Getting Started / Quickstart

Trail marker: Same dog, new tricks!

Once you embed your Godot C# project into .NET applications via 2dog, the project can be run through desktop, test, browser, and other "host" applications.

The stock Godot editor and official export templates will still work, as well.

2dog does not create a second game or port scripts to another language, it just runs a (slightly modified) version of libgodot in a .NET process. GDScript, C# Scripts (GodotSharp), autoloads, input actions, and the rest of Godot stay generally the same.

Prerequisites

To get set up, you'll need:

• the .NET SDK 10.0 or later;
• a supported platform to develop on: win-x64, linux-x64, or osx-arm64;
• the official Godot 4.7.x .NET editor as usual, for scene and resource authoring (builds and CI do not require it).

1. Let's take Godot for a walk!

2dog works by adding small host projects to a Godot project:

Existing Project

# Existing game content stays where it is.
cd path/to/MyGame
dnx 2dog add

Fresh Project

# Create the Godot project and its hosts together.
dnx 2dog new MyGame
cd MyGame

The tool asks which hosts you want and shows its plan before making changes. Flags skip the prompts; for example, dnx 2dog new MyGame --desktop --tests --web.

Try before you bite?

Use dnx 2dog add path/to/MyGame --dry-run to inspect every planned action. Adding 2dog to a Project documents what the command creates and patches.

2. Run the Generic Host

dotnet run --project MyGame.2dog

MyGame.2dog is the process entry point: a plain .NET console application that starts Godot as an embedded library. Change and extend it like any other .NET code – it's the simplest way to run 2dog, and the first place to look when troubleshooting.

3. Keep Using Godot

Open your project in the Godot .NET editor, it should still work exactly as before:

godot-mono --editor . # or Godot_v4.7.1-stable_mono_win64.exe, etc.

Edit scenes and C# scripts as usual. Builds detect changed project inputs and run the required resource import automatically. See Resource Import for how it works and how to configure it.

Trail marker

You now have two compatible ways into the same project: the Godot editor for authoring and exporting, and the .NET hosts for running, testing, and publishing.

4. Run some Tests

Projects scaffolded by 2dog include a headless xUnit host by default:

dotnet test MyGame.tests

This starts Godot without a window and runs tests through the normal .NET test runner. See Testing with xUnit to load scenes and test game behavior, and Single Godot Instance for parallelism constraints.

Start adding some Unit tests right away, we know you want to!

5. Publish a Host

dotnet publish MyGame.2dog -c Release            # host OS
dotnet publish MyGame.2dog -c Release -r win-x64 # or a specific RID

The publish folder is a complete build: your host executable, the native engine, the .NET runtime and assemblies, and your game content exported as MyGame.2dog.pck. Copy the folder to another machine and run the executable – no .NET installation required. See the Generic Host guide for the framework-dependent opt-out, preset configuration, and unsupported publish modes.

6. Publish to the Browser

Install the WebAssembly build tools and a static file server once:

dotnet workload install wasm-tools
dotnet tool install --global dotnet-serve

Then publish the web host:

dotnet publish MyGame.web

The static site is written to MyGame.web/AppBundle/. Serve that directory with any static file server (or upload it to itch.io, S3, etc.)

For example:

# serve locally
dotnet serve --directory MyGame.web/AppBundle

# release to itch.io
butler push MyGame.web/AppBundle user/game:channel

# upload to AWS
aws s3 sync MyGame.web/AppBundle s3://your-game-bucket

# etc, etc.

Trail Marker: Customizing Web Builds

The Browser Host guide covers building, local serving, deployment, configuration, and current browser limitations.