Solving my multi-select troops movement (godot 4)

This is a READ-ONLY snapshot of the Godot Community Forums when TwistedTwigleg was the owner, which is hosted for archival reasons only. The current Godot Community Forums can be found here.

Some links may point to external websites, including the current Godot Community Forums. These websites are not associated with TwistedTwigleg.

Solving my multi-select troops movement (godot 4)

Ank

Hey, in the game, I am having trouble calculating the correct movement for my multi-selected troops.
Currently, I have implemented the movement where troops would stand side by side in the end coordinate. They will align on the Z axis no matter which direction they're coming from:

However, instead, I would like them to know the direction they're coming from and align accordingly:

What would be a formula to calculate a direction and alignment like that?
Currently my logic is pretty dumb:

func moveSelectedSoldiers(raycast: Dictionary, soldierTarget = null):
	var coord = raycast.position
	var startZ = selectedUnits.size() / 2 # calculates the start Z pos from which to align
	var unitZPos = coord.z - startZ
	for idx in selectedUnits.size():
		var soldier = selectedUnits[idx]
		soldier.moveTo(Vector3(coord.x, coord.y, unitZPos))
		unitZPos = unitZPos + 1

Thank you in advance

AspireMint

Ank
Try this: https://github.com/AspireMint/Soldiers/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Lethn

Instead of trying to calculate it automatically and make it too complicated why not have it so that you can rotate the formation with a key/button held down and deal with the alignment problem that way? It's a pretty standard feature in most modern multi-selection features these days. For this I would maybe create a temporary node at the selected position and have the presumed position nodes that your agents are moving to as children of that.

Ank

AspireMint Thank you, I think what helps me most is understanding the direction from this:
var look_dir = -$Soldiers.transform.basis.z

MagickPanda

AspireMint
Nice stuff. Might be very useful in formation move feature too.
Thanks.