How To: Code a Throttle or Debounce function in Lua

No beating around the bush. Here’s a module that you can drop into your Roblox Place and start using it right away to debounce function calls.

local Throttler = {}

local running = false

function Throttler.run( callback, timeoutInSec )
	
	if running == false then

		running = true

		callback()

		if timeoutInSec ~= nil then
			task.wait(timeoutInSec)
		end

		running = false
	end
	
end

return Throttler

Use the Lua module like so:

local ServerStorage = game:GetService("ServerStorage")
local Modules = ServerStorage:WaitForChild("Modules")

local throttler = require(Modules:WaitForChild("Throttler"))

function myOtherFunction()
	print("Throttled...")
end

throttler.run( myOtherFunction, 0.5 )

My example loads the debounce function from ServerStorage, but you could place it in ReplicatedStorage if you need to share it between client/server.

This will ensure your function cannot be executed multiple times in parallel. You could use this in cases where a player touches a portal or object that causes damage so the logic doesn’t execute too many times.