🎮 Summer Coding Quest
Week 1 · Day 5 · Mini-project

Follow Camera & Your First Level

Make the camera follow you, build a little arena, and look back at everything you learned this week.

⏱ About 45–60 minutes
🎯 Today's mission Two parts, Raviv. First, fix the camera so it follows you instead of staying still. Then use everything from this week to build a small playground you can run and jump around — your very first level.

Part 1 — A camera that follows

At the moment the camera is fixed, so you can run off the edge of the screen. Let's glue it to the player — and the clever bit is we'll do it with no code at all.

  1. Drag the camera onto the player

    In the Scene panel, click and drag the Camera3D node onto the Player node, and let go. The Camera3D is now listed underneath Player, slightly indented — it has become a child of the player.

  2. Set the camera's offset

    Select the Camera3D and set its Position to X 0, Y 4, Z 8, and Rotation X to -25. (Same numbers as before — but now they mean "relative to the player".)

  3. Run it

    Press F5 and move around. The camera now glides along behind you everywhere you go. 🎥
💡 The big idea: children follow their parent This is one of the most powerful ideas in Godot. When a node is a child of another, it moves with it automatically. Move the player, the camera comes too — because it's "attached". You'll use this constantly: a sword that follows a hand, a health bar that follows a monster, a hat that follows a head. No code needed — just make it a child.

Part 2 — Build a little arena

Now the fun bit. Use what you know to build a playground. There's no single right answer — experiment!

  1. Add some walls or platforms

    Add MeshInstance3D nodes with BoxMesh shapes as children of World. Stretch and place them (change their Scale and Position) to make walls, steps or platforms to jump on.

  2. Make them solid

    For anything you want to bump into or stand on, select it and use the viewport Mesh menu → Create Trimesh Static Body (just like the floor on Day 4). Walk into one without this and you'll pass straight through — that's a great way to see what collision does.

  3. Add colour

    Give your blocks different colours using Material Override → New StandardMaterial3D → Albedo (from Day 2). A few colours makes it instantly feel like a real level.

  4. Play your level

    Press Play and explore the world you built. Try to jump from platform to platform.
✅ You did it — Week 1 complete! You've gone from a blank window to a playable 3D level with a controllable, jumping character and a camera that follows. That's a real game engine skillset. Take a moment — that's a brilliant first week.

Look back — what you learned this week

You now understand the bones of every 3D game. Here's the week in one place:

💡 The ideas worth keeping Three things from this week come back again and again: (1) games are nodes snapped into scenes; (2) _physics_process runs every frame and is where movement lives; (3) children follow their parent. If those three feel comfortable, you're ready for anything that's coming.

Play around — level up 🎮

🟢 Level 1 — Easy Build a staircase out of boxes, each one a little higher than the last, and see if you can jump all the way up it.
🟡 Level 2 — Medium Make a "lava floor" — a big flat red box. Can you build a course of platforms that lets you cross your arena without touching it? (You'll add real "you lose if you touch it" rules in a later week.)
🔴 Level 3 — Spicy Move the camera offset higher and further back (try Y 8, Z 14) for a grander view, or pull it in close (Y 2, Z 4) for an action feel. Decide which camera suits the game you want to make.
For the grown-up: end of Week 1. A good checkpoint to ask Raviv to show you his arena — being able to demo it is a real confidence boost. If any day felt rushed, repeating one is far better than pushing on. Week 2 starts the actual game: chopping trees for resources.
Previous← Day 4 — Gravity & jumping