Project organization

Introduction

Since Godot has no restrictions on project structure or filesystem usage, organizing files when learning the engine can seem challenging. This tutorial suggests a workflow which should be a good starting point. We will also cover using version control with Godot.

Organization

Godot is scene-based in nature, and uses the filesystem as-is, without metadata or an asset database.

Unlike other engines, many resources are contained within the scene itself, so the amount of files in the filesystem is considerably lower.

Considering that, the most common approach is to group assets as close to scenes as possible; when a project grows, it makes it more maintainable.

As an example, one can usually place into a single folder their basic assets, such as sprite images, 3D model meshes, materials, and music, etc. They can then use a separate folder to store built levels that use them.

  1. /project.godot
  2. /docs/.gdignore
  3. /docs/learning.html
  4. /models/town/house/house.dae
  5. /models/town/house/window.png
  6. /models/town/house/door.png
  7. /characters/player/cubio.dae
  8. /characters/player/cubio.png
  9. /characters/enemies/goblin/goblin.dae
  10. /characters/enemies/goblin/goblin.png
  11. /characters/npcs/suzanne/suzanne.dae
  12. /characters/npcs/suzanne/suzanne.png
  13. /levels/riverdale/riverdale.scn

Importing

Godot versions prior to 3.0 did the import process from files outside the project. While this can be useful in large projects, it resulted in an organization hassle for most developers.

Because of this, assets are now transparently imported from within the project folder.

If a folder shouldn’t be imported into Godot, an exception can be made with a .gdignore file.