Creating a new project

A step-by-step guide for creating a new project using JetBrains Rider or Visual Studio Code.

This guide will walk you through building a starter game with MonoGame using only the command line/terminal on your operating system and a lightweight coding tool of your choice (such as Visual Studio Code or JetBrains Rider).

It is assumed that you have already properly installed the .NET 6 SDK and MonoGame.

Be aware that for iOS/iPadOS and Android, development might be limited when using the .NET CLI. Many of the development features for those targets are exclusive to Visual Studio 2022.

Create a MonoGame Project

You can now create new MonoGame projects. To do that:

• Create a new directory for your project.

• Open a new terminal window or command prompt and navigate to your project directory.

• Run dotnet new <TemplateID> -o <ProjectName> to create your project, where <TemplateID> is a platform identifier, and <ProjectName> the name of your project.

For example:

dotnet new mgdesktopgl -o MyGame

To know which platform identifier (short name) to use for your project, please refer to Target Platforms, or type the following command into the command prompt to list the installed templates and their corresponding short names:

dotnet new -l

Once created, you can open your code editor of choice in the new folder and begin editing.

To run your project, check the instructions for packaging your game to build the executable using the .NET tooling.

Next up: Understanding the code