how to treat a vector3 as a vector2 while using distance_to | Godot Café | Page 1

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 1:00 AM

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i'm making a 3d stealth game. i have an enemy with a raycast always pointing towards the player's head. i want to compare the raycast's rotation with the enemy's overall rotation to determine if the player is within the enemy's view cone. the issue is, i want to ignore the y axis, i don't want the calculation to be affected by height. if i do distance_to with the vector3's, it will factor in height. what's an efficient way to avoid this?

unreal ginkgo Oct 3, 2024, 1:05 AM

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You can try to set y axis from both vector to 0 then calculate the distance

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 1:07 AM

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and just change it back afterwards?

unreal ginkgo Oct 3, 2024, 1:33 AM

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So you have a view cone and a raycast that always point to player, they are different nodes?

normal pine Oct 3, 2024, 1:35 AM

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unreal ginkgo You can try to set y axis from both vector to 0 then calculate the distance

I've also used a method where I make new Vector2's from the axes I care about, use the functions I want, then discard the Vector2's

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Though if you just care about distance, you can easily calculate that yourself without using the vector function

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 1:43 AM

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i think i was wrong saying i don't care about the y rotation, i keep getting the coordinates mixed up

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i only want to compare the y

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 1:47 AM

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unreal ginkgo So you have a view cone and a raycast that always point to player, they are diff...

i don't have a tangible view cone anywhere, i want to just do it with math
and i want it to be a wedge, not a cone

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this works

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it just seems inefficient to have these extra vectors

unreal ginkgo Oct 3, 2024, 1:53 AM

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global_rotation.distance_to(view_turret.global_rotation) looks wrong

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 1:53 AM

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why

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im trying to compare the angle of the enemy's root node with the angle of a child it has that points towards the player

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i'm not using that specific code anymore regardless

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but it did what i expected

unreal ginkgo Oct 3, 2024, 1:55 AM

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I guess distance_to should be used to measure position distance, so I always use on position or global_position, not rotation

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 1:56 AM

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https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_vector3.html#class-vector3-method-distance-to

Godot Engine documentation

Vector3

A 3D vector using floating-point coordinates. Description: A 3-element structure that can be used to represent 3D coordinates or any other triplet of numeric values. It uses floating-point coordina...

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link to vector3 distance_to method

unreal ginkgo Oct 3, 2024, 1:59 AM

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I don't know how to explain, but looks weird to use distance_to when the Vector3 is a rotation

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It feels like you should to use angle_to()

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wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 2:01 AM

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seems to do the same thing

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i tried it

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just wider view angle

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nvm, the number i enter doesn't seem to affect it

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is there any benefit to using this over the other one

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since the other one worked

unreal ginkgo Oct 3, 2024, 2:04 AM

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I don't think so

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 2:07 AM

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i did figure out that one of my extra vectors was redundant since the enemy only rotates on the y axis, i'm going with this

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still feels excessive to make a whole other vector3 just to omit something

normal pine Oct 3, 2024, 2:08 AM

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hold on..

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 2:08 AM

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im mostly concerned about it since a bunch of different objects will be running this every frame

normal pine Oct 3, 2024, 2:10 AM

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Can't you just do
abs(view_turret.global_rotation.y - global_rotation.y)

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Since you just want to know the difference in y rotation

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 2:12 AM

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yeah that works here

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but i have sort of an instinct not to subtract rotations like that because they can loop around, like in gamemaker i would get issues if one was 350 and another was 10, they'd think they're 340 apart and not 20 apart

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isn't that going to be an issue?

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(i'm still pretty new to godot)

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i was excited about vectors because it seemed like it would avoid that stuff

normal pine Oct 3, 2024, 2:15 AM

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That can be an issue (I've encountered it before), but you'd get the same problem using .distance_to()

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There are workarounds

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Or you could try to explore Quaternions (They're worth it)

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 2:20 AM

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you're saying that using distance_to on a vector will have that issue? i thought one of the most important purposes of vectors and that method is to get around that

normal pine Oct 3, 2024, 2:21 AM

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wet heron you're saying that using distance_to on a vector will have that issue? i thought...

Vectors are just bundles of numbers. They wrap around rotations the same way.

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Quaternions are what avoids all the common pitfalls.

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 2:23 AM

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i have created something beautiful while testing

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 2:23 AM

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normal pine Quaternions are what avoids all the common pitfalls.

alright, i'll learn it

normal pine Oct 3, 2024, 2:23 AM

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wet heron i have created something beautiful while testing

weeeeeeeeeee

unreal ginkgo Oct 3, 2024, 2:24 AM

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wet heron i have created something beautiful while testing

"You spin me right round"

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 2:40 AM

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it's weird that distance_to even exists, i feel like it should never be used if it has this issue

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i tested it and just can't believe that it happens

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like i can't imagine a situation where i'd be ok with using that method

normal pine Oct 3, 2024, 2:52 AM

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It's meant to be used on positions.

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For positions, it's perfect

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It really isn't meant for rotations.

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Vectors are mostly used for positions, Quaternions are used for rotations internally, the Vector rotations are just there for the benefit of the developer, to give a simple way to interact with rotations, which works for a good amount of use cases.

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 2:57 AM

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ic

wet heron Oct 3, 2024, 3:52 AM

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#how to treat a vector3 as a vector2 while using distance_to