Godot glossary

Godot is strongly scene-based and node-driven. Many of its key concepts revolve around parent-child structure and reusable scene compositions.

Node

The smallest working unit in Godot’s scene tree.

A Node can represent logic, visuals, input, audio, UI, or physics. Complex objects are usually built from multiple nodes.

A saved collection of nodes.

In Godot, a scene can be a whole level, a UI panel, a player, or even a tiny reusable object. Scenes are more flexible than the word first suggests.

The parent-child structure of the running game.

The scene tree shows which nodes contain or control other nodes. Understanding this hierarchy is essential in Godot.

A saved scene resource that can be instanced.

PackedScene is how Godot stores reusable scene templates so you can spawn or embed them elsewhere.

Godot’s main scripting language.

GDScript is designed to read easily and integrates closely with Godot’s node and scene system.

A built-in event messaging system.

Signals let one node notify another when something happens, such as a button being pressed or a timer finishing.