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🏁 Getting Started

Ready to make games with Godot and C#? Let's start by making sure your development environment is ready to go!

📦 Installing the .NET SDK​

To use C# with Godot, you'll need .NET 6. The .NET 6 SDK works great for both Godot 3 and Godot 4.

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We often write file paths like ~/folder. The ~ is a shortcut for your home folder. On Windows, ~ expands to something like C:\Users\you. On macOS, ~ expands to /Users/you. On Linux, ~ expands to /home/you. For example, ~/Documents expands to C:\Users\you\Documents on Windows, /Users/you/Documents on macOS, and /home/you/Documents on Linux.

Use the Microsoft provided installer to install .NET 6 on macOS. For more information about installing the .NET 6 SDK on Mac, see Microsoft's article for Mac.

If you want to install the .NET 6 SDK manually, you can find all available downloads here.

Make sure you keep track of where the .NET 6 SDK was installed. We'll need that path later.

🚉 Installing Mono​

For Godot 3, you need to install Mono. Instructions and installers are available for each platform on the Mono website.

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You can skip this step if you're only using Godot 4. Godot 4 integrates directly with .NET 6 instead of Mono.

🤖 Installing Godot​

You'll need to download Godot, if you haven't already.

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Godot currently comes in 2 flavors: regular, and mono. For C# development, you must get the mono version!

Godot 4 eventually intends to combine both versions into one, but that hasn't happened just yet.

❓ Where to Put Godot​

Since Godot doesn't have an installer, you get to decide where to put it on your computer. Here's some recommendations for where to install it on each platform.

Move Godot to /Applications/Godot_mono.app. This is where all your other Mac apps are, anyways!

🖥 Shell Environment​

Let's modify the shell environment to contain environment variables that point to Godot and the .NET SDK.

Once we do this, we'll be able to run Godot from a terminal and create the proper launch configurations for Visual Studio Code.

If ~/.zshrc doesn't exist, you'll need to create it.

tip

To toggle visibility of hidden files in the macOS Finder, press Cmd + Shift + . — it also works in file dialogs!

Add the following to your ~/.zshrc file:

# .NET SDK Configuration
export DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1 # Disable analytics
export DOTNET_ROOT="/usr/local/share/dotnet/dotnet"

# Add the .NET SDK to the system paths so we can use the `dotnet` tool.
export PATH="/usr/local/share/dotnet:$PATH"
export PATH="/usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk:$PATH"
export PATH="$HOME/.dotnet/tools:$PATH"

# Run this if you ever run into errors while doing a `dotnet restore`
alias nugetclean="dotnet nuget locals --clear all"

# For Godot 3, add mono to the path.
export PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands/mono:$PATH"

# Environment variables for Godot
export GODOT="/Applications/Godot.app/Contents/MacOS/Godot"
export GODOT4="/Applications/Godot4.app/Contents/MacOS/Godot"

# Add Godot to the system paths (so that you can execute it from anywhere)
export PATH="/Applications/Godot.app/Contents/MacOS:$PATH"
export PATH="/Applications/Godot4.app/Contents/MacOS:$PATH"

# Prevents the occasional "can't create res://.mono" error
# Issue: https://godotengine.org/qa/21875/cant-generate-mono-glue-on-osx
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/6.12.0/lib/pkgconfig"
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Depending on how you install the .NET SDK and Mono, you may or may not need to add them to your path in ~/.bashrc. You can run which dotnet and which mono in a bash shell to see if they're already in your path. If they are, remove the export PATH lines for them.

Make sure the paths to the .NET 6 SDK, Mono, and Godot match where those tools were installed on your particular system, as it can vary depending on how they were installed.

If you're not installing both Godot 3 and 4, remove the lines you don't need.

⌨️ Visual Studio Code​

All of Chickensoft's packages and templates are designed to work well with Visual Studio Code (VSCode).

You can download Visual Studio Code here.

✨ Creating Godot Projects​

Chickensoft provides a few dotnet new templates to help you quickly create a C# projects for use with Godot 4.

# Install or update the latest Chickensoft Templates
dotnet new --install Chickensoft.GodotGame
dotnet new --install Chickensoft.GodotPackage

🎮 Creating a Godot Game​

The GodotGame template allows you to quickly generate a game with debug launch configurations for VSCode, testing (locally and on CI/CD), code coverage, dependency update checks, and spell checking!

chickensoft-games/

GodotGame

C# game template for Godot 4 with debug launch configurations, testing (locally and on CI/CD), code coverage, dependency update checks, and spell check working out-of-the-box!
6Stars
1Forks
Shell
dotnet new --install Chickensoft.GodotGame

dotnet new chickengame --name "MyGameName" --param:author "My Name"

cd MyGameName
/path/to/godot4 --headless --build-solutions --quit
dotnet build

📦 Creating a Reusable Nuget Package​

If you want to share compiled source code between projects or allow others to use your code in their projects, you can release a Nuget package.

Using the GodotPackage template allows you to setup a package with continuous integration, auto-formatting, debugger profiles for VSCode, and a pre-configured unit test project.

chickensoft-games/

GodotPackage

A .NET template for quickly creating a C# nuget package for use with Godot 4.
12Stars
2Forks
Shell
dotnet new --install Chickensoft.GodotPackage

dotnet new chickenpackage --name "MyPackageName" --param:author "My Name"

cd MyPackageName
/path/to/godot4 --headless --build-solutions --quit
dotnet build

Open the new project in VSCode and use the provided launch configurations to debug your application.

tip

If you need to share code and other resource files like scenes, textures, music, and anything else that isn't a C# source file, you should use a Godot Asset Library package instead. Chickensoft's Chicken CLI tool allows you to easily install and manage addons in your project.

chickensoft-games/

Chicken

Command line utility for C# Godot game development and addon management.
30Stars
0Forks
C#