maaack/godot-game-template

Godot template with a main menu, options menus, pause menu, credits, scene loader, extra tools, and an example game scene.

godot-game-template's Issues

Suggestion: option after install to copy UI prefabs/scenes even deeper

I really like the prefab copy (or rather, inheritance) system on start, but I still need to customize the option widgets further (there are too big on my lores pixel art game, I need to change some HBox to VBox, etc.).

Maybe we could have an option to create copies (or rather, inheriting scenes, since I see the copy inherit from the addon scenes, which is great) of low-level widgets as well?

Right now I must do it manually and remember to reassign references everywhere accordingly.

LevelLoader still tries to load levels that are missing

The LevelLoader may try to load an invalid level after:

• deleting a scene from the directory.
• having a current_level var that is > levels.size().

This results in some confusing errors.

Suggestion: Automating the process of propagating changes to the other repos

These are the other repos that this repo shares code with:

• https://github.com/Maaack/Godot-Menus-Template
  • https://github.com/Maaack/Godot-Credits-Scene
  • https://github.com/Maaack/Godot-Music-Controller
  • https://github.com/Maaack/Godot-UI-Sound-Controller
  • https://github.com/Maaack/Godot-Scene-Loader

It would be a huge time-saver if some of the process of porting the code could be automated. It could be done from either end, going up the chain, or down, and still save time. The major differences between repos are the plugin directory name and the scope of their contents.

Keep `main-plugin` synced with `main`

The main-plugin branch should stay synced with the main branch. This is being solved manually. An automated solution would be preferred.

Menu navigation is possible via directional input during title/sub-title fade animation, causing other buttons than Play to be focused when buttons appear

Setting Game Scene Path allows to show Play button, but sometimes the Options button is still the one focused on start, instead of the expected Play button at the top.

EDIT: found cause: ghost navigation, see comment below

Btw nice addon, it goes farther than EasyMenus and already has Credits and above all, remappable controls! I'll use it from now on for my jams, and maybe even my other games!

Fixes to ProjectMusicController

Music controller is supposed to check AudioStreamPlayers that match the audio_bus variable, but it does not.

Also, sometimes an AudioStreamPlayers can get added before the _ready() on the ProjectMusicController gets called. Should use _enter_tree() instead.

Suggestion: option to use version from Project settings

I already wrote my own main menu scripts for other games, and I just use the Project settings version to fill the version label

I found it less error-prone as I don't have to manually update the version each time.

An option to do so, or alternatively fallback to the project settings version when version name is empty of "0.0.0", would be helpful.

Here is my current custom patch:

func _setup_version_name():
	# CUSTOM CHANGE by hsandt
	# If not setting a custom version name, use the one from project settings
	# This avoids having to manually update it every time
	if version_name == '0.0.0':
		version_name = ProjectSettings.get_setting("application/config/version", "0.0.0")
	AppLog.version_opened(version_name)
	$"%VersionNameLabel".text = "v%s" % version_name

Documentation on adding more settings

Would love some documentation on adding more settings, tabs and menus, like if I want to add an anti-aliasing setting, how would I add it and how would I make the setting save, chances are people using this are using it to learn as they are beginners and templates like this really help!

Originally posted by @echoless3484 in Maaack/Godot-Menus-Template#4 (comment)

Set default project main menu path in one central location

The main_menu_scene vars in WinScreen, LoseScreen, EndCredits, and PauseMenu are redundant and should be used optionally, like for a custom main menu after beating the game.

Suggestion: Generic GameState that saves into JSON (or similar)

Currently, the GameLevelLog tracks progress in the config file. This does not follow convention on where that data would typically be stored, as it mixes application configuration settings with game state.

Instead, we could try creating a generic GameState (or even more generic AppState) that stores a dictionary of data and manages the saving/loading behind the scenes. There's a lot of documentation available on how to save and load game state to and from files.

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/io/saving_games.html

Eventually, it could have multiple levels, like UserGameState, PCGameState, WorldGameState depending on the level of persistence desired.

GameLevelLog, GameLog, AppLog could then be updated to read from the GameState instead of Config.

Plugin doesn't include keybindings for gamepads present in full template

The full template has added some gamepad inputs to the default UI actions. Specifically, ui_accept, ui_cancel, ui_page_up, and ui_page_down.

These are currently not present in the plugin version, and result in a different experience for users of the plugin. One solution suggested in the Discord was to use an autoload to add the input events when the app starts. However, according to the documentation, project settings can be overridden by including a override.cfg in the project's root directory.

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_projectsettings.html

How to add audio ?

Suggestion: Support animating background music players in starting scenes

I get these errors if I try to animate the background music player.

I think it would be ideal if developers are still able to control the background music player from the scene it starts in.

Maybe the re-parenting of the player node could instead happen when the scene is about to be unloaded.

Plugin should exclude content outside of `addons/` in repo

The plugin version of the template ( https://godotengine.org/asset-library/asset/2709 ) currently includes the contents of the entire repo when attempting to install. It should only include the contents of the addons/ directory. All other contents should be excluded by default. Refer to other godot plugins.

UISoundController misc issues: unwanted initial button press sound, overlapping focus/press sounds, missing sounds

This is a meta issue for various UISoundController-related issues that prevent me from getting the UI SFX I really want.

• Unwanted initial button focus sound
• Overlapping focus/press sound when clicking with mouse
• No SFX to move slider via directional input
• Inconsistent tab control focus

Unwanted initial button focus sound

button_focused SFX plays when the main menu appears, as the first button is focused. This is generally not wanted.

In addition, it plays even when the main menu gradually appears with transitions (title fade in), which makes it even weirder.

I have already coded a custom UI SFX manager for Unity and despite the differences with Godot, I remember I had the same issue, so I had to check manually if this was the initial selection or not (by checking some custom flag or current selectable reference). I think it's possible to do the same in Godot.

Overlapping focus/press sound when clicking with mouse

When clicking a button with the mouse, it focuses the button then presses it, causing double sound. I'm not sure how to fix this. The user may hold the button for a while before releasing, in which case playing two sounds makes sense, and there is no way to predict it.

In general I'm interested in a sound to select a button while navigating with directional arrows / D-pad, rather than actually focusing the button, but there doesn't seem to be a way to distinguish here. I don't remember I did any particular fix in Unity, so I probably have the same issue there, but I think I used a single Audio Source for all my UI SFX, which means that if user quickly presses and releases mouse button, the Press button SFX will take over the Focus/Select SFX.

No SFX to move slider via directional input

There is a sound to drag slider with the mouse (drag start and end) but not via keyboard/gamepad. I suppose this could be done via value change detection. However that means that dragging with mouse would also spam value change SFX (I reduced this effect by using sound throttling in Unity, so this could be done, but still ugly to play value change button when dragging with mouse...). Probably a lower level detection of directional input to change slider by step values may be better.

Inconsistent tab control focus

Controls tab doesn't autofocus the first element and even if it did, the big controls box doesn't have any focus SFX associated.

Audio and Video tabs autofocus the first element which could be a slider or toggle with their own focus sound.

This means that if I set Focus SFX for Tab Changed and slider/toggle, I will hear twice the SFX (I tested, the SFX seems played at louder volume).

Again, reusing the same source would in this case force SFX overwrite and thus play it only once.

---

I'll add more issues when I think about them.

A few minutes later: added Inconsistent tab control focus

Easier process to switch between Menus Template and Game Template

I found the Menus Template, installed it, then later found about the Game Template which adds a Pause menu.

So I removed the Menus Template addon, installed the Game Template and most references worked at first, and replacing the manual extends path from maaacks_menus_template to maaacks_game_template was easy.

Fixing all the menu prefabs, not so. I had to replace the OptionsControl script with the new one, but even then I'd get a bunch of broken dependencies. At some point errors stopped, I ran the game from the main menu, but it immediately closed.

I realized I was still using the old Autoload singletons so I removed them, and unchecked Project Settings maaacks_menus_template/disable_plugin_dialogues so the addon prompts me to recopy all prefab examples once more. It offered me to update the main scene to the new opening with logo, and the new autoload singletons were properly re-added.

Now the new main menu does work but I lost, as expected, all my prefab overrides, and I don't think I can easily revert my changes without breaking dependencies again. To be honest, I just tried and it's not that bad, I managed to bring back my local options sub-menu changes, but for some reason I can't retrieve the MainMenu changes themselves.

Well, I suppose the easiest will be to just copy paste the PauseMenu.gd, .tscn PauseMenuController.gd and InGameMenuController.gd and replace _game_ with _menus_ in references, rather than the other way round. Is this what you'd recommend?

For next project I'll think ahead which addon suits my project best. I may end up with my own Pause Menu for bigger projects too.

Since it's pretty edge case, I don't expect you to code a super tool to automate that, but if you have some timps on how to make the process easier (after I started working customizing the main menu), you can tell me.

I haven't modified that much of the main menu and I saved the theme as a separate resource, so I suppose installing a brand new Game Template and reapplying my changes manually could also be a solution.

Editor error: RuntimeLogger.gd does not inherit from Node.

Editor throws errors:
Failed to create an autoload, script 'res://addons/maaacks_game_template/extras/scripts/RuntimeLogger.gd' does not inherit from 'Node'.
editor/editor_autoload_settings.cpp:550 - Condition "!info->node" is true. Continuing.

SceneLoader fails to load a cached scene (ResourceLoader.has_cached(scene_path) returns true, e.g. due to PackedScene being assigned to some node)

After adding a custom script that was referencing some scene A in order to load it manually, I noticed that the main menu Play button stopped loading scene A as the initial scene.

Debugging SceneLoader.load_scene shows that the block checking if ResourceLoader.has_cached(scene_path): only sends a signal, then returns:

	if ResourceLoader.has_cached(scene_path):
		call_deferred("emit_signal", "scene_loaded")
		return

and in general you don't have custom code plugged to scene_loaded, so nothing more happens.

To fix this, I defined the following function:

func change_scene_to_path(scene_path: String) -> void:
	# Load scene from path
	# This should only be called for cached or very lightweight scenes
	# Otherwise, use load_scene to benefit from async loading
	var scene = ResourceLoader.load(scene_path, "PackedScene")
	var err = get_tree().change_scene_to_packed(scene)
	if err:
		push_error("failed to change scene to passed scene: %d" % err)
		get_tree().quit()

and added the following line before return:

change_scene_to_path.call_deferred(scene_path)

I added call_deferred to follow the logic of the existing line call_deferred("emit_signal", "scene_loaded") although it didn't seem necessary in this case, but always safer to change scene on deferred call anyway.

I suspect that the dev's intention was to mimic background loading, where we would emit a signal and let the user plug some custom behavior there. However, it seems unnecessary when the scene is already cached since it wouldn't take more than 1 frame.

So I should probably remove the scene_loaded signal which would be irrelevant when directly changing to new scene.