This very simple plugin adds a GridNode2D class to Godot (a subclass of Node2D) that has the property of always "snapping" to a user-defined grid. Crucially, it also brings an editor add-on, which allows the user to place these GridNode2Ds in the canvas, snapping them to their cell in real-time.
With this node and editor add-on it becomes very easy to prototype games in which all elements must snap to a grid.
Tiles are far more limited compared to Node2Ds, which is why for many games it is more convenient to have static elements (like walls, decoration and floors) be tiles while more dynamic elements can be GridNode2Ds. This is probably not true anymore for Godot 4, but some of us still use Godot 3, so...
Each GridNode2D has three properties:
grid_spacing (int): This property defines the width/height of each cell in the grid. DifferentGridNode2Ds can snap to different grids.grid_position (Vector2): The offset of the grid. By default it's set to(0, 0), meaning that the grid starts at the origin.anchor (AnchorSettings): The anchor of theNode2D. It can either beCENTEREDorTOP_LEFT.
If you are not using git:
- Clone the repository into a folder inside your project. I usually create a folder for addons, so I'd do something like this:
git clone https://github.com/rmgaray/godot-gridnode2d addons/GridNode2D
- Activate the plugin under Project Settings. It should be auto-detected by the engine and have the name
GridNode2D.
If you are using git, then I suggest to substitute step (1) from above with this:
git submodule add https://github.com/rmgaray/godot-gridnode2d addons/GridNode2D
This creates a submodule 1 that you can update whenever you want, so you can keep the add-on and your own project separate.
There is an extremely minimal example that showcases the GridNode2D in godot-gridnode2d-example.