Flipping Node/Sprite - scale.x = -1 flipping every frame?

Help Programming
,
1

Godot Version

4.2.1

Question

I’m making a 2D side scrolling RPG, and the Player character node has a Weapon node and animation player as children.

I’m trying to use scale.x = 1 or scale.x = -1 to flip the character and all child nodes based on direction, yet it seems to be flipping every frame when setting scale.x = -1. I’m trying to do this so I don’t have to recreate the animations the other side in the animation player.

My function below for getting the input and direction is called from within the _physics_process function.
The below is my function for getting the input and setting the direction:

func get_input_and_direction() → void:
# Get the input direction: -1, 0, 1
var direction: float = Input.get_axis(“move_left”, “move_right”)

if direction:
	velocity.x = direction * SPEED
else:
	velocity.x = move_toward(velocity.x, 0, 7.0)
	
print(scale.x)     **# Prints 1 every loop**

# Flip the sprite based on input
if direction > 0:
	scale.x = 1
elif direction < 0:
	if scale.x != -1:
		print("Before set " + str(scale.x))    **# Prints 1**
		scale.x = -1
		print("After set " + str(scale.x))   **# Prints -1**

I’d greatly appreciate if someone shine some light on to why this is happening, I can’t figure it out.

I’m also open if you’ve got suggestions on how I can write my code better or handle flipping the Player node.

2

Hi, I ran your code and the scale.x doesn’t revert back to 1 every frame for me, are you setting the scale somewhere else in the code?

3 Likes
3

Thank you for your reply.

I’m definitely not setting scale.x outside of the function I posted above.
I’m at a loss as to why it’s resetting.

I don’t want to post my entire player character script here as it’s a bit messy.
What’s the best way to show you my code?

4

you could post it on github? it’s fine if you post it here too, i won’t judge your code for being messy

5

This is not a bug, see the documentation

6

But they aren’t doing any decomposing? IDK what decomposing is anyway

7

It does when assigning because of how transforms are done, it’s complicated mathematics but it’s put simply that there’s no way to distinguish negative x scale from other things because of how 2D transforms are computed, it has to be combined with the transform or parents etc.

8

How come I can’t replicate it?

9

The specific behaviour might not be directly replicable, but the fact remains that negative x scale isn’t supported and will behave unreliably

Probably the exact behaviour depends on setup

10

Okay then I guess OP should just use sprite flip_h property then

1 Like
11

@athousandships what if you need to flip the player by it’s root node, where you cant flip by flip_h because it doesn’t flip collisions. Scale.x -1 is used for flipping an object, collisions and all. and if that doesnt work, how to flip by root node?

12

You need to flip the individual parts, using what suits the situation, moving or rotating, you can have a shape that doesn’t need to be flipped for example, or switch shape being active when facing different directions, it all depends on your situation

1 Like