The Godot Game Engine has a low learning curve. You could get away with an excellent game without writing a single line of code. If you are trying to get a job in the game industry, go with Unreal or Unity. It's for simplicity why Godot is one of the best game engines to learn. If you are learning to make a game on the side, try Godot first. Godot Engine is a feature-packed, cross-platform game engine to create 2D and 3D games from a unified interface. It provides a comprehensive set of common tools, so that users can focus on making games without having to reinvent the wheel. Godot provides a huge set of common tools, so you can just focus on making your game without reinventing the wheel. Godot is completely free and open-source under the very permissive MIT license. No strings attached, no royalties, nothing. Your game is yours, down to the last line of engine code. Find games made with Godot like Visitor, The Body Monstrous, Scrabdackle, How to Make a Cup of Tea, Project Kat on itch.io, the indie game hosting marketplace.
Godot tutorial is designed for both beginners and professionals. Our Godot tutorial provides all the basic and advanced concept of creating 2D and 3D games in Godot Game Engine. It was released on 14 January 2014.
Godot development was started by Juan 'reduz' Linietsky and Ariel 'punto' Manzur in 2007. It is one of the famous and trending 2-Dimensional and 3-Dimensional game creator. It is free and open-source software and created in C and C++. We can use C#, Python, and GDScript language to code in the Godot engine. GDScript is a high-level, dynamically typed programming language which is similar to Python. We can make attractive and interesting games by Godot engine. And without a game, our life becomes boring. Video Games are mind booster and mind shaper technique to keep our brain happy.
What is Godot?
Video games are important part of our life. It provides a fun and social form of entertainment. Video games are important because disabled people that can't exercise may still play these games.
Godot Engine is an open-source project developed by a community of volunteers. Godot development was started by Juan 'reduz' Linietsky and Ariel 'Punto' Manzur in 2007.
Godot is a great way to practice game design on our own. The Godot Engine is a open-source, C++ based game engine for making 2D and 3D games for mobile and desktop platforms. The editor of Godot can be run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. This tutorial will cover all aspects of Godot game development.
Godot Engine
Godot engine is a feature-packed, cross-platform game engine to create 2D and 3D games from a unified interface. It provides a comprehensive set of standard tools, so the users can focus on making games.
Games can be exported in one click to several platforms, including the desktop platforms (Linux, Mac OS, Windows) as well as Mobile (Android, iOS) and also web-based platforms like HTML5.
Installation of Godot Engine in Windows
We can download Godot from Steam, but here we are downloading form its website.
For the implementation of the Godot, firstly, we have to download the Godot engine. To download Godot engine, click on the link given below:
Firstly, we have to download Godot Engine in our PC (Windows operating system). We can also download Godot for Mac and Linux from below, as the screenshot is given below.
Select standard version 64-bit:
Here, the Godot engine is successfully downloaded in our system.
After that, we have click on the Godot_v3.1.1-stable_win64.exe file to launch it. It is the latest version of Godot, which is version 3.1.1.
First look of Godot game engine:
When we launch Godot, the first window we will see is the Project Manager. It helps us create, remove, import, or play game projects. We can create our new project and importing the existing project also. And also can see many game examples fromTemplates to understand it.
What is GDScript?
The official languages for Godot are GDScript and C++.
Godot C++ API is also efficient and easy to use and it is an excellent tool to optimize projects. But here we are using GDScript.
Godot C++ API is also efficient and easy to use and an excellent tool to optimize projects. But here we are using GDScript.
In the next tutorial, we will understand about Godot Game Engine.
Prerequisite
Godot is a game engine.Before learning Godot engine, you must have the basic knowledge of GDScript and Python.
Godot Engine
Audience
Our Godot Tutorial is designed to help beginners and professionals.
Problems
We assure you that we will not find any issue with this tutorial. But if there is any mistake, please post the queries in the contact form.
Problem
It’s probably the most common error seen in the Godot help channels: an invalid node reference. Most often, it results in the following error:
Invalid get index ‘position’ (on base: ‘null instance’).
Solution
It’s that last part, the “null instance”, that’s the source of this problem, and the main source of confusion for Godot beginners.
The way to avoid this problem is to understand the concept of node paths.
Understanding node paths
The scene tree is made of nodes, which are connected together in parent-child relationships. A node path is the path it takes to get from one node to another by moving through this tree.
As an example, let’s take a simple “Player” scene:
The script for this scene is on the Player node. If the script needs to call play() on the AnimatedSprite node, it needs a reference to that node:
The argument of the get_node() function is a string representing the path to the desired node. In this case, it’s a child of the node the script is on. If the path you give it is invalid, you’ll get the dreaded null instance error (as well as “Node not found”).
Getting a node reference with get_node() is such a common situation that GDScript has a shortcut for it:
get_node() returns a reference to the desired node.
Let’s look at a more complex scene tree:
If the script on Main needs to access ScoreLabel it can do so with this path:
When using $ notation, the Godot editor will autocomplete paths for you. You can also right-click on a node in the Scene tab and choose “Copy Node Path”.
What if the node you want to access is higher in the tree? You can use get_parent() or '..' to reference the parent node. In the above example tree, to get the Player node from the ScoreLabel:
Let’s break that down. The path '../../Player' means “get the node that’s up one level (HUD), then one more level (Main), then its child Player”.
Does this seem familiar? Node paths work exactly like directory paths in your operating system. The / character indicates the parent-child relationship, and .. means “up one level”.
Relative vs absolute paths
The above examples all use relative paths - meaning they start at the current node and follow the path to the destination. Node paths can also be absolute, starting from the root node of the scene.
For example, the absolute path to the player node is:
/root, which can also be accessed with get_tree().root is not the root node of your scene. It’s the Viewport node that is always present by default in the SceneTree.
A warning
While the above examples work just fine, there are some things you should be aware of that may cause problems later. Imagine the following situation: the Player node has a health property, which you want to display in a HealthBar node somewhere in your UI. You might write something like this in the player’s script:
While this may work fine at first, it is brittle, meaning it can break easily. There are two main problems with this kind of arrangement:
Godot Docs
- You can’t test the player scene independently. If you run the player scene by itself or in a test scene that doesn’t have a UI, the
get_node()line will cause a crash. - You can’t change your UI. If you decide to rearrange or redesign your UI, the path will no longer be valid and you have to change it.
For this reason, you should try to avoid using node paths that go up the scene tree. In the above situation, if the player instead emitted a signal when the health changed, the UI could listen for that signal to update itself. You could then rearrange and separate nodes without fear of breaking your game.
Wrapping up
Once you understand how to use node paths, you’ll see how easy it is to reference any node you need. And put a stop to seeing those null instance error messages.
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Godot Engine
