Saving Colors

This is one example of how you could handle saving colors for your players so that they persist.

What's the point of allowing the players to change colors of an object if they don't save?

Some important things to note about this example:

1. Enable saving_enabled on the Advanced_Color_Picker_Save_Load_Client script. It is disabled by default.
2. Your mesh root needs to be networked and have a networked property called data. See the example by looking at Mesh Root.

Player Data has a limit of how much can be stored, so if you are letting the player color the world, expect to hit the limit.

For simple objects where it may be a hat, or some clothing, then this should be fine.

This example stores an object that is built up of the mesh ids and the color picked by the player. The data is sent to a server script which handles saving to Player Storage. When a player logs back in, we convert the data into a string and use a networked property so we can get it to the client.

See Storage for more information.

Client Script

local mesh_root = script:GetCustomProperty("mesh_root"):WaitForObject()
local enable_saving = script:GetCustomProperty("enable_saving")

-- If saving is enabled, then we broadcast to the server when a color is changed.
-- Ideally it would be nice not to have to broadcast every time, but if we try to send
-- all the colors and mesh ids to the server, we will hit either broadcast rate limits,
-- or data limits.

if(enable_saving) then
    Events.Connect("on_color_picker_object_changed", function(id, color)
        local a, j = string.find(id, ":")

        Events.BroadcastToServer("on_color_picker_save", string.sub(id, 0, j - 1), color)
    end)
end

-- Here we listen for a change on the networked property.  We handle turning the
-- data back into a table so we can then apply the colors to the mesh.

mesh_root.networkedPropertyChangedEvent:Connect(function(obj, prop)
    if(prop == "data") then
        local data = unstringify_data(mesh_root:GetCustomProperty(prop))
        local objs = get_objects(mesh_root, {})

        for k, v in pairs(data) do
            for o = 1, #objs do
                local a, j = string.find(objs[o].id, ":")
                local id = string.sub(objs[o].id, 0, j - 1)

                if(id == k) then
                    objs[o]:SetColor(Color.New(v[1], v[2], v[3]))
                end
            end
        end
    end
end)

function get_objects(r, objs)
    local children = r:GetChildren()

    for c = 1, #children do
        local child = children[c]

        if(not child:GetCustomProperty("ignore_color_picker")) then
            if(child:IsA("StaticMesh")) then
                table.insert(objs, #objs + 1, child)
            elseif(child:IsA("Folder")) then
                objs = get_objects(child, objs)
            end
        end
    end

    return objs
end

function unstringify_data(str)
    local obj = {}
    local count = 1
    local last_key = nil

    for s in string.gmatch(str, "([^|]+)") do
        if(s ~= "") then
            if(count == 1) then
                last_key = s
                obj[s] = {}
            end

            if(count > 1) then
                obj[last_key][count - 1] = s
            end

            count = count + 1

            if(count > 4) then
                count = 1
            end
        end
    end

    return obj
end

Server Script

local mesh_root = script:GetCustomProperty("mesh_root"):WaitForObject()
local enable_loading = script:GetCustomProperty("enable_loading")

-- Turns a table of that was stored in the player storage into a string so we can
-- set the networked property value.

function stringify_data(data)
    local str = {}

    for k, v in pairs(data) do
        table.insert(str, #str + 1, string.format("|%s|%.2f|%.2f|%.2f", k, v.r, v.g, v.b))
    end

    return table.concat(str)
end

-- When player joins the game, grab their data, turn it into a string, and send it to them
-- via a networked property.

Game.playerJoinedEvent:Connect(function(player)
    local data = Storage.GetPlayerData(player) or {}

    mesh_root:SetNetworkedCustomProperty("data", stringify_data(data))
end)

-- Handles saving the color to storage for the player. 

Events.ConnectForPlayer("on_color_picker_save", function(player, id, color)
    local data = Storage.GetPlayerData(player) or {}

    data[id] = color

    Storage.SetPlayerData(player, data)
end)