Today we are going to look at not one, but two different solutions to embedding Visual Studio Code inside the Godot game engine. Both projects take massively different approaches but more or less accomplish embedding the popular IDE inside of the Godot game engine.
Gonuts/godot_vscode_ide
The first solution is provided currently as a custom fork on the Godot game engine called Gonuts. Part of this fork is the addition godot_vscode_ide. The approach taken here is to enable a WebView inside the Godot game engine. Then inside that WebView an instance of the online version of Visual Studio Code is loaded. On first use you will need to log in, and unfortunately many Visual Studio Code extensions aren’t available in the online version, but other than those two limitations, you get a nearly full version of Visual Studio Code running in Godot with minimal impact. The author is developing it as a C++ module for now (thus the Gonuts project), but in the future he intends to turn it into a GDExtension, which will make it much easier to get it up and running.
If you would like to see this project continue, be sure to drop him a star on Github and if you have any feedback, hop on their Discord server (linked below).
If you are going to check this out, the easiest way is to currently build the Gonuts fork. When doing this be sure to run the command:
git clone –recursive –branch gonuts https://github.com/appsinacup/gonuts.git
This will bring down the proper branch and make sure all the submodules are properly resolved.
Key Links
godot_vscode_ide GitHub Repository
Projekt J.E.N.O.V.A
This one may sound familiar to many of you, as we covered this impressive project in the past. Project J.E.N.O.V.A is an ambitious project to bring C++ scripting to the Godot game engine, in a similar manner to C# and GDScript. It is described as:
Projekt J.E.N.O.V.A is a comprehensive series of components for the Godot Engine expanding its capabilities with cutting-edge technologies. It introduces fully-featured C++ scripting within the Godot Editor and allows the use of modern C++ 20/23 standards within the Godot Engine, similar to GDScript/C#.
By using Jenova Framework you can easily program your entire game or application in C/C++ without any issues. You can also integrate OpenCV, CUDA, Vulkan, OpenMP and any other modern C++ features seamlessly, All supported by the powerful backend.
The major difference from when we covered it back in 2024 is the addition of the Jenova Code IDE, described as:
Jenova Code IDE: A full-spectrum integrated development environment for Godot built on VSCode Core and engineered for deep integration and modular control.
This is a much more invasive procedure but also results in an actual version of Visual Studio Code running side Godot without requiring a network connection.
Key Links
You can learn more about both of these projects that bring Visual Studio Code (and more) to the Godot game engine in the video below.