Getting a solid roblox simulator pet follow script to work properly is usually the first big hurdle you'll face when building a clicker or a collecting game. Let's be real, a simulator without pets is just a clicking game, and those aren't nearly as fun. You want those little cubes or low-poly dragons to trail behind the player smoothly, without flying off into the stratosphere or getting stuck under the baseplate.
It sounds simple on paper—just make the pet move to the player—but if you've spent any time in Roblox Studio, you know it's rarely that straightforward. You have to deal with physics, lag, and making sure the pets don't all stack on top of each other like a weird neon pancake.
Choosing the right approach for movement
When you start looking into a roblox simulator pet follow script, you'll realize there are a few different ways to handle the actual movement. Back in the day, everyone used BodyPosition and BodyGyro. They worked, but they're technically deprecated now. If you want your game to feel modern and run well, you're better off looking at AlignPosition and AlignOrientation, or even just updating the CFrame every frame using RunService.
Personally, I prefer using the newer physics constraints. They handle the "weight" of the pet much better. If you just hard-code the position using CFrame, the pet might look jittery, or it might phase through walls because it's not actually interacting with the physics engine. By using constraints, the pet feels like it's actually in the world, swaying slightly as the player turns.
Setting up the pet model
Before you even touch a script, you need a pet that's ready to move. Usually, this is just a Model with a PrimaryPart (typically a box called "HumanoidRootPart" or just "Root"). Make sure the whole model is unanchored. If it's anchored, no script in the world is going to move it.
You also want to make sure the pet doesn't have any weird collisions. If the pet's legs or ears are hitting the player's legs, it's going to cause some serious physics glitches. I always recommend setting the pet's parts to a specific Collision Group that doesn't collide with the player. It saves you a lot of headaches down the road when your player suddenly goes flying because their cat touched their heel.
The core logic of the follow script
The heart of a roblox simulator pet follow script is a loop that constantly calculates where the pet should be. You don't want the pet to be exactly where the player is (that would be inside the player's torso). Instead, you're looking for an offset.
Most developers use a basic offset like Vector3.new(3, 2, 3). This keeps the pet a few studs behind and to the side of the player. In your script, you'll likely use RunService.Heartbeat. This event fires every single frame after the physics have been calculated. Inside that loop, you tell the pet to move toward the player's HumanoidRootPart.CFrame, but with that little offset added to it.
It looks something like this: you get the player's position, apply a transformation to find the spot behind them, and then tell the pet's physics constraints to target that spot. If you're doing it right, the pet will follow the player around like a loyal (and hopefully very expensive) companion.
Handling multiple pets at once
This is where things get a bit more interesting. If a player has five pets equipped, you can't have them all trying to occupy the same offset. They'll just jitter and fight for space.
To fix this, your roblox simulator pet follow script needs a bit of math. You can arrange the pets in a semi-circle or a grid behind the player. One way to do this is by having a list of equipped pets and assigning each one an index. Pet #1 goes to the left, Pet #2 goes to the right, Pet #3 goes further back, and so on.
Using math.sin and math.cos is the "fancy" way to arrange them in a perfect circle, but even a simple array of offsets works fine for most simulators. The key is making sure that as the player turns, the pets rotate around the player rather than just staying in a fixed global position.
Dealing with network ownership
If you've ever seen a pet stuttering or moving with a one-second delay, it's almost certainly a Network Ownership issue. By default, the server tries to handle the physics of everything. But the player's character is controlled by the client. When the server tries to move a pet to a player who is moving on their own screen, the two positions never quite match up perfectly.
The fix? Set the Network Owner of the pet's primary part to the player. This tells Roblox, "Hey, let this specific player's computer handle the physics for this pet." Suddenly, the movement becomes buttery smooth because the client is calculating both their own movement and the pet's movement at the same time.
Smoothness and "Lag"
Even with network ownership sorted, a basic "go to position" script can feel a bit robotic. To make it feel more "pet-like," you can add a little bit of lerping or damping. You don't want the pet to snap instantly to its target. You want it to have a little bit of travel time.
Using AlignPosition with a lowered Responsiveness value is a great way to achieve this. It makes the pet feel like it has actual mass. It'll trail behind slightly when the player starts running and might even overshoot a tiny bit when the player stops abruptly. It's those small details that make a simulator feel high-quality rather than something thrown together in ten minutes.
Performance considerations
If your game gets popular and you have 50 players, each with 10 pets, that's 500 pets moving around at once. If every single pet is being moved by a heavy script on the server, your server heartbeat is going to tank.
Smart developers often handle the visuals of the pets on the client side. The server just keeps track of which pets are equipped, and each player's local script handles the actual movement of the pets they see. This offloads all that math to the players' computers, which are more than capable of handling a few moving parts.
Common bugs to watch out for
While writing your roblox simulator pet follow script, you'll probably run into the "pet through the floor" bug. This usually happens if your offset is too low or if your pet's hip height isn't accounted for. Always make sure your target position is at least a few studs above the ground.
Another common issue is the pet spinning wildly. This happens when your AlignOrientation (or BodyGyro) is trying to fight with the pet's natural physics. Make sure the MaxTorque or MaxForce is high enough to overcome gravity, but not so high that it creates a feedback loop that sends the pet into a spiral.
Wrapping it up
At the end of the day, creating a roblox simulator pet follow script is a bit of a balancing act. You're balancing physics against performance, and visual smoothness against script complexity. Start simple: get a single part to follow you. Once that works, add the offsets for multiple pets. Then, polish it up with some nice physics constraints and client-side optimization.
It takes a bit of tinkering to get it feeling "just right," but once you see a line of pets following a player perfectly through your map, it's incredibly satisfying. Just keep experimenting with the values, and don't be afraid to scrap a method if it's feeling too clunky. Most of the best simulators on Roblox went through dozens of versions of their pet scripts before landing on the one that felt perfect.