2D Essentials in Godot 4.3+

All examples target Godot 4.3+ with no deprecated APIs. GDScript is shown first, then C#.

Related skills: player-controller for CharacterBody2D movement patterns, animation-system for AnimatedSprite2D and sprite animation, physics-system for collision shapes and raycasting, camera-system for Camera2D follow and shake, shader-basics for 2D shaders and post-processing, godot-optimization for rendering and draw call tuning.

1. Canvas Layers and Draw Order

Draw Order Rules

Within a single canvas layer, nodes draw in scene tree order — nodes listed lower in the Scene panel draw on top. Use z_index to override without rearranging the tree.

# Draw this node above siblings (default z_index is 0)
z_index = 10