Un-pause game button not working

Question

I can successfully pause my game with Godot 4.1 with:

func _process(delta):
        
    if Input.is_action_just_pressed("action_quit"):
        print("pause...")
        pause()


func pause():
    Globals.game_paused = !Globals.game_paused
    print("game paused? " + str(Globals.game_paused))
    get_tree().paused = ! get_tree().paused

But that's as good as it gets: Once the "action_quit" key is hit the game is permanently paused from this point on.

I've got a sneaking suspicion that _process is on holiday at this point and get_tree().paused = ! get_tree().paused isn't being processed. I may be wrong.

How do I check for a keyboard call to un-pause the game?

Answer 1

The process_mode of the Node controls when their Script get to run.

---

By default process_mode is set to PROCESS_MODE_INHERIT, which mean they take the value from their parent.

And, also by default, the process_mode of the root of the SceneTree is set to PROCESS_MODE_PAUSABLE, which means that when you set the paused property of the SceneTree to true, the Node will stop executing its Script...

And since everything else has process_mode set to PROCESS_MODE_INHERIT by default, then every Script stops executing too.

---

To be able to remove the pause you need an Script to run when paused is true...

That means changing the process_mode of the Node that has the Script.

Aside from PROCESS_MODE_INHERIT and PROCESS_MODE_PAUSABLE, your options are:

• PROCESS_MODE_WHEN_PAUSED which is the opposite of PROCESS_MODE_PAUSABLE. It will make the Script only run when paused is true. Since you want to use the same script to pause and unpause, this won't work for you.

• PROCESS_MODE_ALWAYS which makes the Script run regardless of paused. This is what you want.

• There is also PROCESS_MODE_DISABLED that makes the Script never run. This is sometimes useful to temporarily disable entire Script from code.

---

I want to reiterate that this is about disabling entire Scripts, not just _process (which you can do with set_process) or any other specific methods. So, no, _unhandled_input won't work.

Answer 2

You are correct in that the _process, _physics_process, _input, and _input_event functions will not be called when a Node is paused. However signals continue to work and cause their connected function to run.

As such you can solve this problem by making a popup or panel to handle pausing. Make sure to set its pause mode to WhenPaused - doing so will ensure that it & its children will work when paused. Then you can add code so that the pressing the pause button will enable & show the pause screen:

func _on_pause_button_pressed():
    get_tree().paused = true
    $pause_popup.show()

To unpause and resume the game, do the opposite when the pause screen is closed:

func _on_pause_popup_close_pressed():
    $pause_popup.hide()
    get_tree().paused = false

You can find more information about this in the pausing games and process mode documentation.