When and how to avoid using nodes for everything

    Godot provides more lightweight objects for creating APIs which nodes use. Be sure to keep these in mind as options when designing how you wish to build your project’s features.

      • Example: See the node. It supports a high level of customization for a table of content with an arbitrary number of rows and columns. The data that it uses to generate its visualization though is actually a tree of TreeItem Objects.

      Note

    2. : Only a little more complex than Object. They track references to themselves, only deleting loaded memory when no further references to themselves exist. These are useful in the majority of cases where one needs data in a custom class.

      • Example: See the File object. It functions just like a regular Object except that one need not delete it themselves.
      • Example: Scripts, PackedScene (for scene files), and other types like each of the classes. Each of these can be save and loaded, therefore they extend from Resource.