Nodes¶

A map's content is a tree of nodes. Every node has the same outer shape, with its keys in this order:

hidden and locked are editor state only, so Godot still builds a hidden node. To keep something out of the build, put it in a layer with omit_from_export.

label is the name you gave a brush, mesh, entity, instance or terrain in the editor, shown instead of a default name like brush12. Layers, groups and scatter sets never have one, they keep theirs in name.

Godot only uses label for terrains, it names the node terrain_<id>_<label>. Brushes and meshes merge into their entity, and an entity takes its node name from targetname. Editors older than the key still read files with it, but drop it when they save.

graph is editor state too. It's where an entity's node sits in the Logic graph, in graph points, and only nodes someone moved have it. Godot ignores it, and a value that isn't two numbers is dropped on load.

Ids¶

Ids are positive integers that stay the same across saves, so other data can point at a node. The live link sends edits by id, scatter sets name their surfaces by id, and Godot stores each generated node's id in its _td_id metadata. An id of 0 or a duplicate, which only a hand edited file has, gets a fresh id on load.

A prefab is a separate .tdm file with ids of its own, so two copies of it would clash. To avoid that, the Godot build adds a million times a per occurrence number to the id of every node an instance brings in. Two copies of one prefab never share ids, however deep they're nested.

Where nodes go¶

An entity with children is a brush entity, a door made of brushes for example. Brushes and meshes outside any entity belong to worldspawn.

Layer¶

A top level part of the map, shown in the editor's Outliner.

Group¶

Nodes gathered so you select and move them together.

Group contents are stored in world space, already in place. A linked copy repeats an edit made in one copy in all the others, and transform is just what the editor uses to carry the edit from one copy to the next. The Godot build ignores both transform and link_id.

Entity¶

Property values are always strings, whatever their FGD type, for example "travel": "0 168 0".

An angles, angle or mangle property wins over the node's angles and is read the Quake way: pitch and roll negated, yaw turned by 180 degrees. On classes starting with light, mangle is yaw, pitch and roll instead. An angle of -1 or -2 points straight up or down. The editor draws the entity facing the same way, and turning it there moves the property into the node's angles.

The build ignores origin and angles of a brush entity, since its brushes already sit where they belong.

Each output is one I/O connection: when this entity fires a signal, call a method on a target.

Instance¶

A reference to another .tdm file, placed with a position and rotation, like Hammer's func_instance. This is how prefabs get placed: the content lives once in its own file, and every instance shows it.

The build takes the children of every layer in the referenced map that isn't omitted from export, and moves them by origin and angles. Texture projections move along with the geometry. The referenced map's worldspawn isn't used. Instances nest up to eight levels deep.

A Godot build reads each referenced map once, and all the instances of a map together may add 2,097,152 values, a value being an array item or dictionary entry of the referenced map, with every 8 characters of text counting as one more. Past that the build leaves the remaining instances out and reports an error. Ordinary maps stay far below it, only instances of instances multiplied many times over reach it.

With a fixup of p1, door becomes p1-door in targetname, target, destination, call_target, every property the FGD declares as target_source or target_destination, and every output target. Values starting with !, @ or / are left alone. Nested fixups add up from the outside in, so b inside a gives a-b-door, and Explode Instance in the editor gives the same names.