is it efficient to use groups for getting node information out of a node?

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is it efficient to use groups for getting node information out of a node?

Lethn

extends Camera2D

onready var player := get_tree().get_nodes_in_group("Player")

func _physics_process(delta):
	self.position = player[0].position

This is partly why I was asking questions before about the efficiency of groups and signals etc. in Godot. from what I've read of the documentation it showed that the groups were in fact lists you can add to which made a lot more sense to me and my C# brain once I understood that properly. Is this method though inefficient compared to others that are out there?

DaveTheCoder

Is this method though inefficient compared to others

Method to do what? I'm not clear on what you want to do.

cybereality

If you do it once onready or in the ready() function you should be fine. I haven't tested it, but it's probably not a good idea to do in process() or too often. You ideally want to save all the important nodes onready at the top (the player, camera, etc.). Then when you need other nodes (like the enemies in range of a grenade blast) use a timer or signal or something that happens once. In this case, you can use get_nodes_in_group() because it is infrequent.

Lethn

extends Camera2D

onready var playerGroup := get_tree().get_nodes_in_group("Player")
var player

func onready():
	player = playerGroup[0]

func _physics_process(delta):
	self.position = player.position

Interestingly it didn't let me declare the player within onready var but it worked fine in the OnReady function, thanks I think I can start playing about with Godot a lot more now I know all this. Still need a proper grasp on signals because they look useful but my main thing was learning about how Godot worked in the background.

Lethn

Ohhh weird, I was wondering what was wrong, didn't do the player declaration correctly, am I declaring it twice here by accident or is that just how GDScript does things?

extends Camera2D

onready var playerGroup := get_tree().get_nodes_in_group("Player")
onready var player = playerGroup[0]
 
func _physics_process(delta):
	self.position = player.position

Nevermind worked it out, turns out I was declaring it twice, edited to avoid confusion. For the guy who was asking what I was doing I'm practicing converting from C# to GDScript in my head and figuring out how GDScripts group system works in the background as I was told it operate similar to tags in Unity. My thought process sometimes spills out onto forum posts a bit :D

cybereality

You usually want to avoid any loose code. Though it works for some stuff, depending on which script calls the code, or the node hierarchy, not everything might be ready in time. What I do is have one main script that is on the root node (you are guaranteed this gets called last after everything else) and then do what I need in the _ready() function.