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Godot interfaces

Often one needs scripts that rely on other objects for features. There are 2 parts to this process:

1. Acquiring a reference to the object that presumably has the features.

2. Accessing the data or logic from the object.

The rest of this tutorial outlines the various ways of doing all this.

Acquiring object references

For all Objects, the most basic way of referencing them is to get a reference to an existing object from another acquired instance.

GDScriptC#

var obj = node.object # Property access.
var obj = node.get_object() # Method access.

The same principle applies for RefCounted objects. While users often access Node and Resource this way, alternative measures are available.

Instead of property or method access, one can get Resources by load access.

GDScriptC#

# If you need an "export const var" (which doesn't exist), use a conditional
# setter for a tool script that checks if it's executing in the editor.
# The `@tool` annotation must be placed at the top of the script.
@tool

# Load resource during scene load.
var preres = preload(path)
# Load resource when program reaches statement.
var res = load(path)

# Note that users load scenes and scripts, by convention, with PascalCase
# names (like typenames), often into constants.
const MyScene = preload("my_scene.tscn") # Static load
const MyScript = preload("my_script.gd")

# This type's value varies, i.e. it is a variable, so it uses snake_case.
@export var script_type: Script

# Must configure from the editor, defaults to null.
@export var const_script: Script:
    set(value):
        if Engine.is_editor_hint():
            const_script = value

# Warn users if the value hasn't been set.
func _get_configuration_warnings():
    if not const_script:
        return ["Must initialize property 'const_script'."]

    return []