Enhancing Groups Feature

[Marcus0170]

Hello,
when I started using Godot 3.5 and found out about group function I was amazed how great feature it is, yet I was always wondering why you can only use them in "global" scope as get_tree().get_nodes_in_group("guards")...or get_tree().call_group("guards", "enter_alert_mode")

If you could call node.get_nodes_in_group("guards") or node.call_group("guards", "enter_alert_mode") on any node in SceneTree, while getting only nodes, that are in the given group and at same time in given node and its children(descendants)...meant as filtering groups by "parent node", this would greatly enhance the Groups feature...

Now Im using Godot 4.2 and the Groups feature didnt get this improvement yet...

• Use case Examples:

1. Lets say, we have carrier with children aircrafts, we have several carriers on map, we destroy one carrier and want to play animation for the aircrafts of given carrier and destroy them, when carrier is destroyed...if we call call_group as it is, we would destroy all aircrafts of all carriers, while if we would call destroyed_carrier.call_group("aircrafts","destroy"), we would call it only on given carrier aircrafts
2. Lets say, we have complex UI, where children that we want to call function in group have various structures...meaning we have container that contains buttons(group members), other containers that contain buttons(group members) etc...while we want to call function on all group members of specific given container...since buttons we are interested in are either children, grandchildren, grandgrandchildren etc., we add them to group, but if we have several given containers that contain these group members....calling group as it is now would call function over all containers instead only specific given container we want to....
3. Lets say, we have stealth game with guards....but we want to alert only specific group of guards, we would call "enter_alert_mode" for given guards only instead of every guard on map
4. Even in case you have container with children and you want to call function on every child, you now call get_node then get_children and then call function on each child, while with node.call_group you would already call function on given children

• So I was wondering how the "get_nodes_in_group" and "call_group" functions are implemented and checked the source code...

And as I can see in SceneTree files it doesnt give much of options to make use of current implementation...guess it would have to be reworked as it is...

On other hand, when I checked Node files, I found out something "strange"...it seems each node is storing in "its data" full "list of members of groups" the given node is part of, while these data are never used/accessed...

By least it seems Nodes are storing pointlessly "extra data" thats unnecessary...while at same time this implementation actually could give us hand to solve the "enhancing groups feature"...

When node is added to group, the node is added to this list there, there could be called something like this:

in Node::add_to_group(

path = this.get_path()
node = this

list

while(path != ""){

GroupData gd;

if (data.tree) {
	gd.group = data.tree->add_to_group(p_identifier, node);
} else {
	gd.group = nullptr;
}

list.add(gd)
for(list){
node.data.grouped[p_identifier] = gd;
}

path.omit(last) <- we have "node/node/node" this function will change path to "node/node" until it will become "" with the while combo

node = get_node(path)

}

This way each node can have different node.data.grouped[p_identifier] "list".

Then node.call_group and node.get_nodes_in_group would be called over node.data.grouped[p_identifier] while depending on which node it was called over, number of nodes with be returned/will function be called(we would get our filtered behaviour)

I will think about better soultion if possible, but for now this one seems plausible...

[Marcus0170]

The "pseudo-code" should have been something like this:

in Node::add_to_group(

path = this.get_path()
node = this

while(path != ""){

node.data.grouped[p_identifier].nodes.push_back(this);

path.omit(last) <- we have "node/node/node" this function will change path to "node/node" until it will become "" with the while combo

node = get_node(path)

}

Then node.call_group and node.get_nodes_in_group would be called over node.data.grouped[p_identifier].nodes "list"