Setting up a custom roblox studio humanoid climbing script is usually the first big hurdle for anyone making a decent adventure or parkour game. Let's be real for a second—the default Roblox climbing system is okay if you just want to go up a ladder, but it's pretty boring if you're trying to build something that feels like Assassin's Creed or Breath of the Wild. If you want your players to actually scale mountains or clamber over walls, you have to get your hands dirty with some custom code.
The default behavior relies on Trusses or parts specifically marked as "Climbable," which feels super restrictive. You don't want your players searching for a specific ladder part; you want them to be able to grab onto anything that looks like a wall. To do that, we have to move away from the built-in physics and start handling things ourselves through raycasting and CFrame manipulation.
Why the Default System Isn't Enough
If you've spent any time in Roblox Studio, you know that the Humanoid object has a built-in "Climbing" state. It triggers when a player touches a TrussPart or a part with the right properties. But here's the problem: it's incredibly stiff. You can't really move sideways easily, you can't jump off the wall in a specific direction, and it just looks well, old.
When you write a custom roblox studio humanoid climbing script, you're essentially telling the game to ignore its own rules. You want to detect when a player is facing a wall, stop them from falling, and then let them move around that vertical surface using the WASD keys. It sounds simple, but getting the "feel" right is where most people get stuck. If it's too snappy, it feels like a teleporting glitch; if it's too floaty, it feels like the player is swimming through air.
The Secret Sauce: Raycasting
Before you can climb a wall, your script needs to "see" the wall. This is where raycasting comes in. Think of a raycast like a laser pointer attached to your player's chest. In your script, you'll be firing a short ray (maybe 2 or 3 studs long) directly in front of the HumanoidRootPart.
If that laser hits something, the script says, "Hey, there's a wall here!" If it doesn't hit anything, the player stays in their normal walking or falling state. You'll want to run this check constantly—usually inside a RunService.Heartbeat or Stepped connection—so the game always knows if the player is still touching the wall.
One thing I've learned the hard way: make sure you use RaycastParams. You don't want your climbing ray to hit the player's own arm or a tiny piece of grass. You need to whitelist the environment and blacklist the character model itself, or your player will end up "climbing" their own torso, which usually results in them flying off into the void.
Dealing with the Humanoid State
Humanoids are notoriously finicky. They really want to be in a "Falling" or "Running" state. When you start your custom climb, you need to override this. Most scripters do this by setting the Humanoid's state to Physics or PlatformStand.
By setting PlatformStand = true, you basically turn off the Humanoid's internal physics engine. This is great because it stops the character from trying to stand up or walk while they're mid-air on a wall. However, it also means you are 100% responsible for their movement. You'll have to manually update their CFrame or use a LinearVelocity object to keep them pinned to the wall.
I personally prefer using LinearVelocity and AlignOrientation nowadays because they play nicer with Roblox's newer physics solver. It makes the movement smoother and prevents that jittery "shaking" effect you sometimes see in older games.
Making the Movement Feel Natural
Once you've got the player stuck to the wall, you need to let them move. You can grab the player's input using ContextActionService or UserInputService. If they press 'W', you move their character up. If they press 'A' or 'D', you move them sideways along the face of the wall.
But wait, how do you know which way is "sideways" on a wall? This is where a little bit of math (don't worry, it's not too bad) comes in. When your raycast hits the wall, it returns a "Normal" vector. This is just a fancy way of saying "the direction the wall is facing." By using the cross product of the wall's normal and the world's "Up" vector, you can calculate exactly which way is left and right relative to the surface. It makes the movement feel way more professional.
Also, don't forget about AutoRotate. You should probably turn off Humanoid.AutoRotate while climbing. If you don't, the player's character will try to spin around to face the direction of movement, which looks super weird when they're supposed to be flat against a brick wall.
Animations Make the Difference
You can have the most mathematically perfect roblox studio humanoid climbing script in the world, but if the player is just sliding around in a T-pose, it's going to look terrible. You need a good climbing loop.
Ideally, you want different animations for idling on the wall, moving up, and moving sideways. If you're feeling extra fancy, you can even script a "ledge reach" animation for when they get to the top. Transitioning between these animations depends on the player's velocity. If their movement speed is near zero, play the idle; if they're moving, play the climb animation and adjust the AnimationTrack:AdjustSpeed() based on how fast they're actually going. It's those little touches that make a game feel "high-budget."
Handling Corners and Ledges
This is the part where most people give up and go back to Trusses. What happens when the player reaches the corner of a building? If your raycast is only firing straight forward, they'll just lose contact and fall.
A good workaround is to fire multiple rays—maybe one from each shoulder. If the middle ray misses but the right-shoulder ray hits, you can rotate the player around the corner. It takes a bit of trial and error to get the math right, but it's worth it.
Ledge detection is a whole other beast. Usually, you'd fire a ray downward from a point above the player's head. If that ray hits a horizontal surface, you know they've reached the top. You can then trigger a "vault" or "mantle" animation to pull them up onto the platform. This is way more satisfying than just having them awkwardly hop over the edge.
Common Pitfalls and Bugs
There are a few things that will almost certainly go wrong when you're building this. First, players getting stuck in the wall. This happens if your raycast detection is too sensitive or if your positioning logic pushes them too far into the part's hitboxes. Always add a tiny "offset" (like 0.1 studs) to keep the player just barely off the surface.
Second, the "infinite climb." If you don't check the angle of the surface, players might try to "climb" the ceiling or a very steep slope that they should probably just be walking on. You can check the Normal of the raycast hit to make sure the angle is steep enough to qualify as a wall.
Lastly, make sure you handle what happens when the player runs out of stamina or jumps off. A simple ApplyImpulse call can give them a nice little push away from the wall when they hit the spacebar, making the parkour feel much more fluid.
Wrapping It Up
Building a custom roblox studio humanoid climbing script is a bit of a rite of passage for Roblox developers. It forces you to learn about raycasting, CFrame math, and how Humanoids actually work under the hood. It's definitely more work than just slapping down a few TrussParts, but the end result is a game that feels unique and much more fun to play.
Don't be afraid to experiment with the numbers. Change the climbing speed, tweak the raycast distance, and try out different animation styles. Every game is different, and the "perfect" script is really just whatever feels best for your specific project. Just keep testing, and you'll get it dialed in eventually. Happy scripting!