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Using Godot with C# in 2024

ยท 5 min read
Joanna
2024 written with balloon letters against a backdrop of fireworks and confetti, with the title 'Using Godot with C# in 2024'.

About a year and a half ago, starting a project with Godot and C# was a brave choice. There's always been a C# channel in the main Godot Discord server, but information and tutorials (let alone demos) were all but non-existent.

Now that it's 2024, let's take a look and see how far we've come.

๐Ÿฅณ A LOT has happenedโ€‹

Throughout 2023, a lot of things happened in the game development world. Some of these changes were big news for game developers using C#, too:

tip

Not sure you want to use C#? Check out our blog about GDScript vs C# in Godot 4.

Besides Godot's increased financial support and broader endorsements from established organizations, the Godot C# community itself continues to thrive. We've even observed a new baseline level of user activity on the Chickensoft website, beginning right about the time that Unity was introducing an installation fee.

๐ŸŽฎ A Complete Game Demoโ€‹

Late in 2023, we released an open source, fully-tested 3D platformer game demo built with Godot and C# using the awesome GDQuest assets. We'll be maintaining the demo over the next year, too, keeping it up-to-date and cleaning it up as we learn new things.

chickensoft-games/

GameDemo

The Chickensoft Game Demo โ€” a fully tested, third-person 3D game built with Godot and C#. Now with saving and loading!
352Stars
26Forks
C#

Gamefromscratch covered our game demo, too โ€”ย check it out below!

If you want to know more about it, feel free to read our recent treatise on game architecture โ€” it breaks the demo down and goes into painstaking detail about the technical decisions that went into it. But, bring your reading glasses โ€” it's a long read.

Speaking of Godot game architecture with C#, there's now also the Godot Architecture Organization Advice repository โ€” go check it out and give it a star, too!

Separating game logic from visualization.
This, and many other diagrams await you in our long-winded blog about game architecture.

๐Ÿ›  The Power to Make Gamesโ€‹

Chickensoft is now home to 14 open source packages designed to solve common problems you might run into if you're using Godot with C#:

  • GodotEnv: Automate and standardize Godot installation, version switching, and addon management on macOS, Linux, and Windows.
  • GoDotTest: Run and debug automated tests locally or from the command-line for CI/CD purposes.
  • setup-godot: Install and run Godot on macOS, Linux, and Windows GitHub runners with support for Godot export templates.
  • LogicBlocks: Easy-to-use, hierarchical state machines for games. It even generate state diagrams of your code for you, too.
  • AutoInject: Tree-based dependency injection that lets you easily scope dependencies to specific Godot scene subtrees.
  • GodotGame: Template for quickly spinning up a C# game with the Chickensoft best practices already applied.
  • ...and more, all easily reachable from our homepage.

๐Ÿ† Fun Highlights from 2023โ€‹

๐ŸŽจ TerraBrushโ€‹

TerraBrush is a Godot map editor addon written in C# by spimort, and it features a number of incredible map-editing capabilities. Be sure to give it a star and try it out in your next 3D project!

The TerraBrush map editor being used inside the Godot game engine.
TerraBrush is a recently released map editor addon for Godot built in C#.

๐Ÿฐ Layer Generatorโ€‹

Anton released GodotLayersSourceGenerator, a generator that will produce mappings of your collision layer names. He also updated BinaryBundle, a C# serialization generator for use with netcode.

tip

If you are looking for more C# generators, take a look at the GodotSharp.SourceGenerators project: it has generators for the scene tree, input mappings, and a ton of other stuff.

๐Ÿ“บ Arbitrary Color Reduction and Palette Ordered Ditheringโ€‹

If you're looking to make your game a little more retro, check out Mark's Arbitrary Color Reduction and Palette Ordered Dithering shader that was released recently. Here's a video of it applied to a pseudo-isometric 3D scene:

๐ŸŒ‰ Unidot Importerโ€‹

Looking to bring assets over from Unity? You can now do that easily with the Unidot Importer โ€” it will automatically convert your .unitypackage assets into Godot .tscn scene files!

Unidot importing a Unity asset package into Godot.

๐Ÿค An Open Source Communityโ€‹

If you're using Godot with C#, or interested in doing so, you are no longer alone! Many of us are actively working on creating a better game development future with Godot and C# by sharing tools, documentation, and games we create. We'd love to see you, too!

note

Chickensoft is a grassroots community and open source organization dedicated to furthering the use of Godot with C#. We're excited to have a community ofย over a 1,000 members now, and folks have graciously contributed a number of bugfixes and features to our open source packages over the last year. Come say hi!

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