Why does the order of adding child and setting position matter?

[msanatan]

When we’re making the bullets a child of the container node, our script looks like this:

func shoot():
	var rocket_instance = rocket_scene.instantiate()
	rocket_container.add_child(rocket_instance)
	rocket_instance.global_position = global_position
	rocket_instance.global_position.x += 75

However, it doesn’t work if we set the global position before adding it as a child of the rocket_container i.e.

func shoot():
	var rocket_instance = rocket_scene.instantiate()
	rocket_instance.global_position = global_position
	rocket_instance.global_position.x += 75
	rocket_container.add_child(rocket_instance) # Add as a child last

I’m curious, why does the order matter?

[OboShape]

my understanding is that when a bullet is instantiated, its not part of the scene tree at that point, and doesnt have any transform information.
so calling add_child places it in the tree and we can then set its transform information.

seemingly, there is a post regarding it on the godot github pages that it resets positional information if set before add_child.

[msanatan]

Thanks. That would explain the behaviour, I’ll use this info to look into it more!