Continuosly check for area2d

BubbleMagex

I got this little game, the player can walk towards a tree, get inside its area2d to be able to chop it down.
But if there's another tree colliding with the player at the same time, when I chop one tree down (queue_frees it), I can't chop the other tree until I walk out of the area and then walk inside the area again.

How could I make it so it doesn't matter if an area dissapears? If the player is still inside an area, I want it to still be able to chop the other tree down.

This is the player's script:

This is how the scene looks, with two trees overlapping and the player touching both tree's areas:

(The red areas of the trees are the ones allowing the player to chop them down)
(The little green/yellow area of the player is the one that detects the red area of trees)

And this is how the _process func of the player looks like:

I understand the problem, I just don't know how to solve it. I saw something about "overlapping_areas()" but I don't know how to use it properly for this case.

Zini

The problem is likely that entering a second tree's area overwrites the value of tree.

Currently tree is a single node. Replace it with a list of nodes. This will also allow you to remove the nearTree variable. Just check if the list is not empty instead. Of course when it comes to the actual chopping you still need a way to pick which tree to chop. But you can start with the first in the list for now and refine it later.

LoipesMas

I think the proper solution would look like this:
On axe area (the green one) set collision mask to something unused (you can rename layers to make it easier to remember what's what)

On tree area (the red one) set the collision layer to the same values as the mask of axe

Make sure axe area has Monitoring on and tree areas have Monitorable on (they should by default)
In code, instead of using signals and setting nearTree, do something like this:

@export var axe_area: Area2D

var stop = false

func _process(delta):
	if not stop and Input.is_action_just_pressed("use") and axe_area.has_overlapping_areas():
		# we take first tree, because we want to chop any valid tree, 
		# but only one tree at a time
		var tree = axe_area.get_overlapping_areas()[0].get_parent()
		chopTree(tree)
		
func chopTree(tree: StaticBody2D):
	# whatever you want here
	tree.queue_free()

In the editor you will need to point the axe_area property to your Area node.

We need to set collision layers and masks so that the axe only "sees" the trees.

Here is official documentation about those topics:
overlapping_areas
masks and layers

You could keep using signals and instead of a single value use an array of nearby trees and in chopTree remove that tree from the array, but I think the other solution is better long term.
EDIT: That's what Zini suggests

Let me know if anything is not clear!

BubbleMagex

LoipesMas Your solution worked! had to change some things from my code and now it keeps chopping down trees without having to re-enter the area. Thank you 🙂