pouët.net

What's the Pouet opinion of Monogame?

category: code [glöplog]
http://www.monogame.org/ still works though :)
added on the 2016-10-27 12:37:32 by Canopy Canopy
I use MonoGame on Windows and Raspberry Pi for a game project but you could make really good demo with it.

There's a lots of examples to do 3D effects (see https://kosmonautblog.wordpress.com/)

www.fxgen.org
added on the 2016-10-27 16:52:09 by fxgen fxgen
Quote:
after various tinkerings I've come to the realisation that although the OpenGL stuff I've done over the last few years has taught me a lot, I didn't produce a lot apart from self-education.


And what makes you think that switching to a different language/framework/api will change anything about that?
How is monogame an improvement over sticking to a simple opengl codebase?
added on the 2016-10-27 20:39:58 by arm1n arm1n
yeah so much fun redirecting to those weird website...
added on the 2016-10-28 09:34:17 by Romain337 Romain337
Quote:
How is monogame an improvement over sticking to a simple opengl codebase?

That depends, does that "simple opengl codebase" have all the auxillary functionality like texture/matrix/shader management? Boilerplate can be important.
added on the 2016-10-28 13:28:41 by Gargaj Gargaj
To me, it will probably worth a shot because I do have a couple XNA games from the past which I would like to port to Android for example, but prefer not to rewrite them all.

I had that XNA experience because I wanted to publish on XBOX at that time, and XNA was the way used by indies to get there. Although it was not bad at all, XBOX was the only reason I spent time on XNA.

But, for some people out there, it might still worth because they are too used to XNA (many of them *only* know XNA), and they would feel comfortable with the already known API.
added on the 2016-10-28 13:42:05 by imerso imerso
hi spike, very valid questions :)

Quote:
And what makes you think that switching to a different language/framework/api will change anything about that?

because i'm not making everything from scratch from the ground up. gargaj hit the nail on the head really.

boilerplate wise i was writing in modern gl style trying to keep as minimal differences between opengl es 2 and gl 2.1+ to aid portability. had some really nice matrix, shader, timing, and very basic object/model + scene + vbo/vao management done. logging, window management, debug output in a windows console window..... but ultimately I often wasn't getting anything other than making all that.

i'd still have things like FBO to add, better texture & some kind of font support and improvements to make to input code. before i can think of much else.
(some of which is porting code from a previous iteration, and some would be new)

i wasnt "making an engine", was trying not to 'gold plate' very conscious about being pragmatic and only implementing the things i absolutely needed. however it was still falling into working on that, not the end result. cross-platform was an end goal and its an ever moving target and just getting all the ground work down was harder to find time for.

its a shame because what i learned and have is awesome, for me, but there is value in what i learned from doing it.

i've had a break from working on it due to summer (& life!) and the other project (some website stuff i really want/need out of the way).. i want to be doing something not more of the same as before when i get back to working on things.

fact is. i don't have a lot of time, and i'd rather see more results more quickly

Quote:

How is monogame an improvement over sticking to a simple opengl codebase?


because of the easier portability between desktop and mobile devices of all flavours.

the cost of moving to c# and something proven, and more fully formed is a good hit to take right now.
added on the 2016-10-28 17:55:09 by Canopy Canopy
(btw their site http://www.monogame.net is now fixed)
added on the 2016-10-28 17:59:01 by Canopy Canopy
I am using monogame for quite some time now and am still quite a fan of it (Also because i like C# and was doing some XNA stuff before my xbox broke).
It works like a charm, at least in most aspects and if you go for 2D; the effect/shader system also works quite well. However, there are a few issues you could run into which still need bugfixes (Talking about experience with Windows as target):

When going 3D in fullscreen, somehow it seems to completely ignore your aspect ratio and goes with 4:3 which makes everything looking wrong - But everything works if you set to windowed mode. Could also be driver problem at my machine or something.)

The Video player it comes with has an awful memory leak. I wouldn't recommend using it. The only fix I currently found is a fork of monogame which reimplements the whole media player system - No experience with that because i wanted to stay compatible to the offical releases tho.

Another thing I experienced is that disposing render targets is kinda a lottery here.
After disposing them and even checking for isDisposed, that thing seems still to be there even after terminating the application. So after a few dozen times of testing your game/demo/whatever you might experience a significant performance loss on your graphics card until you restart your graphics driver - I have this problem with every monogame application, even not my own ones here. This could again also be a driver problem. Tested several driver versions without luck tho (gtx660ti here).

Nevertheless i still like it and can't really find any serious competitor which is not a commercial engine like unity for example.
added on the 2016-10-28 18:34:32 by RbR RbR
thanks for highlighting ssome real-world issues you've had.

a quick google shows some of those cases have workarounds out there.
added on the 2016-10-29 12:54:18 by Canopy Canopy
there is a good C++ XNA implementation here

https://sourceforge.net/projects/nxna/
added on the 2016-10-30 10:20:55 by fxgen fxgen
thanks, interesting.. but a hugely different thing from monogame in terms of stability, support and community.

monogame is mature, has been around a long time, has books on the subejct (I know, I've bought two already!) and is backed by M$.

this c++ thing may be great, but seems like a one man effort..
added on the 2016-10-31 14:59:09 by Canopy Canopy
since i brought up in another post there's been some more news about monogame.


its officially supported on xbox one and nintendo switch for indie game development


and a personal update.

i've done some dev with it now, and although c# is new to me, its really a good enivronment to get stuff done.

since the the only thing monogame sdk doesn't support that XNA4 had is microphones/audio-in support i added naudio to my project and have a proof-of-concept to windows test app with streaming audio input. (it does mean i'd have to implement audio myself and/or via other libs on other platforms).

not that exciting.. but this is capturing vinyl playing through my audio mixer, and recording outout being captured through a USB interface. works just as nice with a USB condensor mic. with dynamic adding/removing of devices and record on/off functionality.

click to make bigger..
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added on the 2017-03-22 20:15:50 by Canopy Canopy

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