Learning how to set up a roblox studio chat command script is one of those "lightbulb moments" for a lot of new developers. It's the point where your game stops being just a static map and starts feeling like something you actually have control over. Whether you want to give yourself super speed, teleport players around, or just kick someone who's being annoying, knowing how to handle chat inputs is an essential skill.
The cool thing about Roblox is that it gives you a few different ways to handle this, but for most people starting out, the classic server-side approach is the way to go. It's reliable, it's secure, and it's honestly not that hard to wrap your head around once you see the logic behind it.
Getting Started with the Basics
Before we jump into the code, let's talk about where this script actually lives. You're going to want to put your roblox studio chat command script inside ServerScriptService. Why? Because chat commands usually do things that affect the game world—like changing a player's health or moving them to a new spot—and those changes need to happen on the server. If you put this in a LocalScript, only you would see the changes, and most of the "power" commands wouldn't work anyway.
Once you've created a new Script in ServerScriptService, the first thing we need to do is listen for when a player joins the game. We can't check what someone is saying if we haven't identified who is talking.
The Foundation of the Script
Every chat script starts with a PlayerAdded event. Inside that, we connect to the Chatted event. It looks a bit like this:
lua game.Players.PlayerAdded:Connect(function(player) player.Chatted:Connect(function(message) -- This is where the magic happens end) end)
In this snippet, message is just a string of text. It's whatever the player typed into the box and hit enter on. If I type "Hello world," the message variable becomes "Hello world."
Breaking Down the Command
The problem with just checking the message is that players don't always type things perfectly. Someone might type "/Speed" and someone else might type "/speed". Computers are pretty picky, so we usually want to turn the whole message into lowercase right away using string.lower().
Also, most commands have two parts: the command itself (like /speed) and an argument (like 100). To handle this, we use string.split(). This function takes the message and chops it into a list of words based on where the spaces are.
Here is how you'd structure that logic:
lua local words = string.split(message, " ") local command = string.lower(words[1])
Now, instead of guessing what the player typed, we have a clean command variable that we can check against.
Making a Speed Command
Let's actually make something functional. A speed command is a classic. You want to type /speed 100 and watch your character zoom across the baseplate.
To do this, we need to find the player's character, then find the Humanoid inside that character, and finally change the WalkSpeed property.
lua if command == "/speed" then local speedValue = tonumber(words[2]) if speedValue then local character = player.Character if character and character:FindFirstChild("Humanoid") then character.Humanoid.WalkSpeed = speedValue end end end
Notice the tonumber() part? That's super important. When someone types "100" in chat, it's a string (text), not a number. You can't set a WalkSpeed to a piece of text, so we have to convert it first. If the player types /speed chicken, tonumber will return nil, and the script won't crash because we checked if speedValue then.
Restricting Access (Admin Only)
You probably don't want every random person joining your game to have the power to change their speed or kick others. This is where admin checks come in.
The easiest way to do this for a solo project is to check the player.UserId. You can find your UserId in the URL of your Roblox profile page. It's a long string of numbers.
```lua local adminID = 12345678 -- Put your ID here
player.Chatted:Connect(function(message) if player.UserId ~= adminID then return end
-- Rest of your command logic goes here end) ```
By adding that one line at the top, you've effectively locked the script. If the person chatting isn't you, the script just stops immediately (return) and ignores whatever they typed. If you're building a game for a group, you could check player:GetRankInGroup(groupId) instead.
Adding More Commands
Once you have the structure down, adding more functionality to your roblox studio chat command script is just a matter of adding more elseif statements.
The Kill Command
If you want to be able to reset your character (or someone else's) via chat:
lua elseif command == "/kill" then if player.Character then player.Character:BreakJoints() end end
The Teleport Command
Teleporting is a bit more complex because you usually want to teleport to a specific place or part. If you have a part in your game named "SpawnPoint2," you could do something like this:
lua elseif command == "/tp" then local targetPart = game.Workspace:FindFirstChild("SpawnPoint2") if targetPart and player.Character then player.Character:MoveTo(targetPart.Position) end end
Handling Multiple Arguments
Sometimes you want to target other players. For example, /kick playername. This requires you to look through the list of players currently in the game and see if any of their names match the second word in your command.
It's a bit more advanced, but it follows the same logic: 1. Get the target name from words[2]. 2. Loop through game.Players:GetPlayers(). 3. If string.find matches the player's name, run the command on them.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
When you're writing a roblox studio chat command script, there are a few things that usually trip people up.
First, capitalization. I mentioned it earlier, but it's the number one reason scripts "don't work." Always use string.lower() on your command input so you don't have to worry if you accidentally had Caps Lock on.
Second, the difference between workspace and game.Workspace. They're basically the same thing, but being consistent helps your code stay readable. Also, always make sure you check if the Character exists. Players die and respawn; if they are in the middle of respawning when you run a command, player.Character might be nil, and your script will throw an error.
Third, don't forget the space in string.split(message, " "). If you forget that space, the script won't know where to cut the sentence, and your words table will just be one giant string.
Testing Your Script
To test this, you don't need to publish your game. Just hit the "Play" button in Roblox Studio. Open the chat (usually the "/" key) and type your command.
If it doesn't work, the first place you should look is the Output window (View > Output). If there's a red line of text, it'll tell you exactly which line of the script failed and why. Maybe you misspelled "Humanoid" or forgot a then at the end of an if statement. We've all been there.
Why This Matters
Building a roblox studio chat command script is a great way to practice string manipulation and conditional logic. It's a step up from "press a button to open a door" because it requires the game to interpret human language and turn it into code execution.
Once you get comfortable with this, you can start looking into the newer TextChatService. Roblox has been updating how chat works, and while the old Player.Chatted method still works great for most things, the new system allows for things like custom chat bubbles, autocomplete, and better filtering. But don't feel rushed—master the basics of server-side commands first, and the rest will come naturally.
Coding in Roblox is all about building blocks. Today it's a speed command, tomorrow it's a full-blown admin panel. Just keep tweaking the code, try to break it, and then figure out how to fix it. That's how the best developers on the platform started!