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Comedot - How To Do Shit

🏠 Organize Your Project

Create a separate copy of the entire Comedot project folder for each of your games and modify anything in any way, or

  1. Create a new git branch for your game (say game-of-the-year-2069) in your local Comedot repository, and

  2. Make subfolders for your game in the existing folder structure like /Scenes/YourGame/ or /YourGame/etc/ to organize your own files separately from the framework and avoid accidental conflicts.

💡 You could also use a single /Comedot/Game/ subfolder for multiple game projects: Create a new git repository in the /Game/ subfolder, and use multiple git branches for each game. This may help with experimenting on different ideas while keeping the Comedot framework separate, so that any updates or modifications to the framework can be easily shared between all your games.

❗️ Your main game scene must have the /Scripts/Start.gd script attached to the root node (or any other node as long as it runs before other scripts, just to be safe) so it can initialize the Comedot framework environment and apply global flags etc.

🐣 Understand the Basics

🧩 A "component" is any Godot node that:

  • Reacts to events (like player input or collisions).

  • Moves or modifies its parent node or other components.

  • Contains data for other components to use (like character health and other stats).

  • To simplify, it's basically a wrapper around get_parent().do_something() and get_parent().get_node("OtherComponent").do_something()

🪆 An "entity" is a node whose children are components (it may also have non-component children).

🎬 The quickest way to learn/teach something is by example, so take a look in /Templates/Examples/ and /Templates/Scenes/ for very basic gameplay that you can duplicate and modify.

🎬 Scenes in /Tests/ are used in the development process of various components and subsystems such as /Tests/Upgrades/UpgradeTest.tscn and /Tests/TurnBased/TurnBasedTest.tscn that you can examine to see how those features work.

👤 Make a Player Entity

  1. Create a CharacterBody2D Node.

  2. Attach the /Entities/Characters/PlayerEntity.gd Script.

  3. Add other necessary nodes like Sprite2D or AnimatedSprite2D, CollisionShape2D, Camera2D / CameraComponent

  4. Set the Body's Physics Collision Layer to players and the Mask to terrain. Add other categories as needed.

💡 Try one of the templates in /Templates/Entities/

🕹️ Add Player Control

  1. Select the Player Entity Node in the Godot Scene Editor.

  2. Add components from /Components/Control/ and /Components/Physics/ as children of the Entity node.

    🍄 For platformer "run and jump" movement: JumpComponent + PlatformerPhysicsComponent

    🛸 For "overhead" RPG or flying movement: OverheadPhysicsComponent

    ♟️ For tile-based movement and board games: TileBasedControlComponent + TileBasedPositionComponent

  3. Add /Components/Physics/CharacterBodyComponent.tscn after the above components in the Entity's tree. This component takes the velocity updates from other components and applies them to the Entity's CharacterBody2D

  4. Add /Components/Control/InputComponent.tscn, which processes player/AI input and shares it with other components. The order of this component must be below other components, because input events propogate upwards through the scene tree.

🧩 Add Components to Entities

Most components require their Scene file, not just the Script, because they may add graphics or depend on internal nodes such as Timer and signals etc.

  • Use "Instantiate Child Scene" (SHIFT+Control/Command+A)

    ❌ Do NOT use "Add Child Node" (Control/Command+A): This will not include the component's child nodes or other properties.

  • Drag the .tscn Scene file of a Component from the FileSystem Dock to add it as a child node of an Entity.

    ❌ Do NOT drag a Component's .gd Script file to an Entity node; entities should only have a Script which extends Entity or TurnBasedEntity

📖 Read the documentation comments in the script of each component to see how to use it.

⚔️ Add Combat

  1. Add a FactionComponent and set the Faction to either players or enemies

  2. Add a HealthComponent + DamageReceivingComponent

  • For monsters, add a DamageComponent to hurt the player on contact.

❕ Remember to set the correct Physics Collision Layers and Masks for all bodies/areas, otherwise they won't be able to detect collisions with each other.

💡 See also: HealthVisualComponent + InvulnerabilityOnHitComponent etc.

⚡️ Customization

When you need to add new functionality specific to your game, you have the following options, in order of the tradeoff between easy → powerful:

  • Select a component in your Scene Tree and enable "Editable Children" to modify its internal sub-nodes, such as a GunComponent's pivot point, or collision shapes and timers. Those modifications will only apply to that one specific instance.

  • Create a new scene which inherits an existing component's scene, then add new child nodes to it, such as additional graphics for a GunComponent.

  • Make a subclass of a component's script, e.g. extends DamageComponent and add your own features on top of the existing functionality. Override any func and call super.funcName() to run the original code before or after your code.

  • Modify the original scene/script of a component to permanently modify or replace the default functionality. Those modifications will affect all instances of that component.

  • Create your own entirely new components, by creating a new scene and attaching the Component.gd script to the root node.

  • You don't HAVE to use components: You can continue using regular old nodes & scripts wherever you see fit, or combine multiple components into a single optimized script to improve performance for game objects that may have 100s of instance copies during runtime, such as bullets or enemy swarms.

💡 Don't worry about performance until you actually see a slowdown in framerate! Use the Godot Debugger/Profiler to trace the cause. Comedot has been tested for games with tons of entities each with many components, and it runs fine even in a web browser!

🧩 Create New Components

📜 Components are the core of the Comedot flow. Whenever you need a new kind of behavior in your game — e.g. the player needs to climb a wall, or a monster needs a specific movement pattern, or a bullet needs to explode into multiple smaller bullets, or you simply want to attach graphics like a health bar on all characters — you can add that as a new Component:

  1. Create a new Scene in the appropriate category subfolder in /Components/ or create a new subfolder. If your component needs to display visuals, the "Root Type" must be "2D Scene" which is a Node2D. If your component only has logic code, the "Root Type" should be Node.

  2. Select the root node of your component scene and add it to the components group. This makes it easier to manage multiple components. If the Scene is a Node2D then also enable "Group Selected Nodes" in the Scene Editor Toolbar. This makes it easier to move your component along with its children in the Entity's scene.

  3. Right-click the root node » "Attach Script". Type Component in "Inherits" and choose one of the base components in "Template".

💡 If you don't like having many small components, you can just create one "monolithic" super-component like a "PlayerComponent" or "MonsterComponent" and put everything specific to your gameplay in that one component. You could also forego components and do things the old Godot way for certain entities: just dump everything in a big "MyPlayerEntity.gd" script which extends Entity

🎲 Make a Turn-Based Game

  1. Go to Project Settings » Globals. Make sure the TurnBasedCoordinator Autoload is enabled.

  2. In your scene, add a TurnBasedEntity

  3. Create new components which extend TurnBasedComponent

  4. Connect player input or a UI control such as a "Next Turn" button to the TurnBasedCoordinator.startTurnProcess() function.

  5. Each turn, all turn-based objects cycle through the following states/phases: processTurnBegin() → processTurnUpdate() → processTurnEnd()

    Your turn-based components must implement one or more of those methods and may connect to each other's signals to build your gameplay.

🔧 Fix Common Problems

  • ⚠️ The first time you load a copy of this project, there may be errors because Godot will re-import various files and set the internal IDs for assets, textures etc. To fix: Close and reopen the project.

  • 🪲 The debugMode property on Components and many Scripts is your friend! It will print extra debug information in the logs and/or enable extra visual cues.

  • 📜 Use the logging methods in the Debug.gd AutoLoad to help you track down nasty bugs! Debug.printTrace(), Debug.printHighlight() etc.

  • 📈 Use DebugComponent, ChartWindow, Chart to monitor a real-time graph of any variable or property! e.g. ../CharacterBodyComponent:body:velocity:x to help with perfecting physics parameters etc.

  • If you make a subclass of a component and it doesn't work as expected, see if you need to call super._ready() or super.someOtherMethodYouOverrode() e.g. if you extend AreaContactComponent and override func onAreaEntered(areaEntered: Area2D) then you MUST call super.onAreaEntered(areaEntered) otherwise the collision-registering logic and events will not work!

  • The icons/emojis used in the log messages require Apple's SF Symbols which may not display on Windows or Linux: https://developer.apple.com/sf-symbols/

Common Reasons for Crashes

  • Missing component dependencies: Also check the ORDER of components in an entity's node tree.

  • Incorrect component parameters: Check all fields in the Godot Editor Inspector and make sure all values are correct.

  • I forgor: Check the latest "develop" branch or wait or fix it yourself. 🥲

💬 For more questions, summon @Syntaks.io on Discord on a night of a full moon.