I got tired of Godot’s 2D workflow, so I fixed it myself in C++.

abdjds

Hey everyone,

Let’s be honest for a second. We all love Godot. It’s lightweight, it’s fast, and it’s open-source. But if you’ve ever tried to build a complex 2D or 2.5D game with tons of layers, UI elements, and parallax backgrounds, you know exactly what true friction feels like.

For months, I was working on my game. Every single day, my workflow looked like this: jumping back and forth to the Inspector just to nudge a z_index by 1, losing my mind micro-managing TileMapLayer hierarchies for a simple parallax effect, drawing collision shapes cell by cell, and dealing with silent layout failures when accidentally moving locked nodes.

One night, after wasting two hours just trying to align and layer a village scene perfectly, I snapped. I realized I was spending more time fighting the editor's UI than actually designing my game.

But since Godot is open-source, I didn't want to just sit around, complain on Reddit, or wait for future engine updates. I decided to take matters into my own hands. I downloaded Godot's C++ source code, opened Visual Studio, and started rewriting the editor core to fit my exact needs.

I call my custom build Ignis Engine.

Instead of building temporary editor plugins, I baked my solutions directly into canvas_item_editor_plugin and the core theme manager. Here is the superpowers I gave my editor:

The World Builder Wizard (Bottom Panel): With one single click, the engine automatically spawns a perfect, production-ready 8-layer world hierarchy (Background, Parallax, Ground, Y-Sorted Props, and Foreground). If I switch to 2.5D mode, it instantly configures Y-sorting across the correct nodes. No more manual tree setup.

Instant Depth & Sorting Tools: I added a custom context menu and Command Palette shortcuts for Bring Forward, Send Backward, and a holy-grail feature: Sort by Y as Z. Now, I can select 50 trees in my isometric scene, and the engine calculates their global vertical positions and fixes their rendering depth instantly.

Collision Paint Helper: I built a dedicated panel to manage my collision layers. I can change the visibility tint (like an overlay of translucent neon orange) with a smooth slider, focus the drawing tool instantly, or use a smart function to copy my ground terrain directly into the collision map with built-in safety checks.

Visual Polish & Eye Strain Relief: I tightened the Tree spacings to 4px to stop the crowding in the Scene and FileSystem docks, added a vibrant amber accent strip for active selections, and customized the theme to a deep, dark Slate layout that makes long nights incredibly easy on the eyes.

Every tool I built is fully integrated with Godot’s EditorUndoRedoManager (Ctrl+Z works flawlessly) and completely localized in both English and Arabic.

It completely transformed my development. What used to take me hours of tedious micro-management now takes literal seconds.

I’m sharing this because I want to hear from you: What is that one workflow bottleneck or UI annoyance in Godot that drives you crazy every day? If you could hardcode any tool directly into the 2D or UI editor right now to save your sanity, what would it be?

I’m looking for fresh ideas to bake into my core tools next, so let’s talk! (And yes, I'm adding a screenshot of how the custom layout and grid look right now!)

kuligs2

Im more interested in 3D workflows.

One annoyance with godot, is that when you work on gdscript inside godot editor, sometimes its not obvious what script you have selected, and when you know the script you want to work on is attached to a node, you press the node, to activate/switch to that script to edit but it does not work that way..

For me its more intuitive to click either the node tab or on the open node tree on the left to switch to the player script.. but you have to select it inside another list between node tree and script view.

You can activate the script by clicking the script icon next to the node, but its tiny and requires precision to aim for, when you want to go fast, you are not super precise, so i never use it cuz i often overshoot it.

abdjds

kuligs2 UPDATE: Fixed and fully implemented in the C++ Core! 🚀

Your feedback made so much sense that I went straight into the engine source code to fix this workflow bottleneck from its real click source (SceneTreeDock::_push_item()).

How it works now in Ignis Engine:

If you are currently inside the Script Editor tab, clicking on any Node name in the Scene Tree that has a script attached will instantly switch to that script. No more aiming for the tiny script icon, and no more overshooting!

Completely Defensive & Safe: It only triggers if the Script Editor is active. If you click a node with no script, it safely keeps your current script open without breaking your focus.

Toggleable: I added a dedicated editor setting turned ON by default under: Text Editor > Behavior > Navigation > Stay in Script Editor on Node Selected.

It's compiled, smoke-tested, and officially baked into the core.

Here is a quick demo video I uploaded to Google Drive to show you the new seamless behavior in action:
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Thanks again for the killer suggestion, keep them coming!

Rainfollower

kuligs2

kuligs2

oh yes! This workflow of selecting scripts and scenes so hard requires re-writing and normal UI design! Vertical tree plus horizontal line of tabs plus vertical list of open scripts equals total mess. I click the wrong things constantly, without an end.

PS: sorry for the offtop

PPS: I enabled script icons in the tab, and disabled switching to the root script of scene on scene selection. it helps a bit.

kuligs2

abdjds Can you do the same for the tabs? When you have scenes open but youre in script editor, to switch to the script attached to the scene that is open in the tab?

Like for example click on the player_character scene and it opens the player_character.gd in the script editor.

Hope you make a PR to the engine, so that this gets merged.

Great work !!

abdjds

kuligs2 This new feature dramatically accelerates game development workflows by bridging the gap between scene navigation and coding. Normally, when working inside the Script Editor, switching between different open Scene Tabs keeps the code editor locked on the previous file, forcing you to manually hunt down and click the script icon of the new scene to view its logic. With this update, the engine becomes completely context-aware: the moment you click any open scene tab while in the script view, the editor instantly recognizes the switch and automatically opens the main script attached to that scene's root node, allowing you to cycle through characters or levels with your code updating flawlessly in real-time. Best of all, this fluid transition is fully integrated with Godot's native editor settings under "Open Attached Script on Node Selected," ensuring that it strictly respects user preference—giving developers a smarter, faster workspace that eliminates thousands of redundant clicks daily.

kuligs2

abdjds release the source or make PR pls!!!!!!

abdjds

Rainfollower thank you so much for the feedback! I totally agree, the classic vanilla layout can feel like a total clicking maze when you are in deep coding/design sessions. That's exactly why I built this tool-pass into my custom Ignis Engine fork to eliminate that context-switching fatigue.

I am currently finalizing the stability of the core toolsets and sorting out some other layout upgrades (like our persistent 2.5D world systems and terrain AA). Once everything is rock-solid and cleanly polished, I'll definitely look into pushing a clean, compliant Pull Request (PR) to the official Godot repository so everyone can benefit from a faster workflow. Stay tuned!