If you've been messing around in Luau lately, you've probably realized that setting up a basic roblox starter player esp isn't nearly as complicated as it looks at first glance. Whether you're trying to build a teammate-highlighting system for a tactical shooter or you just want a better way to debug where players are spawning in your own game, understanding how to track and highlight character models is a core skill for any Roblox dev.
Honestly, the term "ESP" gets a bad rap because people usually associate it with exploits, but in the context of game development, it's just a "vision" mechanic. Think about how games like Left 4 Dead highlight teammates through walls or how "detective" modes work in various action games. That's all we're doing here—writing a bit of code that tells the client to show specific information about other players regardless of what's standing in the way.
Why Use the StarterPlayer Folder?
When you're looking to implement a roblox starter player esp, the first thing you have to decide is where the script actually lives. In Roblox, the StarterPlayer folder is your best friend for this. Specifically, putting a LocalScript into StarterPlayerScripts is the most efficient way to handle UI and visual effects that only the individual player should see.
You don't want the server handling ESP. If the server were responsible for drawing boxes or highlights around every player for every other player, the lag would be unbearable. Plus, the server doesn't really care about "visuals"—it cares about physics and data. By keeping our script on the client side, we ensure that the player's computer does the heavy lifting of rendering those outlines, keeping the gameplay smooth for everyone else.
The Modern Way: Using Highlights
Back in the day, if you wanted to make a roblox starter player esp, you had to use things like BoxHandleAdornments or messy BillboardGuis with frames that were stretched to look like boxes. It worked, sure, but it looked kind of janky.
Nowadays, Roblox has given us the Highlight object. It's a game-changer. You just parent a Highlight instance to a character model, and boom—you've got a clean, professional-looking glow around the character. You can change the fill color, the outline color, and even how transparent the whole thing is. The best part? It has a property called DepthMode. If you set that to AlwaysOnTop, it shows up through walls automatically. No math required.
Setting Up the Script Logic
To get started, you'll want to create a LocalScript inside StarterPlayerScripts. The logic is pretty straightforward: we need to find all the players currently in the game, wait for their characters to load, and then stick a highlight inside those characters.
But it can't just happen once. Players join and leave all the time. Characters reset or get killed and respawn. So, your script needs to be "listening." You'll want to use game.Players.PlayerAdded to catch new people coming in, and player.CharacterAdded to catch when they respawn.
I usually like to wrap this in a function. Let's call it applyESP. Every time a character appears, you run applyESP(character). Inside that function, you check if a highlight already exists (to avoid stacking ten glows on one person), and if not, you create one.
Handling the LocalPlayer
One thing people often forget when making a roblox starter player esp is that you are also a player. Unless you want your own screen to be filled with a giant glowing blob of your own character's outline, you need to add a simple check.
In your script, you'll define local LocalPlayer = game.Players.LocalPlayer. Then, inside your loop or your player-added function, just add a line that says if player == LocalPlayer then return end. This tells the script to just ignore you and only focus on everyone else. It's a small detail, but it makes the game actually playable.
Customizing the Look
The "look" of your roblox starter player esp really depends on the vibe of your game. If it's a horror game, maybe you want a thin, faint red outline. If it's a bright, arcade-style simulator, maybe you want a thick neon green glow.
Here are the main properties you'll want to mess with: * FillColor: The color inside the character. * OutlineColor: The color of the border. * FillTransparency: How much you can see the character "through" the highlight. Usually, setting this to 0.5 or 0.6 feels right. * OutlineTransparency: If you want a sharp line, keep this at 0.
You can even get fancy and change the color based on the player's team. If player.TeamColor == LocalPlayer.TeamColor, make it blue; otherwise, make it red. It adds a lot of polish for very little extra work.
Performance Considerations
I see a lot of people make the mistake of using a while true do loop that runs every 0.1 seconds to find players and add ESP. Please, don't do that. It's a massive waste of resources.
Roblox's event-based system is much better. By using PlayerAdded and CharacterAdded, the script only runs when something actually changes. Your CPU will thank you, and your players won't experience those weird frame stutters. If you absolutely must use a loop for some reason (like checking distance), use Task.wait() or bind it to RunService.RenderStepped, but even then, keep the logic inside the loop as light as possible.
Beyond Just Outlines
Once you've got the basic roblox starter player esp working with highlights, you might want to add more info. This is where BillboardGuis come back into play. You can attach a UI to the player's head that shows their name, their health, or how far away they are.
To do the distance thing, you'll need a bit of math. You take the position of the LocalPlayer's RootPart and subtract it from the target player's RootPart. The .Magnitude of that vector gives you the exact distance in studs. You can update a text label every second or so with that number. It's super helpful for games with large maps where you need to know if someone is 50 studs away or 500.
Cleaning Up After Players Leave
Memory leaks are a real thing in Roblox scripting. When a player leaves the game, their character is destroyed, but sometimes scripts can leave behind "ghost" references if you aren't careful.
The good news is that if you parent your Highlight or BillboardGui directly to the character model, Roblox is pretty good about cleaning it up when the character is removed. However, if you have a list or a table where you're tracking all the active ESP objects, make sure you use Players.PlayerRemoving to clear out those table entries. Keeping your data tidy is the difference between a game that runs well for hours and one that crashes after twenty minutes.
Wrapping Things Up
Building a roblox starter player esp is one of those projects that feels really rewarding because you get an immediate visual result. It's not just boring backend data; you can see the results right there on the screen.
Just remember to keep it ethical. If you're making a competitive game, you probably only want this feature enabled for specific power-ups or roles. But as a learning exercise, it's one of the best ways to get comfortable with how players, characters, and the client-server relationship work in the Roblox ecosystem. Once you master highlights and character events, you can pretty much build any kind of tracking system you can imagine.
So, go ahead and open up Studio, drop a script into StarterPlayerScripts, and start experimenting. It's the best way to learn, and honestly, seeing those glowing outlines pop up for the first time is always a pretty cool "aha!" moment.