Help with 2D camera using _process to follow player

Help
, ,
1

Godot Version

4.6.2

Question

I have a 2D topdown game where my camera used to be a child of the player (which is a rigidbody2D), but i read that it is soother if the camera is a separated and its movement is updated in _process. Unfortunately all the examples I’ve found were for 3D cameras, so I’ve tried to make due but have mostly failed.

Here is what I have so far:

extends Camera2D

@export var player: PlayerVehicle

var __target_pos: Vector2

func _ready() -> void:
	if not player:
		push_error("Combat camera wasn't assigned to player")
		return
	
	__target_pos = player.global_position


func _process(delta: float) -> void:
	__target_pos = lerp(__target_pos, player.global_position, min(delta, 1.0))
	self.global_position = __target_pos

It doesn’t need to rotate or anything, it just needs to move position.

It technically works, but it lags far behind the player and needs to play catch-up. What am I doing wrong here?

I also think I recall seeing a post awhile back saying that using lerp() in _process isn’t a great idea. Is there a better alternative?

Thanks!

2

Increase the interpolation weight.

3

min() returns the lower of two values (doc).

Using min(delta, 1.0) for the weight will likely always return delta, since it is almost guaranteed to be less than 1 (unless your game runs at less than 1 frame per second). This will be a very small amount to interpolate by.

You’ll want to multiply your weight by delta, rather than using min(), and multiply it by a larger value - 30.0 in my example below.

__target_pos = lerp(__target_pos, player.global_position, 30.0 * delta)