Introduction

A Lua file is called a script. Lua scripts are plain text files. To create and edit Lua scripts, you need a plain text editor such as notepad.

You can use any plain text editor, but you are going to have a hard time if you aren't using one of the many available Lua Editors, such as Sublime Text or Visual Studio Code.

During these tutorials, we'll refer to your preferred text editor as "notepad".

Creating the script

For our first script, we're not going to do anything too complex. We'll learn how to print a message into the console.

The print function does exactly that. Type the following code into your chosen editor :

You're done! Wasn't that easy? It should have been.

Explanation

print is a function. A function is a command that does something when you call it. Many functions can take arguments, which is data you give the function to change exactly what it does. In this case, print() takes only one argument, which is a string (a series of letters, numbers, spaces, and so on), and when print() is called, it puts that string into the console in Garry's Mod.

Saving the script

You're now ready to save the actual Lua file. To find your Lua folder, follow the following path - depending on where you have installed Garry's Mod on your computer, this path may be different, but will look something like this:

In the filename box, type helloworld.lua (Note that you must specify .lua), and in the Save As type box, select All Files. Now, just press enter (or press the save button) to save your script.

Running the script

To run any of your scripts, you need to be playing a map. Once in game, open the developer console and type the following:

Press enter. If you did everything correctly up to this point, you should see a message in the console:

Congratulations, you have written and run your first Lua script.

Auto running the script

To make your script run automatically when the server starts, you simply put it into one of these folders. Again, if you have Garry's Mod installed somewhere else, navigate there instead.

• For shared scripts ( Loaded on either client or server )

• For client-only scripts ( Loaded only on client )

• For server-only scripts ( Loaded only on server )

For this specific tutorial, any of those paths will work just fine.

Loading portions of a script on the client or server

If you want to use a single file for clientside and serverside code, but want separate parts of the code between client and server, we can do something like this:

• To run code only on the client

• To run code only on the server

• To load onto shared (either Client or Server), don't specifically check for CLIENT or SERVER, just put your code down without the if block.

Example:

The CLIENT and SERVER variables you see up there are explained on the States page.

What's next?

Next we will learn about variables.

Clientside, Serverside, and Shared are explained here: States