Breakout bounce from paddle not working as intended

Help
, ,
1

Godot Version

v4.3.stable

Question

I am trying to recreate breakout but I encountered a problem, I want the ball to bounce to the left if it hits the left of the paddle, and the same for the right, but the closest I was able to get to working was the code bellow but it doesn’t matter where it hits the player(or the paddle) it only bounces to the left, I tried playing with global position and just position and this was the only one that was close to working.

func _on_area_2d_body_entered(body: Node2D) -> void:
	if body.name.contains("BallBody"):
		var body_position = body.position
		
                print("body global: " + str(body_position))
		print("body pos: " + str(body.position))
		print("player global: " + str($Area2D.global_position))
		print("player pos: " + str($Area2D.position))

		var ball_dir = $Area2D.global_position.direction_to(body_position)
		
                print(ball_dir)
		
                ball_dir.y /= 2
		
		
		GlobalVariables.velocity = ball_dir * GlobalVariables.ball_vel

Here are the printed positions when the ball enters the area2d:
body global: (70.07361, 10.86853)
body pos: (70.07361, 10.86853)
player global: (576, 600)
player pos: (0, 0)
(-0.651501, -0.758648)

here is the global variables:

var ball_vel = 500
var randomize_x_direction = randf_range(-0.5, 0.5)
var velocity = Vector2(randomize_x_direction, -1) * ball_vel

and here is the ball code:

const ball_size: float = 7.0

func _ready() -> void:
	#information so the ball keeps stuck to the player trough the "magnet"
	set_ball_stop()

func _process(delta: float) -> void:
	if Input.is_action_just_pressed("start_ball"):
		set_ball_moving()
	
	if GlobalVariables.is_ball_moving == true:
		var collision = $BallBody.move_and_collide(GlobalVariables.velocity * delta)
		if collision:
			GlobalVariables.velocity = GlobalVariables.velocity.bounce(collision.get_normal())
		queue_redraw()
	

func _draw() -> void:
	var ball_pos = $BallBody.position
	#Draws the ball
	draw_circle(ball_pos, ball_size, Color.WHITE, true, -1.0, true)

func set_ball_moving():
	GlobalVariables.is_ball_moving = true

func set_ball_stop():
	GlobalVariables.is_ball_moving = false
2

Is there a reason you’ve made the paddle an Area2D instead of a CharacterBody2D?

I don’t recall off the top of my head, but I didn’t think move_and_collide would trigger on an Area2D since its not a collision body. So my guess is only your body_entered function is being called. (So: is your if collision ever returning true?) The velocity.bounce(collision.get_normal()) should be doing all the work. If you really want the paddle body to be an Area2D, I’d try putting it in there, but you might run into issues where the paddle is moving and the body_entered function gets called multiple times before the ball can escape, which you then have to work around.

3

Oh, sorry, I forgot to include that. My player paddle is both a CharacterBody2D and a Area2D, I use the CharacterBody2D to move the player and detect the walls(and only the walls, not the ball) so the paddle don’t go over the walls and the Area2D is to detect when the balls enters so I can make the logic to change the direction based on where it hits. The “velocity.bounce()” is being used on the ball so it bounces normally on the walls but ignore the player paddle.

4

I’ve got it working now, the problem was that I was not updating the area2d position, only it’s collider, so the position of then player when detecting was always 0,0. I fixed a bunch of things and now I got it working!