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Dev Log: Camera Movement

The camera wasn't something I put a lot of though into when I first started on programming, so initially we had a very old school style camera that simply followed the player character:

Not too dissimilar from a lot of top down games in the 80's and early 90's.

The problem was that, at least in large flat areas, I didn't want the out of bounds areas to be visible. (Obviously, when the traversable area is smaller than the game's viewport, some out of bounds area will be visible.)

So the answer was to set up limits to how far the camera could move relative to the map, which left us with this:

Now, when the camera hits the boundary of the game area, it stops and allows the player to keep moving toward the edge. On the code-side, this is surprisingly straightforward in Godot. The camera itself is attached to the player node, and a special node inheriting Area2D (CameraRegion) is added to each level scene that also contains the left, top, right and bottom limits for how far the camera should move.

When the Area2D is entered, it calls a global (CameraManager) to emit a signal with the positions of the limits. The player node is subscribed to that signal and uses the passed positions to update the camera limits. All told, it's very little code to make that work.

CameraRegion.gd:

CameraManager.gd:

Player.gd:

That also means that I get Link's Awakening style camera lerps on screen transitions for free. I just have to add multiple CameraRegion nodes to a single level scene and as the player moves from one to another, the entered region tells the camera manager to emit a new set of camera limits:

The camera butts up against the local region (in this case, just an arbitrary X value) and when the player crosses the path, the camera jumps over to the new set of limits.

Of course, the jumping doesn't look very good so by enabling smoothing on the camera node, we're left with this:

So that's it. We're done. This is what it looks like in a real part of the game and not a contrived test level:

I can't believe how easy--

Loading a game from a save causes the camera to spawn on the scene origin and then move to within the camera boundary. And with smoothing on, you get this unintended lerp.

Begin cussing.

Okay, well it can't be too hard to fix that. I'll just disable camera smoothing whenever a new map is loading, then re-enable it after the load has finished. Except that didn't fix it.

(Yes, that is the same GIF, but I'm not going to record multiple videos of the exact same thing happening.)

So I figured I should wait a frame after load to re-enable smoothing. In the first frame after load, the camera should immediately (and invisibly) snap to the new boundary, and then smoothing will get turned on and then it's fine from there.

Then I said, "Ehhhhhh.... I'll come back to this."

That was three months ago. Today I fixed it. You want to know how I fixed it?

I wait FIVE frames after loading new map. Four doesn't work. It has to be at least five. And now it works:

Is it the right way to do that? Nope! Is there some underlying issue that if I fixed would obviate the need to wait five frames? Probably! But I don't care! My camera does all of the things (read: two things) that I need it to do and I'm happy with it.

(Also, the five frame wait happens after the level has loaded and the player has control, so it's not even adding five frames to the load time. It's theoretically invisible to the player.)

#game dev #uddra #game development #indie dev

pangur-and-grim

The grinding process for sharpening anything to a cutting edge on a grinding wheel, or even using a whetstone or even sand paper, would cause a large amount of friction heat that would cause a poor insulator substance, like the flesh of a banana, to heat up and become mushy dramatically fast. On a grinding wheel this would mean sending flying bits of banana flinging across the walls

so what you're not understanding is that you'd use a green banana, which are rigid and perfect for sharpening.

tasty-patches

As something of a sharpener myself, I'm pretty sure that bananas are frangible enough that nearly all of the heat would be carried away by the swarf. Plus, given how little resistance an even frozen banana would put up against a grinding wheel, I doubt there would be much friction heating anyway.

I'm confident that, as long as you're using a high speed grinder (a low speed grinder like a Tormek would allow too much time for direct thermal transfer from the stone/coolant to the banana), you could sharpen a frozen banana long before it turned to mush.

Addendum: for the truly sharpest banana you might consider a green plantain. Those fuckers can be used as weapons even when blunt.

starting a collection

#makar

shop5

let’s be real the pressure to use AI as an adult is exactly what they said the pressure the do drugs as a teenager would be like but the people that told us that caved immediately for the AI and definitely did not just say no

everythingnowshow

Don’t Leave The Matrix, Bro…

inkandguns

lillytheaspie

#queen shit

whatsthebird

What's the Bird?

Location: Minnesota, USA

Date: October

Bird - 957 is ...

Wood Stork

Snowy Egret

Great Blue Heron

Little Blue Heron

None of the Above

Show Results

Voting ended onJul 9

We ask that discussion under questions be limited to how you came to your conclusion, not what your conclusion was.

Answer hidden under the cut.

cryptotheism

ct my friend im moving soon whats the scariest painting i can put in the bathroom

Francis Bacon portrait of Innocent X

tasty-patches

god I wish you could buy a full size print anywhere

#literally my favorite painting #you can get larger prints of the other studies naturally #but not the 1953 one #the original is 42x60 inches

r-truth

gischtglas

hybernating-bear

That's because this is Silmarillion

the-commonplace-book

bro what are you talking about artificial preservatives

#local grocery store

king-k-ripple

I had a dream last night where I made this meme. I laughed so hard in my dream that I woke up in the middle of the night.

bugkeeping

boopie….

#damn that's a big lad

lovely-v

Every time Sean Astin makes a statement on whether or not Sam and Frodo were indeed gay for each other in lord of the rings he’s always like “well we have to acknowledge that attitudes around sexuality have changed dramatically over the past several decades and since authorial intent is only up to speculation, the story is open to multiple readings, some of which might have different significances for different groups of people also they kiss on the lips because I said so”

busket

at the rose city comic con panel this month a fan asked them (sean and elijah) if sam and frodo were in love and they said

Sean: .....yes. absolutely

Elijah: 100 percent.

Sean: dont tell rosie

explorerrowan

Rosie: "This is my husband Sam, and that's his husband, Frodo. Frodo is my husband-in-law. I'm not into him, he's he's a bit too 'elfy' for my taste, but Sam likes him, and that's fine with me. As far as I know, Frodo can't give Sam children, but Frodo looks after ours all the same, so I don't mind sharing Sam if it means another pair of eyes on the wee ones. In all honesty, our family tree is right simple compared to some hobbits. Yes, I'm referrin' to you Lobelia, over there pretendin' you ain't eavesdroppin'. Still bitter you ain't got either of my boys or their house, eh?"

arcaniumagi2

ms-katonic-of-tamriel

Tbh it's canon that Frodo invited Sam and Rosie to move in to Bag End after their wedding and they all lived there for a couple of years until Frodo went to Valinor, so yeah. Running with it.

And once Rosie dies, Sam says his goodbyes and disappears after him.

roach-works

what’s funny is people assuming that rosie would somehow be too dim or naive to KNOW that sam loved frodo, instead of looking at a guy who would loyally follow a beloved friend to hell and then help carry him home again, and not be like ‘oh i can’t not fuck that.’

elodieunderglass

Polyamory, specifically polyandry, would be an interesting solution to the oddball population of the Shire.

The Shire is excellent farming country, with consistently good weather, and only one tough winter in living memory; hobbits like to produce large families; they’re resistant to disease, rarely violent, and encounter few dangers. It is usual for hobbits to produce many children, so that (for example) Bilbo and Frodo are unusual in both being only children, with no siblings, and not having children of their own. All of this should point to a population that increases every generation if not doubling outright. Young people (and their ideologies!) should rapidly outnumber the old with an ever-increasing effect and impact on society. However, the Shire has a surprisingly stable history; it never seems to increase or decrease greatly in population, and the bell curve of age seems… demographically balanced? There certainly isn’t a conflict from rising young bloods challenging the middle-aged reactionaries; there’s no unemployment; there are no housing crises or waves of emigration, or even a tendency for young people leaving home to marry. Meanwhile, not only does the Shire not suffer from internal pressures, but it remains obscure and hardly noticed in global politics.

What makes sense here is that adult hobbits form a loose group. Four parents in a polycule, between them all, may produce four children. All four parents claim to have four children. An outsider would assume this meant the adults had eight children.

Hobbits therefore are not especially fertile or fecund. They simply have large families. Much of their interest in genealogy is due to the complex relationships of blood-kin, hearth-kin, love-kin and pledge-kin, who must all be carefully tracked and measured - not just because you need to make sure that you don’t climb into bed with an un-permitted degree of blood-kin, but to track family alliances and carefully quantify the precise level of thoughtfulness to put into the proper present to gift your father’s lover’s lover (too much implies a degree of intimacy that might upset the polycule.)

Thus, while a hobbit matron may tell a startled dwarf that she has seven sons, she might only have borne five of them herself, and have one hearth-son by her wife, and a pledge-son of her first husband’s. There are between three and four fathers involved at various stages of production, from conception to pledge-duty, but there is debate about the precise number of fathers, as one child was festival-conceived and therefore provisionally pledged to the Brandybucks until more distinctive paternal traits should materialise. It’s expected that four of the sons will be uninterested in women, and their contribution to family life will be in raising hearth-children and pledge-duty. However, this level of detail is normally negotiated later in conversation, as a mutual overture of friendship. So she’s just clear and simple: yes, certainly, she has seven sons. Yes, they’re all hers. Yes, that’s fairly normal - yes, hobbits like big families. How big? That’s really hard to say! Well, about thirteen hobbits live in her house… er, she has forty-three nieces and nephews. Yes! She has nine siblings, that’s correct, but some of them are still babies themselves..

In this way, a bewildered dwarf might assume that hobbits are absurdly fertile, producing an average of seven children per couple, at an absurd pace.

When in fact, with about half of hobbits never bearing biological children, the population of hobbits is pretty much always the same.

Tl:dr, hobbit population works perfectly well, both internally and in the perceptions of outsiders, if the majority of the Shire is gay, they’re all polyamorous, and they all firmly claim to be parents of high numbers of children. Of course Frodo fathered Sam’s kids - he named them! They were pledge-kin but not hearth-kin, as Frodo needed a lot of quiet and stability in the home.

No outsider ever parses hobbit genealogy well enough to understand this except for Gandalf, who never explains anything either.

dancingspirals

are you kidding? Gandalf would WEAPONIZE his knowledge of Hobbit genealogy against outsiders

elodieunderglass

Since “pledge” kinships are multidimensional and can occur in different directions, hobbits can form - and formalise - family bonds simply because they choose to. Gandalf doesn’t tell anyone that the formation of Thorin’s Company, the Fellowship of the Ring, and Belladonna Took’s Accidental Troop of Mercenaries* are legal formations of pledge-siblings, a hobbit family structure usually claimed to increase social class and prestige (as high numbers of pledge-kin confer distinction on a hobbit, being a sort of popularity vote/endorsement that adds greatly to their social power. Incidentally, this is partly why Bilbo was both controversial and successful in his pledge-claim of Frodo; outsiders mistook his “bachelor” status as someone living outside of heteronormativity, while the Shire was bewildered and increasingly annoyed by his rejection of pledge and hearth commitments. By rights Bilbo had too few pledge-kin, and too little parenting experience, to claim rights to an orphan, especially one from Brandybuck hearth; but conversely, his social status was high enough that his belated bid for his very first pledge-son couldn’t reasonably be denied by anybody.)

In short, all of the hobbits enjoyed achieving even larger families on their adventures, legally and without argument or debate. It’s free real estate. If nobody else is going to sibling these losers, we will. (The condensation of so many entanglements at once also legally made Pippin his own father-in-law.)

Gandalf never explained.

* see the post about the Old Took’s “enchanted diamond cufflinks” that obeyed the wearer’s commands; which were probably, given the general state of things, two lost silmarils recovered by his Remarkable Daughters and gifted to him because things stay small and safe in the shire

#this is all canon and no one can convince me otherwise