TL; DR -> In short, NO, lol. AI is a tool that can assist you in solving common problems and mixing many different AI tools and features you can help to accelerate your development and the creation of content (at least place holders for your artists to draw from). But, it is also a great source of pain, frustration and injection of complex issues, which you end up using AI to solve only making the complexity worse and harder to understand if you are not familiar with it.
Essentially, the AI CANNOT do it alone and still needs a human at the helm to guide it, correct it and use other tools to generate assets.
It is however fantastic for DOCUMENTING your project and identifying potential issues!
As ever progress marches on whether we want it to or not and with the ever increasing power that AI brings, everyone gets split into one of three groups:
TL;DR -> .NET 8 language support is now available for MonoGame and opening up a whole new world of goodness and speed for games.
*Note, the information contained below is for those developers who want access to the cutting edge, as it requires access to the development source. (with the exception of upgrading your game to .NET 8)
The full release of the .NET 8 MonoGame support will be included with the 3.9 release, coming soon.
MonoGame may have seemed stagnant or unmoving in the past, mainly because of the rigors of a group of developers working unpaid on the development of an OpenSource framework, meaning the focus had to be on what enabled the developers to make money in their own projects based on MonoGame. But thanks to recent investments by ReLogic and our awesome MonoGame community, the MonoGame Foundation was born and more significant investments could be made.
TL;DR -> With a little effort, publishing MonoGame projects to the Web is possible, so long as you remember it is the Web and you cannot do EVERYTHING!
When it comes to GameJams, like the one mentioned in this post, pushing out the finished project as an EXE or Appx usually results in your project either getting downvoted or ignored, because who wants to infect their machine with an unknown just to test out a Jam project.
This applies to most Game Engines out there that are not web-based, including MonoGame, but thankfully due to the hard work of Nikos Kastellanos (NKast) there is an option available to us.
TL;DR -> Getting started with MonoGame is easy, mastering it takes time. So, throw all that out the window and get hacking instead!
The 5th annual MonoGameJam is kicking off soon on the 30th November 2023, which is by far one of the best ways to throw yourself into MonoGame and learn something new:
TL;DR -> It is as simple as Initialize, LoadContent, Update, Draw, UnloadContent and finish, with a little sauce in between.
Every Game, Program or process runs on a specific loop, it might go through just once, or as is in the case with Games, the loop continues until the game is over, finished, kaput, crashed or simply closed (but who really wants a Game to ever end :D). Put simply, this is known as the Game loop, and whether it is Unity, Unreal or MonoGame, they all have their own specific order of things.
TL;DR -> Today, cross-platform projects are easy to setup (except UWP), with .NET7, it gets easier. Read the article for the How-to!
Most Game projects when built are solely for a single platform, usually the same as the development machine they are being built upon. Only later does the idea surface to maybe ship to another console, handheld or platform which then highlights issues in the games implementation that can lead to issues.
TL;DR -> MonoGame rocks and continues to be one of the best open-source frameworks for building games including with lightweight editors like VSCode, on ANY platform.
Things are busy and heating up in the Open-Source development space and the MonoGame Team announced their plans to step up to the recent demand.
TL;DR -> MonoGame rocks and continues to be one of the best open-source frameworks for building games.
Making games is hard enough (or the most fun you will ever have) without the worry of the Framework or Engine you use either being cancelled or changing the terms of its use in the future, which can provide uncertainty for the years of effort you put into making your dream a reality that everyone can play.
Back in the day, Riemer Grootjans had one of the best XNA tutorial sites available (along with some C++ and other series), featuring a great balance of beginner, intermediate and advanced content.
There are those who either do not like or prefer not to use big heavy-hitting coding IDE's, prefer the raw metal of cutting their teeth on code using nothing but their wits (and a good spellchecker), thanks to MonoGame 3.8's new .NET Core delivery approach they can.
Sure, you might miss some of the big-hitting features the larger packages might offer, but if you are starved for disk space, bandwidth or simply like your meat raw then the slimline editor is much more attractive option.
Getting started with CLI for MAC
The MonoGame team took particular interest in ensuring everything you need to know about setting up MonoGame 3.8 on your Mac for CLI was all up to scratch and you kind find the article (as well as others) here:
MonoGame Samples are being updated for 3.8 which are available here. Stay tuned.
So why are you still here reading this article? Get out there and get coding your game and if you are stuck, check in to the MonoGame discord and start chatting!
MonoGame is certainly one of those frameworks where if you take your eye off it for a little while, it comes back to slap you in the face and remind you why it is still relevant.
With the recent MonoGame 3.8 release, this is even more true than ever as we say goodbye to the old MSI approach for installing one of the best open-source game frameworks out there.
For some time now I have been asked if I would do a session on the “Darkside of MonoGame” about using XML with MonoGame and the Content Pipeline, for a while I put it off as I had my own schedule and agenda with the channel. Eventually I got worn down and I have succumbed to the demands of my viewers (it can happen )
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