Quick Start Guide

Introduction

If you're looking to get started without going through lengthy tutorials, this guide will get you running with the minimum number of steps.

Note that this guide assumes you are using the FlatRedBall Editor. If you are creating a code-only project, see the Code Only Projects page.

Downloading FlatRedBall

First you will need to make sure you have the prerequisites. Once you do, you need to download FlatRedBall. For detailed steps, see the Downloading FlatRedBall page.

Creating a New Project

To create a new project:

1. Click the Create New Project button

   

   Create New Project button
2. Leave the defaults and click the Create Project! button. The defaults select the most common project setup.

   

   Click the Create Project! button
3. After the project loads, the Project Setup Wizard appears. Select which project type you would like such as Standard Platformer or Standard Top Down. These options are the quickest way to get a functional game running. If you would like to have an empty project, close the wizard by pressing the X button at the top right.

   

   Project Setup Wizard

   1. If you selected a project type, wait for the project creation to finish.

   

   Project Setup Wizard setting up a project

You now have a FlatRedBall Project. You can run the project through the FlatRedBall Editor, or in Visual Studio.

Project in FlatRedBall after it's been created

Running your Project in FlatRedBall

To run your Project in FlatRedBall, click the play button. Notice that this tells you which Screen will load when the project starts.

Play button in FlatRedBall

Once the project is running you will see it in its own window.

FlatRedBall Platformer Project

Running in Visual Studio

To run your project in Visual Studio:

1. Click the Visual Studio icon in FlatRedBall\

   

   Visual Studio Icon in FlatRedBall
2. Wait for the project to load in Visual Studio

   

   FlatRedBall project in Visual Studio
3. Press the Play button to build and run your project in Visual Studio. FlatRedBall projects are standard .NET projects, which means you can treat it as you would any other .NET project including debugging, NuGet packages, and full C# syntax support.

What's next?

Now that you have FlatRedBall running on your machine, you can get started making games. Here are some next steps to consider:

• Join the FlatRedBall Discord - come say "hi" and tell us about what you want to do with FlatRedBall. We have an active community who loves to help new users.

• Check out the Beefball tutorials and other tutorials. These will get you up to speed on how to use the FlatRedBall Editor.

• If you prefer to dive right in to the docs, check out the FlatRedBall Editor reference to see what it can do, or the FlatRedBall API Documentation for info about working with FlatRedBall in code.

• Try things out! The best way to learn is by doing, so try making changes to the project and explore what is already there.