Correct way to access the CogitoPlayer

[DavidBradbury]

Hi there, first off, Cogito has been fantastic and I'm looking forward to using it more and contributing where I can.

(Backstory, feel free to skip to the tl;dr below)
I'm currently focusing on 'enemy' characters. As part of a patrolling / sight system, I have a broad Area3D check to first see if I even need to check further. Once I know they're in that, I am planning on using a combination of visibility/sound and raycasts to change the state of the enemy from Patrolling, to Alert, to Chase. All very normal stuff.

That said, when working on the raycasts, I started with using CogitoSceneManager._current_player_node to find a reference to the player, before realizing I should just be passing the reference from the broad check. Not only better practice, but more extensible.

(tl;dr)
That did get me wondering however, what is the correct way to reference the player in general assuming I don't have a direct reference to it?

I've always been taught that accessing "private" variables like _current_player_node should be avoided outside its scope, and I don't see a global singleton or an accessor in the scene manager. If the later is recommended, I'd be glad to put together a quick PR.

[Phazorknight]

Hey, welcome and so glad to hear Cogito has been useful for you.
In general, the CogitoSceneManager autoload saves a reference to the player node, which can be used in a pinch.

I'd recommend taking a look at the Security Camera script, but basically it works like what you seem to have already going for your enemy:

• Area3D is checked for body_entered / body_exit signal (and filtered for nodes in group "Player")
• For as long as Player is within Area3D, a raycast check is performed to see if the Camera can "see" the player. This is done by casting a Raycast3D from the Camera to the Player and seeing if it hits the player or something else.
• If the Player is visible for the Camera, it gets switched to the detecting state, which goes for a certain grace period, then of course switching to detected or back to searching.

You can probably attach this whole system to your enemies and it should work.
And again, the reference to the player here is simply passed via the body_entered/exit functions from the Area3D.
By adding the group check for nodes in group "Player", you guarantee to only filter out the player, but can also easily add custom behaviour (for example if enemy's detect each other they could play a "greeting sound" )

Hope that helps!