Node references that survive node renaming

Help
1

Godot Version

v4.3

Question

Hello, I’ve been looking into Godot today and test it for a future project. Not a game per se but an interactive presentation. I was looking into referencing and these seem to break a lot. If I use $“…/Name”, this will break if I rename the node. If I use %Name, this will break if I rename the node.

More over I’m not sure that nodes names are their actual “script_name”, are they? Maybe I’m see it wrong but when connecting signals, the functions seem to have other names.

I also have seen people suggesting to use variables with @onready to then just update a single variable not all mentions in the code, but if a node is rename, this variable still breaks.

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I did see a tip to use

@export var your_variable: NodeType

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But this is failing. Maybe I’m missing some extra bits of info on how to implement this. And how to use said reference in another node’s script.

So ideally what I would like to have is:

  • Change node name.

  • Script referencing it, still works.

Thanks

2

The one recommending @export var your_variable: NodeType meant for you to replace your_variabel with an appropriate varible name, tbut like before, and NodeType to your node’s type, in your case `TextureButton

@export var tbut: TextureButton
1 Like
3

This little video made it more obvious how to use @export:
https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/vtq9kw/new_game_changing_feature_in_godot_40_export_node/

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4

Good catch I were able to make it work with Node but I guess that’s because it’s a parent class of TextureButton but using the specific type is prolly more assertive and filters things from the menu.

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Thanks

5

Best to use the parent-est class you can, better auto completion and under-the-hood optimizations.

1 Like