Loops — doing things over and over

Every living game has a heartbeat: something that runs constantly, checking and updating. The sun rotating, a shop restocking, enemies respawning. That heartbeat is a loop.

#The forever loop: while true

while true do
    print("tick")
    task.wait(1)
end

• while true do — "keep going as long as true is true", i.e. forever.
• The lines between do and end run.
• task.wait(1) — pause for 1 second before the next round.

Without the task.wait, the loop would spin millions of times a second — printing "tick" so fast it locks up your game. A loop that runs forever needs a pause. Think of while true as breathing: the wait is the breath.

#A loop that ends

You don't need forever. This counts down:

local count = 5

while count > 0 do
    print(count)
    count = count - 1
    task.wait(1)
end

print("Go!")

Each pass, count drops by one. The moment it hits 0, the condition is false, the loop stops, and the script continues. This is exactly how countdown timers work in games.

#The one that checks at the end: repeat

repeat runs the block first, then checks:

repeat
    task.wait(0.5)
    print("checking...")
until coins >= 100

The difference: while checks before each run, repeat checks after. So a repeat loop always runs at least once. Use it when you need the check to happen after some work — like waiting for a condition that starts false.

#How loops break

Loops end in two ways: a condition goes false (while and repeat), or you force an exit with break (rarely needed in this course).

-- countdown from 3

Next: a loop that counts a fixed number of times — for.