editor; you need code to handle that logic on the fly.
The Secret Sauce: CustomPhysicalProperties
Before we look at the code, you have to understand what we're actually changing. Every BasePart in Roblox has a property called CustomPhysicalProperties. By default, it's set to nil, which means the part just uses the default physics for whatever material it's assigned (like Plastic, Wood, or Slate).
When you create a roblox friction script, you're essentially telling the engine: "Ignore the default material settings and use these specific numbers instead." The PhysicalProperties.new() constructor takes a few arguments, but the first one is the most important for us: Friction.
Here is a quick look at how you'd set this up in a basic script:
```lua local part = script.Parent
-- The parameters are: Friction, Elasticity, ElasticityWeight, FrictionWeight local friction = 0.7 local elasticity = 0.3 local frictionWeight = 1 local elasticityWeight = 1
part.CustomPhysicalProperties = PhysicalProperties.new(friction, elasticity, frictionWeight, elasticityWeight) ```
In this example, we're bumping up the friction. The numbers usually range from 0 to 2. A value of 0 is basically air—no resistance at all. A value of 2 is incredibly "sticky." If you set a floor to 2, players might find it hard to even turn around because the grip is so intense.
Making a Slippery Floor Trap
Let's say you're making an obstacle course (an Obby). You want a specific platform to turn into ice every five seconds. You could swap the material to "Ice," but that doesn't always give you the exact "slide" you're looking for. A roblox friction script gives you way more precision.
You could write a simple loop that toggles the friction value. When the friction is low (like 0.1), the player will keep sliding long after they stop pressing the "W" key. When it's high, they stop instantly. It adds a layer of challenge that feels much more polished than just changing the color of the part to light blue and hoping the player gets the hint.
Handling Friction for Vehicles
If you're building a car, friction is going to be your best friend and your worst enemy. If your tires have too much friction, the car will flip over the second you try to turn. If they have too little, you're just spinning your wheels in place.
Most car chassis scripts use a roblox friction script to adjust how the wheels interact with the road. You might even want to change the friction depending on the surface the car is touching. For instance, if the car is on a "Mud" part, the script could detect that and lower the friction value while increasing the "FrictionWeight."
Wait, what is FrictionWeight? This is a common point of confusion. Basically, if two parts touch, Roblox looks at the friction of both parts and tries to find a middle ground. If you want your part's friction to "win" the argument, you turn up the FrictionWeight. Setting it to a high number ensures that the part's friction value is the one that matters most during the collision.
Applying Friction to Everything at Once
Imagine you have a racing game with 500 track segments. You don't want to put a script inside every single one. That would be a nightmare for your game's performance and a headache to update. Instead, you can use a single roblox friction script in ServerScriptService that loops through a folder or uses a CollectionService tag.
Here's how you might handle a bunch of parts at once:
```lua local CollectionService = game:GetService("CollectionService")
for _, part in pairs(CollectionService:GetTagged("SlipperySurface")) do if part:IsA("BasePart") then part.CustomPhysicalProperties = PhysicalProperties.new(0.05, 0.3, 1, 1) end end ```
By using tags, you can just slap a label on any part in your game, and the script will automatically apply those icy physics properties when the game starts. It's clean, it's efficient, and it makes you look like a pro.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
One thing that trips up a lot of people is the Humanoid. Roblox characters are weird. They don't always behave like standard physics objects because the Humanoid controller is constantly trying to keep the character upright and moving in a specific way.
Sometimes, even if you have a perfect roblox friction script on the floor, the player might still move normally because the Humanoid is overriding the physics. In those cases, you might need to look at the FloorMaterial property of the Humanoid or even mess with LinearVelocity to force a sliding effect.
Another tip: don't go overboard with Elasticity. While we're mostly talking about friction, the PhysicalProperties.new() function requires those other values too. If you set Elasticity (bounciness) too high while trying to fix your friction, your players might end up launching into the stratosphere the moment they jump.
Testing and Tweaking
The best way to get your physics feeling right is to live-test. Open up Roblox Studio, hit "Play," and then go into the Explorer and manually change the friction values while your character is walking around. You'll start to feel the difference between 0.1, 0.5, and 1.0.
Once you find that "sweet spot" where the movement feels just right, take those numbers and plug them into your roblox friction script. Every game is different. A high-speed skating game needs totally different friction settings than a realistic tactical shooter.
Don't be afraid to experiment with weird values. Sometimes the most fun gameplay mechanics come from setting physics values to things they weren't "supposed" to be. A world with zero friction and high elasticity? That's not a bug; that's a chaotic physics sandbox that people would probably love to play.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, a roblox friction script is just another tool in your developer toolbox. It's not just about stopping a player from sliding; it's about defining the "vibe" of your game's movement. Whether you're making a slippery ice world, a high-grip racetrack, or just trying to fix a buggy character controller, understanding how to script these physical properties is a game-changer.
So, stop fighting the default physics engine and start telling it exactly what to do. Your players (and their non-sliding avatars) will thank you for it. Grab a script, tweak some numbers, and see how much better your game feels when the floor actually behaves the way it's supposed to.