Debounce

A debounce prevents a function from running too many times or an input triggering multiple times. The follow is some good examples on when to use debounces.

Detect a collision

Individual cooldowns

If you want to create a kill brick, you will need to use the .Touched event and damage the player. However since we don't have a debounce, this will damage the player many times as it is running every frame.

local part = script.Parent

part.Touched:Connect(function(hit)
    if not hit:IsA("Player") then return end

    hit.Health = hit.Health - 10
end)

To avoid causing excessive damage, we will add a debounce pattern which adds a cooldown to our function.

In this example, we use a debounce table so that each player has their own individual cooldowns.

local part = script.Parent

local debounce = {} -- Create a debounce table
local debounceTime = 1 -- Set a debounce time

part.Touched:Connect(function(hit)
    if not hit:IsA("Player") then return end
    if debounce[hit] then return end

    debounce[hit] = true
    hit.Health = hit.Health - 10
    wait(debounceTime)
    debounce[hit] = nil
end)

Global cooldowns

If you want to create a door, you would want the cooldown to be global so that the door only opens after the cooldown for everybody.

local zone = script.Parent

local debounce = false -- Create a debounce boolean
local debounceTime = 1 -- Set a debounce time

zone.Touched:Connect(function(hit)
    if not hit:IsA("Player") then return end
    if debounce then return end

    debounce = true
    --- DOOR ACTION HERE ---
    wait(debounceTime)
    debounce = nil
end)