RigidBody2D: Drag and Drop
Problem
You want to pick up and move rigid bodies with the mouse.
Solution
Working with rigid bodies can be tricky. Godot’s physics engine controls their movements, and interfering with that can often lead to unexpected results. The key is to make use of the body’s mode property. This applies equally well in 2D or 3D.
Body setup
We’ll start with our rigid body object, adding a Sprite and CollisionShape2D. You can also add a PhysicsMaterial if you want to set Bounce and Friction properties.
Place the body in a group called “pickable”. We’ll use this to allow for multiple instances of the pickable object in the main scene. Attach a script and connect the body’s _input_event signal.
extends RigidBody2D
signal clicked
var held = false
func _input_event(viewport, event, shape_idx):
if event is InputEventMouseButton:
if event.button_index == BUTTON_LEFT and event.pressed:
emit_signal("clicked", self)
We’ll emit a signal when a mouse click is detected. Since there can be many bodies, we’ll let the main scene manage whether a body can be dragged or if there’s already one in the held state.
func _physics_process(delta):
if held:
global_transform.origin = get_global_mouse_position()
If the body is being dragged, we update its position to follow the mouse.
func pickup():
if held:
return
mode = RigidBody2D.MODE_STATIC
held = true
func drop(impulse=Vector2.ZERO):
if held:
mode = RigidBody2D.MODE_RIGID
apply_central_impulse(impulse)
held = false
Finally, these are the two functions to call when the body is picked up and dropped. Changing the mode to MODE_STATIC removes the body from physics engine processing. Note that other objects can still collide with it. If you don’t want that, you can disable the collision_layer and/or collision_mask here as well. Just remember to re-enable them when dropping.
In the drop function, when we change back to MODE_RIGID, the body will be asleep. A sleeping body can be awoken by applying an impulse to it (even a zero magnitude impulse is fine). However, by passing in an optional impulse value, we can “throw” the object on release.
Main scene
Create a main scene with some static body obstacles or a TileMap and instance a few copies of the pickable body.
Here’s the script for the main scene:
extends Node2D
var held_object = null
func _ready():
for node in get_tree().get_nodes_in_group("pickable"):
node.connect("clicked", self, "_on_pickable_clicked")
func _on_pickable_clicked(object):
if !held_object:
held_object = object
held_object.pickup()
Here’s where we connect up the signal from the rigid body instances. The connected function sets held_object so that we know something is currently being dragged, and calls the body’s pickup() method.
func _unhandled_input(event):
if event is InputEventMouseButton and event.button_index == BUTTON_LEFT:
if held_object and !event.pressed:
held_object.drop(Input.get_last_mouse_speed())
held_object = null
Lastly, when the mouse is released during dragging, we can perform the reverse actions. Note the use of get_last_mouse_speed() - be careful with this! You may find yourself launching the rigid bodies at high speeds, especially if the bodies have low mass values. It’s probably a good idea to clamp() this to a reasonable value. Experiment to find out what works for you.