NOTE: This course was originally written using Visual Studio Express 2013 for Desktop. So, the screenshots and videos may look slightly different from the current version – Visual Studio Community Edition 2022. However, these lessons still work in the latest version.
Lesson objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will know how to…
- Install Visual Studio on your computer, to begin writing the game.
Installing Visual Studio Community 2022
To write a program, you need an editor – a specialized word processor for writing programs.
Most C# (and VB.Net) programmers use Visual Studio, from Microsoft.
The latest version (as of April 2022) is Visual Studio Community Edition 2022. It’s free to download and use. You can get it here:
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/
Here’s a video on how to download and install Visual Studio Community Edition 2022. Please watch the video to the end, and there is information about the different forms of .NET. This will help prevent the biggest source of problems people have encountered – using .NET 5 or 6, when these lessons where written for .NET Framework.
Next Lesson: Lesson 02.2 – Building the solution for the game
Previous lesson: Lesson 01.1 – Defining classes and objects for the game
All lessons: Learn C# by Building a Simple RPG Index
should i get visual studio 2022 c++ or hunt down a copy of Visual Studio Community 2017. Thanks
You can use Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition (from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/)
When you create your solution, make sure you create the Windows Forms and Class Library projects as “.NET Framework” projects. In the image below, notice I entered “framework” and “C#” in the search boxes at the top, and the project descriptions include “(.NET Framework)” in their names.
Please let me know if you have any questions with creating the projects.
thankyou Scott looking forward to getting stuck in , i will buy you a coffee 🙂
You’re welcome.
By the way, there is a newer version of the course that uses WPF for the UI, instead of Windows Forms. It’s at https://soscsrpg.com/
Hi, I was wondering if this would still work if I used visual studio code as opposed to visual studio community. My hard drive is pretty full, and I already have Visual Studio Code and have been used to it for a while. thank you!
Hi Aeden,
Yes, This should work with Visual Studio Code. However, you might want to look at the newer version of these lessons at https://soscsrpg.com. One thing to watch out for is that .NET Framework (the older version of .NET) might not be installed. You might only have .NET Core or .NET 5 or 6. If you follow the SOSCSRPG lessons, and use .NET Core or .NET 5/6, the game graphics won’t work for a while. One of the later lessons changes the way the graphics are displayed, so it works for all version of .NET.
Please let me know if that wasn’t clear (the way Microsoft handled changing .NET names is confusing) or if you have any other questions.
It says “video is not available”. Could you be so kind to fix it? If there are some unobvious moments
Thanks for letting me know. It should be fixed now.
Thank you! Yes it’s fixed but I’m using Mac version of VS and it will discontinued from 31 August 2024. Also, installation process is much more different on a Mac, installer won’t even give so much option during installation. Also, there are completely different project types when creating a new project. Any ideas or alternatives on what to do in this case? On a Mac the only options I’ve got is to create multiplatform .NET MAUI App or MAUI Blazor App. I’m completely unaware of how different it may be and what it means
These lessons are written for a Windows Forms project, which cannot run on Mac. It would only run on a Windows. The only way it would work is if you have a virtual machine program on your Mac that lets you create a Windows VM, like VMWare Fusion, Parallels Desktop, or Virtual Box.
If you want to learn C# on a Mac, you could use VS Code (a free program like Visual Studio, but runs on Mac and Linux). Instead of building a Windows Forms project, you could use a cross-platform library like AvaloniaUI, which is like WPF (a different way to handle the UI part of the program).
Unfortunately, I don’t know any good guides for that. There probably are some, but I don’t know about them.
Hiya Scott.
Thank you so much for your lessons, I’m trying to finish this lesson and SOSCRPG, you are hugely appreciated for teaching us.
I’m planning to dive deeper into GameDev after i finished your lessons, but with the huge amounts of lessons out in the internet, I struggle to find my next step, so if you don’t mind, would you point me into the right direction? It doesn’t have to be precise, I just want to know if I am learning the right topics to achieve my goal.
Here is a few questions/points that should let you have a better grasp;
– My goal is to learn/make games, both for mobile and PC, is C# the language to focus on? or do you think that there is another language that is used more in the professional world?
– There are many engines available to use, do people use specific engines for specific platform? For example, unity/unreal engine for PC games, Godot for mobile. In your knowledge/experience, which engine should I focus on for mobile and for PC? I’m still really clueless about this.
I am aware that I can search this answer myself, but I trust your knowledge and experience more than I trust my googling skills, I apologize if this is out of topic, and I thank you sincerely, even if you don’t answer!
You’re welcome Nathan,
I’ve never built a “real” game, so may not be able to give the best advice. But, this is what I’d do.
I’d look at the Godot game engine. I like it because it seems to be very robust and is open source. As you’ve probably seen, it lets you create games for Android, iOS, and PC, and should save you a lot of time from coding the common game logic. Then you can focus on the unique story/world/gameplay of your game. A nice thing about Godot is that you can write your part of the game in C#, which would save you time from learning a new language. For a good place to start, check out Brackey’s recent tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOhfqjmasi0
If you want to get a job at a big game studio (which I hear is often not the best job to get), I’d learn C++ – which could also come in handy if you want a non-gaming job.
Maybe consider looking at Ludum Dare and itch.io for indy game development. Those should let you see what other indy developers are using to create their games.
That’s where I’d start. Good luck!
great so far.