Godot 4 Jam Template

Quick start template for game jams built on hatmix/godot-4-ci. See the plain template in action at https://hatmix.itch.io/godot-4-jam-template (password hatmix).

Features:

• Github template repository vs. addon
• Web, Windows, Linux and macOS exports configured for maximum jam
• Premade basic UI for main menu, pause menu, credits, and settings
• G.U.I.D.E for input with remapping
• Settings persisted across sesssions (where user:// filesystem is writable)
• Keyboard and controller support for all template UI, touchscreen via Godot's emulate mouse from touch setting
• ATTRIBUTION.md for in-game credits (inspired by Maaack's approach)
• CI/CD for automatic Itch.io updates adapted from abarichello/godot-ci

Don't just settle for the first template you find! Compare the alternatives and decide which best fits your desired feature set, coding style, and approach to game development.

Alternatives:

• https://github.com/Maaack/Godot-Game-Template
• https://github.com/bitbrain/godot-gamejam
• https://github.com/nezvers/Godot-GameTemplate
• And many more...

Initial setup

There are a few ways to get started.

• "Use this template"
• Clone the repository
• Download a zip file of the source

Main

Once the Godot project files are cloned locally, open res://main.tscn and res://main.gd and create your game!

UI

Most of this template's work is done in the UI scenes under res://ui/.... The main UI scene treats its direct children as UI pages and components to show or hide. They might be an entire screen or just a widget in the corner. The main UI scene includes basic UI for all of the template's menus, a stub in-game UI with pause screen, and Maaack's ProjectUISoundController.

The intended approach is to keep all UI in res://ui/ui.tscn and instantiate it as a child of every other scene.

The top-level UI is set PROCESS_MODE_ALWAYS with children inheriting the mode. The InGameMenuOverlay will appear when get_tree().paused == true. In games where pausing the tree should not hide the game area, either remove that node or have the PauseMenu show and hide the overaly.

The project default theme is res://ui/ui_theme.tres generated by ThemeGen and res://ui/ui_theme.gd.

Folder structure

Each UI layout is contained in its own directory under res://ui. The assets folder is for non-scene/non-code files used in the UI. The game folder and its scene are intended for the UI (HUD) shown in gameplay only and I recommend creating a res://game directory to hold other game files.

├───autoloads
├───tests
└───ui
    ├───assets
    │   ├───audio
    │   ├───fonts
    │   └───icons
    │       ├───input_devices
    │       └───notifications
    ├───controls
    ├───credits
    ├───game
    ├───how_to_play
    ├───main_menu
    ├───notifications
    ├───pause_menu
    └───settings

Settings and Controls

Settings are saved automatically in user://settings.cfg and control mappings in user://controls.tres. Saving and loading are handled by res://autoloads/settings.gd.

See G.U.I.D.E documentation for how to add new actions, etc.

The input icons are generated by G.U.I.D.E in a RichTextLabel. The buttons used for remapping use the theme generated by res://ui/controls/remap_input_button_theme.gd.

Tests

GUT addon has been removed. I hope to have gdUnit4 tests working with CI soon.

CI/CD

Github actions can be used to publish to itch.io on every push.

On succesful export, and if configured, the CI action uses butler to deploy the game to itch.io. Setup these secrets in your Github repository to enable push:

• ITCHIO_USERNAME
• ITCHIO_GAME
• BUTLER_API_KEY