Up to date

This page is up to date for Godot 4.1. If you still find outdated information, please open an issue.

InstancePlaceholder

Inherits: Node < Object

Placeholder for the root Node of a PackedScene.

Description

Turning on the option Load As Placeholder for an instantiated scene in the editor causes it to be replaced by an InstancePlaceholder when running the game, this will not replace the node in the editor. This makes it possible to delay actually loading the scene until calling create_instance. This is useful to avoid loading large scenes all at once by loading parts of it selectively.

The InstancePlaceholder does not have a transform. This causes any child nodes to be positioned relatively to the Viewport from point (0,0), rather than their parent as displayed in the editor. Replacing the placeholder with a scene with a transform will transform children relatively to their parent again.

Methods

Method Descriptions

Node create_instance ( bool replace=false, PackedScene custom_scene=null )

Call this method to actually load in the node. The created node will be placed as a sibling above the InstancePlaceholder in the scene tree. The Node‘s reference is also returned for convenience.

Note: create_instance is not thread-safe. Use Object.call_deferred if calling from a thread.

String get_instance_path ( ) const

Gets the path to the PackedScene resource file that is loaded by default when calling create_instance. Not thread-safe. Use Object.call_deferred if calling from a thread.

Dictionary get_stored_values ( bool with_order=false )

Returns the list of properties that will be applied to the node when create_instance is called.

If with_order is true, a key named .order (note the leading period) is added to the dictionary. This .order key is an Array of String property names specifying the order in which properties will be applied (with index 0 being the first).