How to Organize Your Godot Project Files

Coming From Unity

In Unity, I let the root project directory be a wild west of stuff because, when importing things from the store, I could never be certain how files would be structured. I adopted having one organized folder called __Project which I kept pretty organized. All the art had a folder; prefabs had a folder; ScriptableObjects had a folder; animation had a folder, etc. etc.

The Root Folders

In data analysis programming, I got into the habit of having a folder for raw input data that I wouldn't touch, a folder for scripts to operate on the data, and a folder for results. I've adopted a similar approach in Godot after reviewing some articles on data organization. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

• an assets folder will contain the 'raw'^[4] data - that includes:
  • audio files, organized into an audio folder
  • aseprite files, organized into an aseprite folder
  • sprite files, organized into a sprites folder
  • music files, organized into a music folder

• a scenes folder will contains all the scenes we've made

  • scenes are loosely categorized, e.g.:
    • characters contains characters
    • levels contains levels
    • effects contains effects (e.g. a reusable explosion)
  • code lives with the scene, except for the code that doesn't have scenes which goes into...

• a src folder which contains auto-load scripts or scripts that are not part of scenes, e.g. resource scripts

• a resources folder which contains all the resources for the project

theoretically, if I was working with a team, then the people producing audio would only be concerned with whats in the audio subfolder; similar to music, similar to aseprite. inside each type folder, the hierarchy of the scenes folder is mirrored. if you've got a scene in /scenes/characters/bob/ then all its assets will be organized by type in their respective /characters/bob/ folders.

all files are named with snake case.

An Example

I've got assets for a character named Squash. I've got some sound effects, some running and walking and idling animations, and I'm making a scene for him. He'll be used in a game consisting of one world scene. My project structure will look like:

/assets/audio/characters/squash/fart.wav
/assets/audio/characters/squash/hello.wav
/assets/music/characters/squash/squash_theme.wav
/assets/sprites/characters/squash/squash_walk.png
/assets/sprites/characters/squash/squash_run.png
/assets/sprites/characters/squash/squash_idle.png
/assets/aseprite/characters/squash/squash.aseprite
/scenes/characters/squash/squash.tscn
/scenes/characters/squash/squash.gd

it's maybe redundant to have the sprites and the aseprite files in there - there are aseprite importers that you can use to set up the animations from the raw aseprite data like importality.

WARNING WARNING

DO NOT move files around outside of Godot! It WILL BREAK STUFF. Even sometimes moving them within Godot breaks stuff - try to run your project after you move things and see what errors pop up. Get your structure in place early so you don't risk breaking things.

References & Notes