Orbiting a player character around a boss

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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I’m trying to make a boss arena where the player orbits in a circle around the boss enemy.

I’m trying to use the movement component since I’d like braking, friction, gravity, etc. Currently the player is also moving up and down the screen, so the movement mode is flying. Braking of 2000, fly speed of 600.

The player also rotates to face the boss at all times using Controller Rotation Yaw (image of code has been attached).

I’ve attached the current orbit code as an image, but I’m facing a slight issue. Whenever I move the player character slowly drifts backwards over time, which brings them out of the alignment of the circle. I’m not sure how to stop this, I’ve tried normalizing and I’ve tried adjusting movement values.

I’m mostly sure it’s to do with the movement component since it’s super noticeable when the player slows down, but I’m also not sure. It could just be my math. I don’t want to use set player location since although I can get that working I noticed if the player walks into any obstacles they do get stuck for a second, which is really bad considering this is a boss fight.

Does anyone have any solution or suggestion? Or if set actor location is the better option, a way to handle the getting stuck on objects?

Thanks

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Edit:
I’ve marginally solved it with this by “nudging” the player back on course as they finish moving. I’m going to keep this post up however incase someone has a cleaner solution!

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Hey @HawksHaloveil how are you?

What I’d do is stop fighting the movement component and just let it behave normally. Instead, I’d apply a small correction every tick to keep the player locked to the orbit radius. That way you preserve all the braking and friction feel, but eliminate the slow drift over time.

On Event Tick, after applying movement input, I’d:

  • Get the vector from the Boss to the Player (Player Location - Boss Location).
  • Normalize it and multiply by the desired orbit radius.
  • Add the Boss Location to get the ideal orbit position.
  • Lerp from the current player position toward that ideal position (using a small alpha, something like 0.1 * DeltaSeconds * 60, or just a fixed correction speed).
  • Call SetActorLocation with Sweep = true.

The sweep part is important. With sweep enabled, the player won’t clip through geometry — it’ll respect collision just like regular movement. And since the correction each frame is tiny (just nudging the player back onto the radius), it won’t feel like teleporting or cause them to get stuck.

In practice, the correction per tick is so small that you’ll almost never hit anything with the sweep, unless there’s geometry sitting exactly on the orbit radius.

Let me know if this works for you or if you need more help!