issue smoothly changing camera margin

[crisp ridge]

basically I'm trying to make it so that the top margin of a Camera2D which is a child of a CharacterBody2d has a margin that changes depending on whether or not the character is on the floor. I wrote the following code:

if is_on_floor():
    $Camera2D.drag_top_margin = move_toward($Camera2D.drag_top_margin, 0, delta)
else:
    $Camera2D.drag_top_margin = 1

It works mostly, but there's a strange issue where there's a solid fraction of a second where the camera doesn't visibly move when the character touches the ground. I would like it to continuously move the second the player touches the ground. Weirder still, when I set it up so that the camera margin is printed to console, the value does consistently change but the change isn't visible. I've also tried lerp but still had same issue. (sorry if this is dumb or poorly written I'm new to godot)

[tough kernel]

Do you have a video showcasing the issue? I think it'd help

[crisp ridge]

one sec

it'll take a bit cuz I gotta like compress the vid and stuff

[tough kernel]

Take you time I need to be afk for 15 minutes

[crisp ridge]

cool

so you can see the character jumps on the higher ground and then it lags before the camera moves

damn it embed fail

[tough kernel]

That's because you're lerping the margin from the edge of the screen to the middle of it, but you character isn't at the edge of the screen, he's somewhere near the middle

So all the time it takes from the margin to reach your character is the time it's not moving

[crisp ridge]

hmmm ok

thanks

so wait do I gotta have it start from the position that the character is relatve to the screen?

[tough kernel]

yes, but it may be easier to just have a bit of code that moves the y of the camera towards the player whenever he's on the ground

And leave the drag margin to 1.0 or something

[crisp ridge]

ah ok thx

wait I cna't find in the docs how to set the camera's position

[tough kernel]

It inherits node2D so it's .global_position or something like that

[crisp ridge]

ok so I tried doing

if is_on_floor():
    $Camera2D.global_position.y = global_position.y

[tough kernel]

It teleports right?

You need a move_toward or a lerp to make it smooth

Something like
$Camera2D.global_position.y = move_toward($Camera2D.global_position.y, global_position.y, cameraspeed * delta)

[crisp ridge]

no it won't teleport it just won't move on the y axis

except for the movement from having a margin of 1

[tough kernel]

Weird

[crisp ridge]

I figured it would teleport but I would try that code before anything too crazy

[tough kernel]

Maybe the camera system interfers with it
You can try doing it with the margin again, but switching to zero as soon as the character touch the ground
And use position_smoothing_enabled and position_smoothing_speed to prevent teleport

I'm just reading the doc, never used it, so I'm just guessing, sorry if it doesn't work

[crisp ridge]

no no you're cool thank you for helping

ok.... so I've implemented your idea but now the camera drags behind the player as it moves along the x axis and it's kind of jittery