Need help figuring out methods to recenter the phantom camera

[RealGabrielDelRosario]

Hi there! I'm doing a 2.5d platformer game and some objects in the world allow for some flight inspired movement. This process involves changing follow targets, the follow damping values, etc.

My camera setup is a framed follow with no look at target to give that side scroller style. Sometimes because of the change of follow offset, the character becomes off-centered while following the dead zones.

I'm looking for techniques that can allow recentering to occur. Whether it be to reset the follow target (even tho its already assigned properly maybe it would be like restarting a machine that it would work properly again) or to reset the follow offset and follow damping values, or to manually change the coordinates of the camera

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!! (Using 4.3 godot btw)

[RealGabrielDelRosario]

Update here, I sorta found a solution in recentering in that I would just manually set the follow mode to simple when the player is idle and any other state i would set it to framed and that seems to work surprisingly well

Still open to hearing other suggestions!

[ramokz]

The answer depends a bit on what you're looking to achieve.

If you want the camera to instantly be in its desired position, post-damping, then the simplest answer would be to call the teleport position method. It essentially resets the camera to its intended position, which bypasses any acceleration and damping values and logic. The current version of the addon in the git branch has better support for that functionality — will make another minor release in the very near future.

But if you want it to be more of a smooth transition, then you could juggle between 2 PCams as you want things to change, which is what I generally suggest. Then you can reset the properties to the inactive one and make that one ready to be swapped with again, rather than making one super-PCam that does everything dynamically.

But given you mention you're changing the follow offset specifically, not sure what else is being changed, that would mean you would also need to reset that property before teleporting the camera. Otherwise, the PCam would teleport to the offset position, which sounds like what you don't want?

Update here, I sorta found a solution in recentering in that I would just manually set the follow mode to simple when the player is idle and any other state i would set it to framed and that seems to work surprisingly well

Would discourage changing the follow mode at runtime, if that's what you're doing, as mentioned on the documentation page. It changes the way the camera's position is being calculated, which in many instances, and depending on what is being changed to and from, can mess up the camera composition.

[RealGabrielDelRosario]

Followed your advice on this with a secondary pcam, one thats a simple follow and the other thats a framed for movement and it works really well!

Thanks again for this