How do you organize your script files?

housatic

Out of curiosity, I'd like to know how others organize and attach their scripts. The docs and tutorials usually say to attach different script files to individual nodes.

I like to have only one script attached to the root node, then I add the children I wanna use in the root node's metadata (as Node Paths) and access them in code using Get Meta. I found that this makes it easier to e.g. change which node some code belongs to, since instead of finding the old & new nodes and reattaching the script, I can just drag the new node into the metadata.
I'm not sure if there's any disadvantages to doing this though, I don't think I've seen anyone else organize their whole project this way.

xyz

housatic If you name your class using class_name the engine will register it as a new node type. You'll be able to directly create nodes of that type, with the script automatically attached.

award

housatic

I'm curious why you prefer assigning them to the metadata over assigning them to exported variables. I guess functionally it makes little difference. It just seems slightly more hassle.

This is the difference in my mind, but please correct me if I'm mistaken in how you do it:

extends Node2D

@export var exported_node_path:NodePath

func _ready() -> void:
	var export_way = get_node_or_null(exported_node_path)
	var meta_way = get_node_or_null(get_meta(&"meta_path")) if has_meta(&"meta_path") else null

synthnostate

housatic Yeah, I prefer one big script (for each "thing") over tiny little scripts attached to various subnodes. I try not to create xyz.gd without xyz.tscn. You can do whatever you want, Godot is pretty flexible about how you organize scripts, though if you find yourself swimming upstream there's probably a better way.

MagickPanda

Theoretically it's saner if you put script in the same folder of the game object/node, though for shared script such as a child component node or an instanced object derived from class_name node xyz mention above, putting them into a dedicated script folder is probably a better solution.

housatic

MagickPanda Is that when you're saving nodes as packed scenes?

MagickPanda

housatic hmmm I only save them to packed scene when saving them to file.
For reusable instancing objects such as a bullet/particle, I just make them packed scene at the top of the script via var xxx = preload(path).

housatic

award
Like:
Camera2D camera = (Camera2D)Scene.GetNode((NodePath)GetMeta("camera"));
It definitely looks messy, and to be honest I hadn't thought to add any error handling. It seems I haven't gotten any errors from this yet (and I hope it stays that way!)
To be even more honest, I didn't know you could do the same with exported variables 😆 But can't you only export node paths from code, meaning you'd have to either have script attached to the node, or know the exact path and have to change it if the structure changes?

housatic

synthnostate Not sure if it'd work the same in GDScript, but: I have one .cs file where I set all the nodes and global variables, and then the rest is organized into separate files (either using partial classes or namespaces) based on functionality. So instead of having scripts for nodes, I'll have one file for all GUI nodes, one for player related stuff, one for saving/loading, etc.. It feels more natural for me that way.

xyz

housatic Node class inheritance is one of the key architectural concepts in Godot. Why not play along with it?

housatic

xyz I'll have to look more into what are the differences between setting up inheritance as Godot intended, and just writing classes/functions to create nodes.

xyz

housatic The differences are comparable to differences between writing your code in a pure structural language like C versus writing it in an object oriented language like C#. The former is more tedious for things like games where you have to instantiate objects till the cows come home.

housatic

xyz In my little demos so far I've only had static elements like GUI that I made in the editor, or relatively simple objects that I create through code, but I can see how the latter would become hard to manage when it's anything more than a couple of TextureRects and Labels. I'll look into it 👍️

housatic

Looking at my previous project I did use instances the recommended way, but only for background elements that I then didn't touch again. I think I got confused with the scene terminology, if in Godot a scene is any structure of nodes but when I see the word I just keep thinking "level" or "[movie] scene" instead of "object". Nothing I can do there but brute force the word association away, I guess.

housatic

Alright, I restructured my current project to make it less silly - attached scripts to relevant root nodes instead of having every single thing on THE root node, made objects independent on the scene - but I'm still sticking to my terrible (Node)GetNode((NodePath)GetMeta("nodename") 😆 Thanks for the replies everyone.

xyz

housatic but I'm still sticking to my terrible (Node)GetNode((NodePath)GetMeta("nodename") 😆

Bad habits are hard to drop 😃