Gondwana.Templates 2.2.4

Gondwana Templates

dotnet new templates for the Gondwana Game Engine.

Install

dotnet new install Gondwana.Templates

Available Templates

Usage

WinForms (Windows only)

dotnet new gondwana-winforms -n MyGame
cd MyGame
dotnet run

This scaffolds a ready-to-run WinForms project containing:

• MyGame.csproj — targets net8.0-windows with the four Gondwana packages pre-referenced
• Program.cs — [STAThread] WinForms entry point
• GameWindow.cs — Form wired to the engine lifecycle (OnLoad → host, OnShown → Initialize, OnFormClosed → Dispose)
• GameHost.cs — WinFormsGameHost subclass with // TODO override stubs for loading tilesheets, building the scene, and handling keyboard input
• assets/README.txt — instructions for adding sprites and other asset files

Avalonia (Windows, macOS, Linux)

dotnet new gondwana-avalonia -n MyGame
cd MyGame
dotnet run

This scaffolds a ready-to-run Avalonia project containing:

• MyGame.csproj — targets net8.0 with the Gondwana and Avalonia.Desktop packages pre-referenced
• Program.cs — Avalonia AppBuilder entry point using UsePlatformDetect()
• App.cs — Application subclass that creates the main window on startup
• GameWindow.cs — Window wired to the engine lifecycle (OnOpened → host + Initialize, OnClosed → Dispose)
• GameHost.cs — AvaloniaGameHost subclass with // TODO override stubs for loading tilesheets, building the scene, and handling keyboard input
• assets/README.txt — instructions for adding sprites and other asset files

Choosing a backbuffer

Both templates accept a --Backbuffer parameter to choose the rendering backend:

# GPU-accelerated WinForms project
dotnet new gondwana-winforms -n MyGame --Backbuffer gpu

# GPU-accelerated Avalonia project
dotnet new gondwana-avalonia -n MyGame --Backbuffer gpu

Omitting --Backbuffer is equivalent to passing --Backbuffer bitmap.

When --Backbuffer gpu is used:

• GameWindow.cs uses WinFormGpuRenderSurfaceControl / AvaloniaGpuRenderSurfaceControl instead of the bitmap variant.
• GameHost.cs derives from WinFormsGpuGameHost / AvaloniaGpuGameHost instead of WinFormsGameHost / AvaloniaGameHost.

Avalonia WASM (desktop + browser)

dotnet new gondwana-wasm -n MyGame
cd MyGame
dotnet run                                    # run on desktop

Build and publish for browser:

dotnet workload install wasm-tools            # one-time per machine
dotnet publish -f net8.0-browser -c Release
# Output: bin/Release/net8.0-browser/browser-wasm/AppBundle/

This scaffolds a project containing:

• MyGame.csproj — multi-targets net8.0 and net8.0-browser; Avalonia.Desktop / Avalonia.Browser and Gondwana.Audio.Browser are applied conditionally; defines BROWSER constant for the browser target
• Program.cs — desktop entry point (#if !BROWSER); uses UsePlatformDetect() and StartWithClassicDesktopLifetime()
• Program.Browser.cs — browser entry point (#if BROWSER); imports gondwana-audio.js via JSHost.ImportAsync, then starts Avalonia with StartBrowserAppAsync()
• App.cs — handles both IClassicDesktopStyleApplicationLifetime (desktop) and ISingleViewApplicationLifetime (WASM)
• GameWindow.cs — desktop Window (compiled only when BROWSER is not defined)
• GameView.cs — browser single-view UserControl
• GameRenderSurface.cs — thin project-specific subclass of AvaloniaBitmapRenderSurfaceControl
• GameHost.cs — AvaloniaGameHost subclass with // TODO stubs showing both desktop and browser audio patterns
• wwwroot/gondwana-audio.js — the Gondwana browser audio JS module, also shipped by the Gondwana.Audio.Browser NuGet package as a content file
• assets/README.txt — instructions for adding sprites and other assets

Further reading

• Getting started (15-minute guide) — first-game-in-15-minutes.md
• Wiki — https://github.com/Isthimius/Gondwana/wiki
• API reference — https://isthimius.github.io/Gondwana/
• NuGet packages — https://www.nuget.org/packages/Gondwana