UI that follow objects in your game

Here's a few ideas on how to make a floating UI element follow objects in the world. Depending on performance, type of UI and such you might need different solutions so I decided to show a few of the ones I experimented with in Godot for my game Solar Rogue.
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[@TackerTacker]

You could take a look at the RemoteTransform2D Node which has an option to update positional information only. That could be pretty tedious though, I think the best solution would be to make a feature request on GitHub, for something similar to the selective transformation updates that the RemoteTransform2D Node has, but make it a standard Node2D and Node3D/Spatial property ( maybe a drop down menu, similar to the one on the pause property, but for every transform type ) That could bring so many new possibilities :O

[@TackerTacker]

Well... a drop down menu for position, rotation, and scale could be a bit much. It could just be a check-mark if it should Inherit from the parent or not.

[@Produno]

I done something similar though i added every ui element i wanted to scale into a group, then called that group on my camera script whenever i zoom the camera, then do whatever i need there. It saves having to put a script on every one. Also you could use a visibility notifier to see if the object is on the screen to determine whether to process it or not.

[@Ombarus]

I always underestimate groups. Great idea, thanks!

[@NeZversSounds]

CanvasItem.set_as_toplevel() Would mean the child is in the owner's scene but acts as it is outside.

[@KumsalObuz]

I thought of the same thing but he might have other concerns that might have got in the way of using such a simple command. Oh, the joy of programming.

[@abcababca3796]

You can use a RemoteTransform2D node for it (add it as a direct child of a Player etc. and make it update some Control's (global) position/scale/rotation based on the settings you've set). Not sure if it's faster but seems simpler to set up.

[@Ombarus]

I wonder how it behave if the Control is inside a different CanvasLayer, I'll have to test it out. Thank you for the suggestion

[@gingerageousgames613]

That was my first thought too but I haven't tried it.

[@abcababca3796]

@@Ombarus RemoteTransform2D uses only local/global transforms so in general it won't work for different CanvasLayers. It would work for different CanvasLayers only if they would have the same canvas layer transform. Here's the relevant source code: github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/31d0f8ad8d5cf50a310ee7e8ada4dcdb4510690b/scene/2d/remote_transform_2d.cpp#L47 It shouldn't be hard to create a custom analogous node that takes also canvas transforms into account though. But there's still a question whether it's a preferable solution.

[@Smaxx]

This sounds like a perfect use case for inheritance. For example, rather than attaching your "prevent scaling script" to multiple instances of Label, subclass Label as UnscaledLabel once and instantiate that one instead (or change the other Label's node type to this). Something like this: extends Label class_name UnscaledLabel # code for behavior follows here

[@dorktales254]

Isn't there like billboarding in Godot