Ever had the problem where you’re firing a bullet or some kind of projectile at high speeds, and it just goes right through the collision object, instead of hitting it?
Here’s a weapon that fires a bullet at random velocities, to demonstrate the issue:
The bullets impact the character in various places, rather than at the first point of contact. I haven’t found a way to enable any kind of continuous contact option, outside of playing with the
safe_margin
setting. I ended up adding a raycast:
It’s definitely a hack, though. The
move_and_collide
should be replaced by the ray query. Using both instructions together could result in an even weirder situation;
move_and_collide
could skip a collision object (the issue we’re trying to fix with the ray query), but then still collide with a different collision object. Then the ray query redoes the same movement and collides with the first object that was missed by
move_and_collide
. Depending on the game, that could mean something like randomly shooting through shields or walls under specific circumstances.
The current approach is essentially a two-pass solution, where the first pass is sloppy, and the second pass works as intended, but doesn’t move the projectile.
One of the benefits of working with Godot Engine is that GDScript allows one to operate high level. GDScript is dynamically typed, so not even variable types have to be specified, but I would strongly recommend using static typing wherever possible. It can help with performance but primarily adds clarity when trying to follow the …
I had a setup with nested CanvasLayer nodes. Toggling the visibility of the root CanvasLayer doesn’t hide any nested CanvasLayer nodes. My solution was to listen to the visibility_changed signal, find any CanvasLayer child nodes, and apply the same visibility to them.
Here’s a collection of tutorials that are helpful if you’re new to using Control and Container nodes to create UIs in Godot 4. The Game Dev Artisan video covers creating a simple UI with a reload indicator for a simple 2D tank game: Clear Code’s 11+ hour Ultimate Introduction to Godot 4 has a chapter …
Godot’s resources are quite powerful. However, modifying a resource class doesn’t automatically update any corresponding .tres files, unless you happen to edit a scene that uses that resource in some way. This doesn’t impact runtime behavior — the game still runs as expected. But it can impact version control and result in a messier diff …
Projectiles going through collision objects
Ever had the problem where you’re firing a bullet or some kind of projectile at high speeds, and it just goes right through the collision object, instead of hitting it?
Here’s a weapon that fires a bullet at random velocities, to demonstrate the issue:
The bullets impact the character in various places, rather than at the first point of contact. I haven’t found a way to enable any kind of continuous contact option, outside of playing with the
safe_marginsetting. I ended up adding a raycast:The ray cast looks somewhat like this:
It’s definitely a hack, though. The
move_and_collideshould be replaced by the ray query. Using both instructions together could result in an even weirder situation;move_and_collidecould skip a collision object (the issue we’re trying to fix with the ray query), but then still collide with a different collision object. Then the ray query redoes the same movement and collides with the first object that was missed bymove_and_collide. Depending on the game, that could mean something like randomly shooting through shields or walls under specific circumstances.The current approach is essentially a two-pass solution, where the first pass is sloppy, and the second pass works as intended, but doesn’t move the projectile.
Related Posts
When not all strings are Strings. Detect bugs in your GDscript more easily with static typing
One of the benefits of working with Godot Engine is that GDScript allows one to operate high level. GDScript is dynamically typed, so not even variable types have to be specified, but I would strongly recommend using static typing wherever possible. It can help with performance but primarily adds clarity when trying to follow the …
Toggling Visibility of Nested CanvasLayers
I had a setup with nested CanvasLayer nodes. Toggling the visibility of the root CanvasLayer doesn’t hide any nested CanvasLayer nodes. My solution was to listen to the visibility_changed signal, find any CanvasLayer child nodes, and apply the same visibility to them.
Building UIs in Godot 4
Here’s a collection of tutorials that are helpful if you’re new to using Control and Container nodes to create UIs in Godot 4. The Game Dev Artisan video covers creating a simple UI with a reload indicator for a simple 2D tank game: Clear Code’s 11+ hour Ultimate Introduction to Godot 4 has a chapter …
Update all resources after modifying a resource class
Godot’s resources are quite powerful. However, modifying a resource class doesn’t automatically update any corresponding .tres files, unless you happen to edit a scene that uses that resource in some way. This doesn’t impact runtime behavior — the game still runs as expected. But it can impact version control and result in a messier diff …