Godot @programming.dev BentiGorlich @gehirneimer.de 3mo ago

How to save "meta" information in a scene

I am coming from a Unity background and there I just had a component of some custom class in the scene which I could then easily get by calling FindInScene<CustomComponent> or something like that. Not in Godot this doesn't work, because I didn't find a way to get the actual class of an attached script. I always just get GDScript as the class name even though I did specify a custom one.

The information I want to save are things like: where to spawn players, how many laps will this race have, maybe save references to the spawned players, etc.

So how would I save this "meta" information to get by another script in Godot?

EDIT: here is an example: I have a main scene which can load different levels. When loading a level I need to get some information about that level, like: the available spawn points. Inside each level I have a node with a script attached to it that defined class_name LevelMeta and holds the meta information that I need when loading the level. How do I detect this script and the associated meta information?

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Im not really sure i understand. A scene is just a node with some children, if you want to store and read information from it then you just attach a script to the root node and declare some variables in it no?

If you add some custom node or instance to it, then you just get_node that by its path and access its variables.
- Yes exactly. but how do I detect a specific script in my scene view? Or in other words: how do I find the source of my meta information in a scene?
  
  Oh you want to know the name of the script that was previously attached to a node?
  
  get_script().get_path() should return the filepath to the script that you used, not sure if thats what you want tho.
  
  not the name, the class_name I set inside of the script
  
  I added an example in the thread
  
  I see, looks like that is actually an issue.
  
  https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/21789
  
  Seems like you have to overwrite the get_class function if you want to detect custom classes.
  
  extends Node2D class_name CustomClass func get_class(): return "CustomClass" func is_class(name): return name == "CustomClass" or .is_class(name) func _ready(): print(get_class()) print(is_class("CustomClass")) print(is_class("Node2D"))
  
  But is my solution actually a good one?
  
  Defining a unique class name gets you the same thing as giving each script a unique filename and then differentiating between the get_script().get_path() but i can see how its not as clean for comparison.
  
  Another solution would be to just give all your custom classes a var called "class_id" or something and then you can read that out if you need it.
  
  Oh I meant the general solution for getting level / scene meta data 😅
  
  Im assuming you have a predefined level scene, which you instantiate and add as a child to your main scene. If i were to save a bunch of metadata about that level scene, i would add a dictionary named "level_data" to the script of the root node of that levels scene.
  
  extends Node var level_data = { "spawn_point": Vector2(x,y), ... }
  
  After you instantiate that level from your main scene with:
  
  var level1_tscn = load("res://path/to/tscn") var level1 = level1_tscn.instantiate()
  
  You can then get or modify the metadata from that instance reference.
  
  print(level1.level_data["spawn_point"])
  
  When you are done you can then add it as a child to the main scene with add_child(level1).
  
  You can also do that right away and access the data later ofcourse, but if the values are needed in the _ready function of the level, then you need to modify them before adding it to the main scene.
  
  That seems very nice. Thanks for the input :) I am very much new to Godot and I gotta say most Unity systems in my head still work, but some just let me run against a wall, like the one I described here XD
  
  Added something to the previous comment.
  
  Im also not super experienced, i just make unsuccessfull attempts at making games from time to time :) But i do love godot a lot.
  
  You generally use the same logic for literally everything in godot.
  
  Spawning a bullet, enemy, item, ui component?
  
  Instantiate, set values, add_child
  
  Ah good find, I will read through that shortly, thanks :)

21 comments