Hi, I want to create a game, but (mostly) without the editor or at least without the automatic functions form the editor. I want to be able to create scenes, materials, UIs and so on "on the fly" from a script.

Maybe some parts of the game like the main menu and some core functions can be created in the editor, but most of the game should be created from script.

I want to be able to add a new item or mobs or whatever just by adding script files to the game folder (modding). A core function should search a folder for scripts and run them. And these scripts should create most of the game content (not the editor)

Is that possible and if so, how does it work? Are there tutorials? Unfortunately I haven't found any yet. If that doesn't work, I'll probably have to look for another game engine because the modding feature is supposed to be a core function of my game.

Regards DotGo

4 days later

Nobody's responding to this, so I'll take a crack at it.

From what I can tell, you can create everything that you could create with the Godot GUI completely in code, so you wouldn't have an issue with the idea of creating things on the fly from scripts. That's going to be a bit difficult, I'd say, but it's possible.

Now as for modding, it should be possible to load external scripts using the standard script loading procedure, just with the current working directory or the user's directory ("user://") instead of the resource directory ("res://"). I think the best course of action is to try out a simple test, where you create a game that runs from an empty directory, and create a GDScript file that does something simple. That way, you can test it out and see how it works.

I'd understand if there aren't any tutorials; modding is pretty unusual, even for today's indie games. However, there are results if you search for Godot modding; for example, here's a short post on the Q&A forum. As mentioned in that post, security should be a top concern to ensure that modding support doesn't become a virus or malware transport vector. That might be possible to guard against from your side programmatically, but it's something to be aware of and do tests on, just to be sure.

12 days later

I changed my mind about creating content without the editor a bit. This is more or less what I'm looking for

https://github.com/sxkod/godot_learning/blob/master/loadpack.pdf

Because my game should be client/server and most content is procedurally created I don't need the editor to create static maps or something like this. But the editor is useful to create scenes and export them as packages

I'm creating a game that is almost entirely procedural. Yet it feels like it would be pretty odd not to use the editor to organise an application. Nodes to attach scripts to. Scenes so that I can run parts of my game for testing.

Everything is there for convenience. I'd have to go out of my way not to use any of these things.

3 years later