Godot tips and hidden features to get more from the engine

[@njdarda]

i'm new to godot and this was immensly helpful. it eliminates a whole bunch of annoyances i had with the engine! live view of nodes is straight magic

[@octodemy]

I'm really glad you liked it :).

[@someanimatordude2925]

Please continue the great work. Your perspective and tenacity is invaluable for new developers.

[@octodemy]

Thanks a lot! Comments like this helps quite a bit.

[@JSR80]

Oooh! The last one I didn't know about and I think will help me. Thankyou.

[@octodemy]

Nice! I'm glad it helped. I had more unusual tips like that one to add but felt it was better to keep it simple and stick to the more general and useful ones as the video was also getting too long. Maybe I can do a follow up video a few weeks later with more tips focusing on really niche features this time. Probably after 4.2 releases as there are quite a few nice new things in there that could go unnoticed.

[@sporktank]

Great video! 😀 Just stumbled on your channel... hope you continue to post more and grow the channel.

[@octodemy]

Glad to hear that! I'm planning to alternate video releases between proper tutorials and more general fun videos like this and mini-prototype game devlogs. I'm still trying to get the hang of voice recording and video pacing (and failing)... Hopefully the videos will improve in the future.

[@fer6010]

Amazing work, keep it going!😃

[@octodemy]

Thanks!

[@trickster721]

The last tip, removing features from the editor, doesn't actually disable them in the engine. It only affects the editor UI, so you can set up a limited workspace for an artist on a team or something like that.

[@octodemy]

Yea, thats about it. I like this mainly to remove the store page from the top. You can however disable 3D features when building your game. From 4.3 onwards, doing this will remove all 3D nodes from ever being compiled into your game. Here is the PR if you're curious github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/89381

[@aryantzh2028]

very helpful, thanks a lot!!

[@octodemy]

Glad you liked it :)

Thank you 🎉

[@idle.observer]

That will save a lot of time, thank you :)

[@octodemy]

Glad you found it useful o/

[@TheThedaminator]

Editable childrens ?! Woa this changes evrything !

[@octodemy]

Yea :). That was one of the big things I was missing when I just started Godot. It feels so wrong not allowing you to edit your 'prefabs' children if you need to. But glad it does have the ability to. So yey!

[@GoblinArmyInYourWalls]

​@@octodemythis is a purposeful design choice, so that the user knows if it's an instance or if you're editing the scene it came from.

[@octodemy]

Oh yeah, I get it. It just meant to say it would be hard not to have that ability as, it is great for prototyping and testing things quickly. After a while, I kinda prefer the way Godot's does this, it forces you to do the right thing. I remember starting in Unity I had quite a few bugs where I mistakenly edit an prefab in a scene and not applied the changes. And quite a few other bugs where I applied some test changes by mistake.

[@xtratoothpaste]

eyo, good video. thanks for the tips. I'm new to Godot and the tip I'll probably be using the most is setting my vars to the actual type using the : As a c# programmer I really like having that control.

[@octodemy]

Yeah, static typing really makes GDScript feel a lot better :). I never really understood the appeal of dynamic typing as they are really error prone... And as long as the internal C++ classes doesn't use the Godot's 'Variant' class as a parameter, using static typing will always get your some marginal increase in performance.

[@igorthelight]

@@octodemy In some cases it's 2x the speed! But most of the time it's not that big ;-)

[@kartopod]

Amazing video! Some of these tips were really good! Great job :D

[@octodemy]

Thanks! :)

[@toddlask]

great vid!

[@octodemy]

Thanks!

[@RedaHaskouri]

heaven tips. thanks

[@octodemy]

Glad to hear that.

[@drinkwwwaterrr]

Super useful, thanks :)

[@octodemy]

I'm glad you liked it :).

[@kingkonork2641]

Very nice tips, I suscribe.

[@octodemy]

Thanks, welcome to the channel!

[@eivisch]

actually some I didn't know

[@octodemy]

Nice to hear that.

[@jutraim2422]

can you make a 3D grappling hook and/or seing mechanic?

[@octodemy]

I want to try and make a 3D grappling hook sometime, grappling mechanics are always fun, but I don't think I'll use it in this game. And sorry, not sure what a 'seeing mechanic' is?

[@jutraim2422]

@@octodemyOops, meant to type swing. I understand, I was looking at grappling hook tutorials for godot 4 for days but there were none so I wanted to try my luck :p

[@octodemy]

Oh I see... I kinda started to think of using some sort of anchor mechanic to drift the boat at some point. eg: You dropped an anchor and used that to help change directions quickly. But idk if it'll use that yet. But yea, I always found grappling hook in games interesting and I think I will try to make a tech demo for a grappling hook someday in the future. If I ever do that, I'll be sure to make a video on how to do it in Godot 4. :)

[@aryantzh2028]

maybe u need to add value * delta so it will have the same amount each time u're using vsync or not

[@aryantzh2028]

and don't forget to change the stretch mode to canvas_item so the aspect ratio will same for each kind of resolution

[@octodemy]

That's right, I kinda got so used to using * delta, that it feels so natural, and I didn't think to include it here. There were a lot more tips that I didn't include because there were either too simple or too unusual here. After 4.2 releases I think I might do another tips videos focusing on more unusual and uncommon tips.

[@octodemy]

Speaking of stretch mode, if you instead use the mode 'viewport', you'll keep the pixel fidelity for the UI too. So if you are looking for a true pixelart look, choosing viewport stretch will make sure all UI will use the viewport width/height too. Choosing 'canvas_item' will keep the sprites locked to the viewport width/height but will allow UI canvas items to render using the stretched width/height resolution.

[@federicotamburini]

Hidden for who dont read the wiki 😂

[@octodemy]

Oh yeah, most of the important ones you can it 'hidden' on the docs ;) But there are still lots of minor things that are not really documented because there are either too small or too obvious to even be there. So this is in the end, just a collection of useful things to keep in mind that exist.