v0.7.0.2

🐛 Fixes

• Fixed minor issue where when resetting Limit Target would result in unneeded errors and not properly reset the sides to their default values.

v0.7.0.1

🐛 Fixes

• Corrected / aligned setter function names for Follow Group in phantom_camera_3d.gd with phantom_camera_2d.gd
  • Thanks @HeavensSword for bringing this up (#262)
• Fixed an issue where Draw Limit didn't update when changing the Shape2D in 2D scenes.

v0.7

❗ Breaking Changes

Note

The breaking changes in this release are a one-time thing.
It's a combined number of system changes that needed to happen at some point, and so it was decided to do it in one go rather than over the course of multiple releases.

Important

Always be sure to have your current changes commited to source control before updating to avoid losing work.

Godot 4.2 Minimum Requirement

This release, specifically the property change, further down the page, relies on changes that were only released in Godot 4.2. As such, it will now only be compatible with that and future versions of Godot.

Addon Filename Consolidation & Dependency Errors

A lot of the addon's filenames have been changed to align with a general snake_case naming convention, but as a result will likely run into an error on start-up that looks like this:

If you're well-versed with Godot, then this should be a relatively simple thing to resolve, but if you're unsure how to solve this, follow the steps below.

Tip

After doing the steps below, if you're running into an issue where the editor will constantly say that it can't find Phantom Camera scripts, then it's likely due to there being a cached reference to the previous file inside .godot directory. To solve that, try and delete the entire .godot directory. It will be repopulate itself once you reopen the project.

Fixing Missing Dependencies

Revamped Property System

This is mainly an under-the-hood change and will only impact existing users of the addon.

TLDR

• All the property variables have changed from using _property_list to @export.
• For existing users, a lot of property names have changed as a result, which will break, or more precisely reset, existing setups.
  • See the end of the section for a mitigation guide.

Why the change?

The shift to @export was always planned, but for a later release — initial thinking was for v1.0. The reason it is being introduced now is due to a project export bug (#164), where an important feature didn't consistently work when exporting a project — despite working consistently in the editor. Suffice to say, that's a pretty big problem. From some initial tests, this issue did not occur when using the aforementioned @export approach. So the decision was made to make the jump sooner than originally planned. So far, the issue has yet to reappear.

The change was also meant to coincide with a better editor experience, as @export allows for supporting inspector property tooltips (#55) as well as an in-editor documentation page for all the addon's public node properties, functions, and signals (#168).

From a development perspective, the change also greatly simplifies the process of adding, removing and debugging properties, which in turn reduces the code complexity and time spent testing new and old features.

Why was @export not used from the beginning?

The addon has been in the worked since before Godot 4 was fully released. Not until Godot 4.2 was it possible to dynamically show or hide properties using @export. If the addon had used @export from the start, it would have resulted in all the available properties for a given addon node always being displayed. The vast majority of which being both irrelevant and confusing without contextual toggles or modes enabled — awful developer experience, in other words.

One of the changes made here is that property names do not have any nested names, e.g. follow_parameters/target_offset, are now named as a single variable name, e.g. follow_offset.

I have set up a lot already from previous release(s), what can I do to mitigate breaking changes?

Assuming you're using some form of source control, such as Git, the good news is that you can convert the property names manually from the individual scene files (.tscn) directly and keep your existing property values. Below is an example of how I would migrate an existing setup from a pre-0.7 project to be using the new property names from this release. Note that the follow_damping_value property is the exception to this - more in the Important section below.

Mitigation Guide

Once you've updated the addon and opened an existing scene that has PCam2D and PCam3D nodes, their values will have reset - you may have to re-save the scene first. From here, if you want to keep your existing setup, you can look at your source control and compare what values have been changed. In the example below, I've readded a follow_target and damping with random values.

As the image above shows, the names are not changed to be unrecognisable from the previous version. They are different, however, which does mean manual intervention if you wish to migrate the values over. Simply use your text editor of choice and add the values into the .tscn file directly.

Tip

If you're unsure what a property name is called now I would suggest looking it up on the documentation site. It will have all the up-to-date names.

Important

As you may have noticed from the image above, some values have had their type changed in this release too. The only properties this relates to is follow_famping_value. You need to adjust its value according to the new system — see the Improved Follow Damping Logic section further down the page for more info. As the effect of the value have, for all intents and purposes, completed shifted I would recommend doing a test in one scene, feel it out, and reapply values elsewhere based on that observation.

Logic Moved to _process

This might seem insignificant, but it does have a notable impact.
It will likely affect everyone, existing as well as new addon users, so would suggest following the steps in the “What can I do about it?” section further down for how to work with this change.

TLDR

• By default, setting a camera to follow a physics-based node will highly likely result in the followed node being very jittery.
  • Again, see “What can I do about it?” section.
• Nodes that are moving in the _process or uses a Tween animation should no longer be jittery.
• This isn't a complete solution and there is still work to be done.

A big thanks to @P5ina (for the PR) and @Lasuch69 for the discussing and helping with this change.

What was it before?

In previous releases, camera movement has been happening in the _physics_process. This was initially in large part been due to playable characters, what the camera would also typically be assigned to follow, would be a physics-based node such as CharacterBody2D/3D. This meant that as the physics object moved, along with the character asset within the physics object (i.e. sprite / 3D model), the camera followed it relatively evenly as the movement should both be happening in the _physics_process.

Why has this changed?

While having the camera move in the _physics_process meant that following a physic-based node was generally fairly smooth, it did also come with a few, no-trivial, issues.
The arguably biggest issue, was that animations that were being done in the _process, such as anything using the built-in Tween method, would always result in jitter. Either when it was being followed by the camera or were moving while the camera followed something else. Since not everything is, nor should, be moving in _physics_process it highlighted an issue with the previous approach. As things stood, it was deemed not possible to solve while the camera moved in the _physics_process and so it was changed to be occurring in the _process instead.

Why is there suddenly more jitter, or jitter where there was none before?

If you're using a physics object as a follow or look at target, and it's set to move in the _physics_process then you will likely notice jitter right away — even if you apply follow damping.

A typical playable character would then often consistent of a node hierarchy like:

• CharacterBody2D/3D
  • Visual representation, e.g. Sprite2D or a `MeshInstanc...

v0.6.4

✨ New Features

Editor Updater Confirmation Step

As the addon gets more refined over time, leading to potential breaking changes, the updater now requires an extra step to be completed before it can be triggered for major or minor releases. The only practical difference is an added dropdown menu, where you have to select Yes instead of the default No option, which will then make the update button appear. This is to give a bit of friction and to give some thought before pressing the big green Update button and risk causing project side effects.

This will, however, not occur for patch or hotfix releases.

Major and Minor Releases	Patch & Hotfix Releases

Term Reference Examples:

Major Release: v0.8 -> v1.0
Minor Release: v0.6 -> v0.7
Patch Release: v0.6.4 -> v0.6.5
Hot Fix Release: v0.6.4 -> v0.6.4.1

Editor Updater Project Settings

Tip

You may have to enable Advanced Settings in the top right-hand corner for the settings to appear in the panel. Alternatively, you can search for them.

Options to now disable the updater to two different levels (more below) have been added to the Project Settings.
This is meant to better support released projects where no further work is happening, but where the project is occasionally being opened.
💡 Thanks to @lunarcloud for the suggestion (#203)

Enable Updater	Show New Release Info on Editor Launch in Output
If enabled, it will trigger the updater dialogue when the Godot project opens and show an updater button in the addon's bottom editor panel. Important If you are using the addon by having forked the project, then the updater window will now always be disabled. This is to prevent an update from overriding your own changes. Pulling and merging the main branch should be done instead.	If Enable Updater is disabled or using a forked version of the project, this will appear by default in the Output tab within the Godot editor on startup. Like with the Editor Updater, this too can be disabled from the Project Settings.

🛠️ Changes & Improvements

• Added support for rotational tweening in 2D scenes. (#225)
  • 💡 Thanks to ZT2wo for the suggestion. (#214)

🐛 Fixes

• Resolved an issue where moving between multiple Framed Follow PCams would stack the dead zone fields in the viewport. (#226)
  • 🔍 Thanks @RichardStolp for the report (#208)
• Resolved an issue with setting various SpringArm3D properties such as collision_mask didn't get triggered during runtime. (#224)
  • 🔍 Thanks @eliaskowitz for the report (#222)

v0.6.3

🛠️ Changes & Improvements

• Added follow_target_changed signal that's emitted whenever a PCam's follow target is changed.
  • 🏅 Thanks @ZenithStar for the pull-request. (#191)
• Added Look At Offset option for Look At Group.
  • 🏅 Thanks @ZenithStar for the pull-request. (#197)

v0.6.2.2

🐛 Fixes

• Resolved an issue where a crash could occur when you queue_free() a PCam node due to an invalid reference to the PCamHost node. (#175)
  • 🔍 💡 Thanks @ciso507 for reporting this and suggesting a fix. (#165)
• Resolved an issue where changing the Camera3D resource properties via a PCam3D's setter methods wouldn't update the Camera3D if a PCam was the active one. (#184)
  • 🔍 Thanks @Zaphodious for reporting this. (#183)
• Resolved an issue where Look At (for PCam3D) didn't assign its target properly. (#182)
  • 🔍 Thanks @P5ina for reporting this. (#178)

v0.6.2.1

🐛 Fixes

• Resolved an issue where if you used a Third Person Follow PCam3D with both damping enabled, with a small damping value, and a follow target far away from a global position of (0, 0, 0) the camera would very slowly move towards its intended position from (0, 0, 0). Leading to a potentially long wait before you could realistically make use of the camera's intended behaviour. (#167)
  • 🔍 Thanks @MartinFretigne for spotting and reporting this. (#166)

v0.6.2

🛠️ Changes & Improvements

• Improved the ability to seamlessly transition between areas a Limit applies. The previous version had an issue where there would be a quirky jump as you transition between neighbouring Limit areas. As a result from this change, the 2D damping logic has been reverted to pre-0.6, which means the damping applies an interpolation to the movement, rather than relying on the Camera2D's Position Smoothing. Like the previous change, this shouldn't have any notable impact.
  • 💡⛑️ Thanks @zen14774 for bringing up this discussion and help testing the solution (#157).
  • 💡 Thanks bissash05 (Twitter) for confirming and helping with identifying the issue (DM).
• Added is_tweening signal — emitted whenever a PCam is tweening.
• Allow for adjusting Follow Properties in the node inspector, such as Follow Offset and Damping, even without a Follow Target whenever the Follow Mode is not set to None. This is to allow for dynamically applying a Follow Target during runtime while allowing to set Follow Properties if they're known during compilation and not being forced to do so via code.
• Added a few missing void return types to various functions.
• Added a default value to Follow Target. Allows for resetting the property using the reset button to the left of the property button.
• Added a type to the 2D and 3D Follow Target and Follow Path Target. It means that the pop-up menu selector only allows for selecting Node2D/Node3D and Path2D/Path3D nodes, respectively.
• Removed unused icons.

🐛 Fixes

• Resolved an issue where the Camera2D Limit size wouldn't reset properly while tweening between PCam2D's if both were using a CollisionShape2D as their limiter. Resulting in the camera snapping in one direction.
• Resolved a regression with the Frame Preview not updating in 2D scenes when changing the Zoom property. This was due to a bug where the variable name zoom in PhantomCamera2D.gd didn't trigger the setter, and consequently the _draw function call, resulting in the preview not updating. The fix here was to rename the variable to camera_zoom instead.
• Resolved an issue where loading a 2D scene where a Limit was being applied via either a TileMap or CollisionShape2D (Shape2D) would result in a PCam2D not being able to fetch the node, resulting in updates to the Limit Node not updating the PCam2D limit. The solution was to wait until the PCam2D had called its _ready() function before validating the Limit Path property when the scene is loaded.
• Resolved an issue where tweens would transition for one additional frame for every transition.
  • 💡 ⛑️ Thanks @zen14774 for spotting this and testing the fix (#157)
• Resolved an issue when downloading and loading the addon where either errors or a crash would occur. This was due to scale_with_editor_scale was enabled on some .svg icons, which scaled them to look correct on high resolution monitors. This issue should be resolved in Godot 4.3, but until then this property will be disabled to avoid user frustration.

v0.6.1

✨ New Features

Pixel Perfect (2D)

To support pixel perfect camera movement, a new toggle option to snap Camera2D to whole pixels has been added.
This should be particularly useful in pixel art projects, where assets should always be aligned to the monitor's pixels to avoid unintended stretching.

• 🥇 Thanks to @GrogsyShovel for the contribution (#156, before/after examples can be found in the PR's description).

CollisionShape2D Limit Support

In addition to allowing TileMaps to apply the Camera2D Limit, a CollisionShape2D can also be used to apply the Limit values using its Shape2D property. It will automatically update the limit when the Shape2D is changed.

• 💡 Thanks to @zen14774 for the suggestion (#157)

PhantomCamera Signals

Support for PCam signals have been added. This is meant to allow for receiving callbacks when specific events begins or ends for each PCam. This has been added for both PCam2D and Pcam3D nodes.

List of added signals:

• became_active - Emitted when the PCam becomes active.
• became_inactive - Emitted when the PCam becomes inactive.
• tween_started - Emitted when the Camera starts to tween to the PCam.
• tween_interrupted(PhantomCamera pcam) - Emitted when the tween is interrupted due to another PCam becoming active.
• tween_completed - Emitted when the Camera has completed its tween to the PCam.

⚠️ Breaking Changes

• Property name, such as the TileMap Limit, has been renamed with a generic Node Limit property - the same goes for setter/getter methods. As a result, existing property values will likely reset upon loading scenes that have any overrides, and setter/getter calls will produce errors if used in scripts until renamed to the new ones.
  This change is to allow other node types to be assigned to the property, such as the newly added CollisionShape2D, but also to make the names less specific and more in line with other property names.
  • The property value loss can be mitigated by manually updating property values in the .tscn files in a text editor.

🛠️ Changes & Improvements

• Added the ability to reset most properties to a default value. This has not been applied to every property, such as Follow Mode, to avoid accidentally resetting critical property values.
• TileMap Limit nodes will now update the Limit size after the TileSet is changed. Note: This will only be triggered after leaving the TileMap editor panel.
• Updated TileMap Limit Margin to type Vector4i instead of Vector4. Changed due to Camera2D Limit property only supports integer values.
• Moved Zoom property from phantom_camera_properties.gd to phantom_camera_2D.gd. Changed due to the Zoom property is only used in 2D scenes and PCam2D.
• Updated and organized all the addon scripts by grouping each category, i.e. const, vars, func etc., into their own, collapsable, regions.

🐛 Fixes

• Resolved an issue where Framed Follow in 3D scenes would not apply its distance and offset upon loading a scene. Resulting in the camera zooming into its target and effectively breaking on load.
  • 🥇 Thanks to @warent for discovering the issue (#140) and submitting a fix (#147)
• Resolved an issue where tweening between PCam2Ds while the initial PCam2D's Follow Damping were enabled led to undesired transition easings and sudden camera jumps at the end of the tween.
• Resolved an issue where using the getter method for Limit only returned Limit Left.

⚕️ New Contributors

• @warent made their first contribution in #147

v0.6

✨ New Features

Editor Updater

Whenever a new update of Phantom Camera is released on GitHub, the editor will show a prompt to update to the latest version directly from the editor.

Code and layout for this feature was replicated from the Dialogue Manager addon by @nathanhoad.

• Thanks @BenjaTK for the proposal (tweet)

---

Camera2D Limit + TileMap support

Utilizing the built-in Limit properties of Camera2D nodes, you can now limit the position of the camera to a specified area. Optionally, it also supports the built-in smoothing property. So whenever the edge of the limit is reached it will gradually ease to its limit, as opposed to immediately stop once it reaches the edge.

On top of the existing built-in feature set, TileMap node can also optionally be used as a way to limit the Camera2D movement. An optional margin can also be set to further adjust the limit's size.

The editor preview area of the clamped area can be toggled within the editor.

Example Scene
addons/phantom_camera/examples/example_scenes/2D/2DLimitExampleScene.tscn

• Thanks @ManicMarrc for the initial Tile Map clamp suggestion #109
• Thanks @spheras for the additional suggestion of supporting Camera2D Limit property #139
• Thanks @GrogsyShovel for fixing a property issue #142

---

PhantomCamera2D Frame Preview

PCam2D nodes will now by default show what it will frame (green rectangle) when instantiated, similar to the purple rectangle a Camera2D shows. This is to help determine the composition of the individual PCam2D without switching the priority around.
This can optionally be disabled per instance to reduce screen clutter.

• Thanks @filipinyo for the proposal #131

🛠️ Changes & Improvements

• PCam2D now uses the Position Smoothing property of the Camera2D instead of its own interpolation method. The damping should be very similar, but there might be a minor damping speed difference compared to releases prior to this.
• Zoom property for PCam2D now has linked values, meaning adjusting the zoom by default now changes the width and height at the same time. Identical how Camera2D property behaves.

🐛 Fixes

• Resolved an issue where the PCam2D Priority Override property wasn't being set.
• Resolved an issue where Framed Follow mode would behave strangely if it wasn't the first PCam to have the highest priority when a scene starts.
  • Thanks @PanHoracy for the report #143
• Resolved an issue where the Camera would jump to and tween from unexpected positions if the Camera's parent nodes had any positional offsets.
  • Thanks @hakur for the report #136
• Resolved an issue where Third Person Follow's SpringArm3D node wasn't updating its length during runtime when using the setter method.
  • Thanks @niceandgoodonline for the report #135
• Resolved an issue an on high DPI monitors where editor icons didn't scale properly and looked tiny compared to others.

⚕️ New Contributors

• @GrogsyShovel made their first contribution in #142
  • Special shout out for being the first project contributor 🎉