Signaling from a newly instanced node

Help Programming
,
1

Godot Version

4.6.2

Question

I want to implement buttons that switch screens when clicked. Right now my Main node looks like this:

image

I’ve implemented a button in MainMenu that when clicked, tells Main to delete MainMenu and instantiate another node MainGame as a child.

image
image299×216 4.87 KB

Now I want to implement a button in MainGame for the opposite function: delete MainGame and instantiate MainMenu. However, since MainGame wasn’t originally a part of the tree, I couldn’t connect a signal from there to Main through the signals tab. I tried something like

return_to_main_menu.connect($MainMenu.get_parent().return_to_menu())
return_to_main_menu.emit()

But that didn’t work.

I know I could add MainGame to the original tree and do some changes, but before I do that, I want to know if there’s a way to do what I want with what I have.

2

“Didn’t work” in what way?

3

It returns errors:

E 0:00:48:789   main_game.gd:540 @ process_click(): Node not found: "MainMenu" (relative to "/root/Main/MainGame").
  <C++ Error>   Method/function failed. Returning: nullptr
  <C++ Source>  scene/main/node.cpp:1963 @ get_node()
  <Stack Trace> main_game.gd:540 @ process_click()
                main_game.gd:505 @ _on_click_button()
                button.gd:17 @ _on_area_2d_input_event()
E 0:00:48:791   process_click: Cannot call method 'get_parent' on a null value.
  <GDScript Source>main_game.gd:540 @ process_click()
  <Stack Trace> main_game.gd:540 @ process_click()
                main_game.gd:505 @ _on_click_button()
                button.gd:17 @ _on_area_2d_input_event()
4

image

i’ve tested it, it’s probably bug with your code cuz you can emit newly connected signal

extends Node

var test = preload(“res://Other/test_node_2.tscn”)

func hello():
print(“hello”)

func _ready():
var new = test.instantiate()
add_child(new)
new.hello.connect(hello)
new.hello.emit()
5

Well then fix the error, following the error message. It says that it cannot find the node on the specified path, meaning that you provided an incorrect node path.

6

How are you instantiating these new MainGame and MainMenu scenes? If you are using a preload it is likely a circular dependency which silently fails and becomes null.

Is there any reason you cannot use get_tree().change_scene_to_file()? It is built to do such operations, may prove easier than managing your own “main” node.

7

Yeah, doing this worked. Thank you!

8

I tried the function but it replaced the entire tree including Main with MainGame, which is not what I wanted (I wanted MainMenu to be replaced with MainGame).

9

Right, but can Main be an autoload/global? Can you explain more big-picture what you are trying to do? Are you using preload in your scripts?