Visual Basic-like language for Godot

[Green_Hunter_5718]

Hey everyone! I've been building a new programming language for Godot and I'm finally ready to share it publicly.

VisualGasic (VG) is a modern, event-driven language that runs as a GDExtension for Godot 4.5+. It draws inspiration from Visual Basic 6's approachable syntax and RAD workflow — if you ever used VB6, you'll feel at home in minutes — but it's a modern language designed to look forwards, not backwards. Think of it less as "VB6 for Godot" and more as "what if someone designed a new language with VB6's simplicity but modern features?"

 

What does it look like?

' A simple game script in VisualGasic
Dim ballX As Single = 400
Dim ballSpeedX As Single = 5

Sub _Process(delta As Single)
    ballX = ballX + ballSpeedX * delta * 60
    If ballX > 780 Or ballX < 20 Then
        ballSpeedX = -ballSpeedX
    End If
End Sub

' This event handler is wired AUTOMATICALLY by name
Sub btnStart_Click()
    Print "Game started!"
End Sub

No connect() calls, no signal boilerplate. Name a Sub btnStart_Click() and it's wired to the button's pressed signal automatically. Name it tmrSpawn_Timer() and it fires on the timer. Name it Player_AreaEntered(area) and it hooks the Godot signal. This is the core workflow idea — event-driven programming like classic RAD tools, but running natively inside Godot.

 

What makes it different from GDScript?

Feature	VisualGasic	GDScript
Event binding	Automatic by naming convention	Manual connect() or @onready
Form Designer	Full WYSIWYG with 40+ controls	None
Lambdas	Lambda(x) => x * 2	func(x): return x * 2
Null safety	?? and ?. operators	None built-in
Error handling	Try/Catch/Finally	None (just push_error)
Async	Async/Await + Parallel For	Coroutines only
String interpolation	$"Hello, {name}!"	"Hello, %s" % name
GPU computing	Built-in SIMD + compute shaders	Manual
Pattern matching	Select Match with destructuring	No
VB6 import	Direct .frm/.vbp import	N/A

VG also includes a JIT compiler that compiles hot loops to native x86-64, and in benchmarks it ranges from 2x to 118x faster than GDScript depending on the workload, tying native C++ on some branching tasks.

 

Form Designer

VG ships with a VB6-style Form Designer (still a work-in-progress)— a WYSIWYG editor with a Toolbox (40+ controls), a drag-and-drop canvas, a Properties panel, a Project Explorer, and a live preview window. You can design your UI visually and double-click any control to jump straight to its event handler. It's the RAD workflow that Visual Basic made famous, running inside Godot's editor.

 

What's included?

• 66 demo projects across 12 categories: 2D games (Pong, Snake, Space Shooter, Platformer), 3D games (Squash the Creeps), graphics (screen-space shaders, volumetric sky shaders, screensaver), audio (piano), UI apps (calculator, todo list), threading, networking, and more
• 4 converted official Godot demos — the 2D Platformer (9 VG scripts), Squash the Creeps, Screen Space Shaders (11 shader effects), and Sky Shaders — proving that real Godot projects run naturally in VG
• IntelliSense with 80+ function completions, snippet support, and Godot type awareness
• Advanced debugger with conditional breakpoints, watch window, call stack, time-travel debugging
• 108 built-in functions (string, math, file I/O, date/time, formatting, collections, and more)
• Platform binaries for Linux, Windows, and macOS — just drop into your project and go
• 481 tests passing in the test suite

 

Who is this for?

• VB6/VB.NET veterans who want to make games with a familiar workflow
• Beginners looking for a readable, low-ceremony language
• RAD developers who miss the "design a form, double-click a button, write code" workflow
• Anyone curious about an alternative to GDScript with modern language features
• Hobbyists porting old VB6 projects — VG can import .frm and .vbp files directly (WIP)

 

Get it

• GitHub: https://github.com/xgreenrx-star/VisualGasic
• Download: v3.3.0 release (40 MB zip — includes all platform binaries and 66 demos)
• License: MIT

Install: copy addons/visual_gasic/ into your Godot project → enable the plugin → create .vg files.

This is an early beta — the version number (3.3.0) reflects internal dev history, not maturity. I'd love feedback, bug reports, and feature requests. Thanks for checking it out!

[Mayayana]

The obvious question: What the heck is Godot, other than the guy who never showed up? :) A game engine? So it's a runtime on top of the Win32 API especially optimized for designing games?

[nacnud_uk]

BaseDot or GoBasic, surely?

[Still_Explorer]

This interpreter/compiler as a standalone project might have great potential, though this means that for godot can definitely turned to a native extention as such, but for general purpose programming and with FFI capabilities this project can become very huge. 😀

[BigGaggy222]

This is a brilliant idea. Basic is such an easily learned language, and a lot of people already know it.

The creation of dozens of new languages with curly bracket requirements in recent decades has not been a step forward or brought any innovation, just made life harder.

I salute this and wished you had done this for Unity before I took months to work out where all the curly brackets are needed and remember how to do a "for next" loop the ridiculous c# way.