Godot Autoload Architecture

If you're building anything beyond a single-scene Godot project, you'll eventually need global state that survives scene changes. This covers the full spectrum of AutoLoad patterns, from basic singletons to thread-safe access and lazy loading. The real value is in the "NEVER" section, which catches the common traps like accessing AutoLoads in _init() or creating circular dependencies that hang your game at startup. Includes practical scripts for scene transitions, event buses, and debug consoles. The initialization order diagnostic alone will save you hours if you're running multiple singletons that depend on each other.