Question About PathFollow2D

nateyice

I created a circuit with Path2D and I need a few different items to travel around the circuit in a looped animation. Obviously I want the start/finish point of each item to be different so that they don't completely overlap, but I can't figure out how to make this work without creating a new Path2D. I tried making two different PathFollow2D nodes and keying the second one at a different Unit Offset, but I can't figure out how to tell it to end in the same position. Is this possible?

Ross

Just to be clear, you want two platforms(or whatever) moving around the same path but at different points? Like so?:

As long as you move them both at the same speed, you just need to set the initial offset of one to be different than the other's, and they will stay the same distance apart. You'll probably need a little bit of trial-and-error to get the distance between them correct.

nateyice

What offset do you mean? The Unit Offset of the PathFollow2D? Or the position of the sprite itself?

When I tried re-positioning the sprite, it moved as if its center was at the start position of the Path2D, so it would leave the "track" when going around corners.

To be clear, I have it structured like this:

Path2D - PathFollow2D - - AnimationPlayer - - Sprite1 - - Sprite2

Or alternately, with 2 PathFollows (neither method is working for me):

Path2D - PathFollow2D - - AnimationPLayer - - Sprite - PathFollow2D - - AnimationPlayer - - Sprite

Ross

I mean the Unit Offset of the PathFollow2D, or its Offset, which is the same thing only in actual pixel distance.

Yes, you will need to use multiple PathFollow2Ds if you want things to stay on the path.

OK, I tried this myself and I see the problem. The AnimationPlayers won't let you keyframe a Unit Offset of greater than 1.0, and they don't know how to loop it properly. I actually got it to work by manually setting a keyframe's value to 1.1 (looping to 0.1 at the start of the animation), but . . . the editor still showed the value as 1.0, so I think that may be a bad idea . . .

This would be a lot easier to do with a script rather than an animation. You can set the Offset or Unit Offset on a PathFollow2D to any value you want, and it will automatically loop the way it ought to. Just do something like this:


onready var follow1 = get_node("Path2D/PathFollow2D")
onready var follow2 = get_node("Path2D/PathFollow2D2")
var followspeed = 0.5
 
func _process(dt):
	follow1.set_unit_offset(follow1.get_unit_offset() + followspeed * dt)
    follow2.set_unit_offset(follow2.get_unit_offset() + followspeed * dt)

. . . and then in the editor set their Unit Offsets to whatever you want so they are spaced out correctly on the path.

Of course this method gets a lot trickier if you want them to change speed or do anything fancy. Stopping and starting them would be easy though, just set up a Timer to toggle their _process() on and off.

nateyice

Setting "1.1" in the animation didn't work for me, but I ended up putting a modified version of your script on the Path2D node and it works pretty nicely. Kind of better anyway, as it makes it easier for me to adjust the speed and direction in one place. Thanks!