Tutorials

CNA Tutorials

From zero to shipping — 157 step-by-step guides for C++ game development with CNA, including guides for the native platforms, the Content Pipeline, Diagnostics and the Inspector added since the first tagged pre-release.

All 157 tutorials available

🔍 Looking for a specific topic? Press Ctrl + F (or ⌘ + F on macOS) to search this page by keyword.
🌱
Beginner

Getting Started

No prior game-development experience required. Install CNA, open a window, draw sprites, play sounds, handle input, and ship your first game — from scratch in C++.

20 tutorials • ⏰ 10–20 min each • Available now
01 Introduction to CNA 10 min 02 Setting Up Your Dev Environment 12 min 03 Your First CNA Window 12 min 04 The Game Class Lifecycle 10 min 05 The Game Loop: Update and Draw 15 min 06 Drawing Your First 2D Shape 12 min 07 Working with Colors 8 min 08 Loading and Drawing Textures 15 min 09 Drawing Text with SpriteFont 12 min 10 Handling Keyboard Input 10 min 11 Handling Mouse Input 10 min 12 Moving Sprites and Basic Animation 15 min 13 Sprite Sheets and Frame Animation 18 min 14 Playing Sound Effects 12 min 15 Playing Background Music 10 min 16 Basic Collision Detection 20 min 17 2D Camera and Viewport 15 min 18 Game States — Menus and Scenes 20 min 19 Saving and Loading Data 15 min 20 Building and Running Your Game 12 min
⚒️
Intermediate

Core Systems

Go deeper into 2D rendering, enter the third dimension, work with matrices and math, manage assets, and add gamepad and touch input to your games.

30 tutorials • ⏰ 15–25 min each • Available now
21 SpriteBatch Deep Dive 20 min 22 Blend Modes and Alpha Compositing 15 min 23 Render Targets for Off-Screen Rendering 20 min 24 Post-Processing with Render Targets 20 min 25 SpriteSortMode and Layering 15 min 26 Tilemaps and Tile-Based Worlds 25 min 27 Scrolling Backgrounds and Parallax 18 min 28 Particle Systems in 2D 25 min 29 UI Elements: Buttons and Menus 20 min 30 GamePad and Controller Input 15 min 31 Your First 3D Triangle 20 min 32 BasicEffect and 3D Lighting 25 min 33 Matrices and Transformations 20 min 34 3D Camera Setup and Control 20 min 35 Loading 3D Models 25 min 36 Texturing 3D Models 20 min 37 Multiple Light Sources 20 min 38 Vertex Buffers and Index Buffers 25 min 39 Depth Buffer and Z-Fighting 15 min 40 Primitive Types 15 min 41 Vector2, Vector3, Vector4 Math 20 min 42 Matrix Operations and Transforms 20 min 43 Quaternions for Smooth Rotation 20 min 44 Bounding Volumes and Spatial Queries 20 min 45 ContentManager and Asset Pipeline 20 min 46 Custom Content Readers 25 min 47 GameComponent and DrawableGameComponent 20 min 48 Fixed vs Variable Timestep 15 min 49 Touch Input and Gestures 15 min 50 Accelerometer and Sensors 15 min
🔥
Advanced

Graphics and Architecture

Write custom shaders, build deferred rendering pipelines, profile and optimize your game, implement shadows and reflections, and architect scalable multi-platform projects.

30 tutorials • ⏰ 25–35 min each • Available now
51 Custom Vertex Types 25 min 52 Writing Custom Shaders (ShaderEffect) 30 min 53 Shader Uniforms and EffectParameter 25 min 54 AlphaTestEffect and Alpha Masking 20 min 55 DualTextureEffect for Lightmaps 25 min 56 EnvironmentMapEffect for Reflections 25 min 57 SkinnedEffect and Skeletal Animation 30 min 58 Normal Mapping 30 min 59 Shadow Mapping 35 min 60 Instanced Rendering 30 min 61 Occlusion Queries 25 min 62 Multiple Render Targets (MRT) 30 min 63 Stencil Buffer Effects 25 min 64 Cubemaps and Skyboxes 25 min 65 MSAA Anti-Aliasing 20 min 66 Post-Processing: Blur and Bloom 30 min 67 Deferred Rendering 35 min 68 Terrain Rendering 35 min 69 Water and Reflections 35 min 70 Procedural Geometry 30 min 71 Memory Management in C++ 25 min 72 Choosing a Renderer 20 min 73 Performance Profiling and Optimization 30 min 74 Frustum Culling 25 min 75 Level of Detail (LOD) 25 min 76 Spatial Partitioning 30 min 77 Asset Streaming and Async Loading 30 min 78 Multi-threading Considerations 30 min 79 Debugging Rendering Issues 25 min 80 Cross-Platform Build Guide 30 min
👑
Expert

Real-World and Platform

Ship to WebAssembly and Android, port from XNA and MonoGame, extend CNA with custom renderers and language runtimes, build complete game projects, and integrate physics and networking.

19 tutorials • ⏰ 30–45 min each • Available now
81 Emscripten: Building for WebAssembly 35 min 82 Android Build and Deployment 35 min 83 Migrating from MonoGame/FNA to CNA 30 min 84 Migrating from XNA to CNA 30 min 85 The Vulkan Renderer: Setup and Quirks 40 min 87 Writing a Custom Renderer 45 min 88 Native OS Integration with CNA::Devices 35 min 89 Extending CNA with sharp-runtime 35 min 90 Integration with easy-gl Directly 30 min 91 Building a 2D Platformer 45 min 92 Building a Top-Down RPG 45 min 93 Building a First-Person 3D Game 45 min 94 Building a Puzzle Game 40 min 95 Speedy Blupi: A Real-World CNA Port 40 min 96 Physics Integration (Box2D / Bullet) 35 min 97 Network Sessions on the Local Network 40 min 98 Localization and Multiple Languages 25 min 99 Unit Testing CNA Game Logic 30 min 100 Shipping Your CNA Game 30 min
🎨
Advanced

Renderers in Depth

A normal CNA build compiles one of its 14 renderer identities; a build can also opt into a compatible set and choose one before device creation. These tutorials cover selection, family boundaries, capability traps and the SDL_GPU and WebGPU renderers.

10 tutorials • ⏰ 20–30 min each • Available now
101 Querying Renderer Capabilities 20 min 102 The OpenGL Family 20 min 103 Direct3D 9 and 11 on Windows 20 min 105 Browser Renderers: WebGL 2 and WebGPU 20 min 107 CPU-Only Renderers: Software, Headless and Stub 20 min 108 FNA3D: Running XNA's Real Compiled Stock Effects 20 min 109 Metal on macOS 20 min 131 The SDL_GPU Renderer: Build, Verify and Query 20 min 132 The WebGPU Renderer: Native and Browser 20 min 133 Read the Renderer Capability Profile 20 min
🧩
Advanced

3D Content and CNA Extensions

Runtime glTF loading, skeletal animation, morph targets and PBR materials, plus the CNAEXT extensions where CNA goes beyond the XNA 4.0 contract - and how to opt out of them entirely.

8 tutorials • ⏰ 20–30 min each • Available now
110 Loading glTF 2.0 Models at Runtime 20 min 111 The CNJ Format and the gltf_to_cnj Tool 20 min 112 Skeletal Animation from glTF 20 min 113 Morph Targets 20 min 114 PBR Materials with PbrEffect and SkinnedPbrEffect 20 min 115 CNAEXT: Extending Beyond XNA 20 min 116 CNAEXT Post-Process Effects: ASCII, CRT, Depth and Colour Matrix 20 min 117 The CNA::Devices Layer: Building With It, and Without It 20 min
🔧
Expert

Audio, Media, Services and Verification

Procedural and positional audio, XACT, video, the media library, locally-persisted achievements and leaderboards, the WebAssembly gotchas that only bite in a browser, and how CNA verifies pixels.

16 tutorials • ⏰ 20–30 min each • Available now
118 Procedural Audio with DynamicSoundEffectInstance 20 min 119 3D Positional Audio 20 min 120 XACT: AudioEngine, SoundBank, WaveBank and Cue 20 min 121 Video Playback with VideoPlayer 20 min 122 MediaLibrary and Audio Visualization 20 min 123 Achievements and Leaderboards, Offline and on the Server 20 min 124 WebAssembly Gotchas: Game Lifetime, Storage and Video 20 min 125 Headless and Pixel Testing, and the XNA Oracle Corpus 20 min 126 Build Several Renderers and Select One at Runtime 20 min 127 Choose Platform, Renderer, and Audio Independently 15 min 128 Load Compiled XNA Effects on Supported Renderers 20 min 129 Your First C Program Against the Experimental C API 20 min 140 Parse and Format Math Values with Type Converters 20 min 141 Save Data Portably with StorageDevice 20 min 160 Running Focused Tests, Bounded Runs and Parity Fixtures 20 min 161 Diffing a Renderer Against the XNA Oracle 20 min
#
Intermediate

C# with CNA.NET

Run original XNA 4.0 C# games on CNA's native runtime through CNA.NET without rewriting them, and start new C# games from the dotnet new template with desktop, browser and Android heads.

0 tutorials • ⏰ 20–30 min each • Available now
170 Run an Unchanged XNA 4.0 C# Game on CNA.NET 20 min 171 Start a New C# Game with the CNA.NET Template 20 min
🎮
Advanced

Gamer Services, Guide, Avatars and Networking

Local profiles and sign-in, the Guide, achievements and leaderboards, friends and presence, avatars, and network sessions — offline by default, or connected to the self-hosted CNA Gamer Services server.

0 tutorials • ⏰ 20–30 min each • Available now
162 Gamer Services setup, local profiles and sign-in 20 min 163 The Guide — message boxes, keyboard input and system pages 20 min 164 Connecting a game to the CNA Gamer Services server 20 min 165 Friends, presence and gamer pictures 20 min 166 Online sessions, invitations and host migration 20 min 167 Drawing and animating avatars 20 min 168 Operating the Gamer Services server 20 min
🖥
Expert

Window Systems and Builds

Run CNA on X11 and Wayland through SDL3's video drivers, use ALSA audio and CNA's own mixer, configure SDL-free windowless builds, and run CNA in a terminal.

5 tutorials • ⏰ 20–30 min each • Available now
135 Running on X11 through SDL3 20 min 136 Running on Wayland through SDL3 20 min 137 Native Linux Audio with ALSA 20 min 138 Building Without SDL 20 min 139 The Terminal Platform 20 min
📦
Advanced

Content Pipeline and CNB

Author content with the build-time Content Pipeline, pack it as CNB, interoperate with XNB produced by XNA and MonoGame, and write your own content types.

4 tutorials • ⏰ 20–30 min each • Available now
145 Build Content with cna-content 20 min 146 Write and Load CNB Files 20 min 147 Load XNB from XNA and MonoGame Content 20 min 148 Custom Content Types with XNB, Reflective and CNB Readers 20 min
✨
Advanced

Modern Graphics

Graphics profiles, build-time shader compilation and one shader across several renderers.

3 tutorials • ⏰ 20–30 min each • Available now
150 Build-Time FX Compilation with cna-content 20 min 151 One Shader, Several Renderers: Choosing a Dialect at Run Time 20 min 152 Reach vs HiDef: Choosing a GraphicsProfile 20 min
📈
Expert

Diagnostics, Inspector and Tools

Turn on Diagnostics statistics and traces, connect the Inspector to a running game, and use the command-line content and asset tools.

3 tutorials • ⏰ 20–30 min each • Available now
155 Read Frame Statistics with Diagnostics 20 min 156 Watch a Running Game in the Inspector 20 min 157 A Tour of the Content Tools 20 min
📌

Want a tutorial faster? Open an issue on GitHub and request a specific topic — high-demand tutorials get prioritised. Contributions are also welcome: if you write a tutorial, submit a pull request.