Most, or pretty much all Lua coding I've seen so far follows the basic format of


function Update(self) checks the game for every single interval of time until whatever the script is attached to disappears.
But I was wondering about how the script should be written so that it only acts once before self terminating, so as to save up processing power and make stuff more streamlined.

If you want everything to be done only once, you could put all of it into the Create function.

Should work. Just make sure the variable of your choosing is set to 0 to begin with. If you want it to be exactly timed, you could go for something like:

Mind you, "darpdarp" is a completely arbitrary variable name. :U

I assume I should put this in the create function area?

Yes. I should start speaking more clearly, silly me. :U
So yeah, to clarify myself a little more:

Well, Shook's example script will still loop. It just won't do anything while it loops (except checking if self.darpdarp == 0). Since the Create() function only runs once, you should put your single-run stuff into there instead of putting it into Update() (the Update() function loops while the object is in the simulation).

Figured it out and I found that the resulting code was surprisingly simple

Indeed