MonoGame 3.3
March 16, 2015 by Tom Spilman in News, Releases
This is the MonoGame 3.3 release. It is a culmination of over 3,000 commits from dozens of developers over the last 11 months.
- MonoGame 3.3 for VisualStudio
- MonoGame 3.3 Binaries for Mac
- MonoGame 3.3 Pipeline GUI Tool Package for Mac
- MonoGame 3.3 On GitHub
We still lack easy to use installers for Mac and Linux binaries and Xamarin Studio templates, but they are being worked on and we plan on them being available in the next release. For now depend on the zipped binaries above or building from source code when developing from Linux or Mac.
Note this is the first in our new push to release “early and often”. We expect to have official releases on a quarterly to monthly basis based on the submitted fixes and features.
Also this will be the last release with the MonoGame content pipeline extensions for XNA. We will be focusing all efforts on the new MonoGame content pipeline in future releases.
This is a short summary of all the changes in this release:
- Support for vertex texture fetch on Windows.
- New modern classes for KeyboardInput and MessageBox.
- Added more validation to draw calls and render states.
- Cleaned up usage of statics to support multiple GraphicsDevice instances.
- Support Window.Position on WindowsGL platform.
- Reduction of redundant OpenGL calls.
- Fullscreen support for Windows DX platform.
- Implemented Texture2D SaveAsPng and SaveAsJpeg for Android.
- Improved GamePad deadzone calculations.
- We now use FFmpeg for audio content building.
- BoundingSphere fixes and optimizations.
- Many improvements to Linux platform.
- Various fixes to FontTextureProcessor.
- New Windows Universal App template for Windows Store and Windows Phone support.
- Many fixes to reduce garbage generation during runtime.
- Adding support for TextureFormatOptions to FontDescriptionProcessor.
- XNA compatibility improvements to FontDescriptionProcessor.
- Resuscitated the unit test framework with 100s of additional unit tests.
- BoundingFrustum fixes and optimizations.
- Added VS2013 project templates.
- Moved to new MonoGame logo.
- Added MSAA render target support for OpenGL platforms.
- Added optional content compression support to content pipeline and runtime.
- TextureCube content reader and GetData fixes.
- New OpenAL software implementation for Android.
- Xact compatibility improvements.
- Lots of Android fixes and improvements.
- Added MediaLibrary implementation for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and Windows Store.
- Added ReflectiveWriter implementation to content pipeline.
- Fixes to Texture2D.GetData on DirectX platforms.
- SpriteFont rendering performance optimizations.
- Huge refactor of ModelProcessor to be more compatible with XNA.
- Moved NET and GamerServices into its own MonoGame.Framework.Net assembly.
- Runtime support for ETC1 textures for Androud.
- Improved compatibility for FBXImporter and XImporter.
- Multiple SpritBatch compatibility fixes.
- We now use FreeImage in TextureImporter to support many more input formats.
- MGFX parsing and render state improvements.
- New Pipeline GUI tool for managing content projects for Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops.
- New implementation of content pipeline IntermediateSerializer.
- All tools and content pipeline built for 64-bit.
- New documentation system.
- Implement web platform (JSIL) stubs.
- Lots of fixes to PSM.
- Added Protobuild support for project generation.
- Major refactor of internals to better separate platform specific code.
- Added MGCB command line tool to Windows installer.
Thanks for supporting MonoGame!
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MonoGame Pipeline Tool Available for MacOS and Linux
January 9, 2015 by Dean Ellis in News
It has been a long time coming, many of you have been waiting for this day and its finally here. Thanks some hard work over the christmas break the new Pipeline Tool is now working on both MacOS and Linux.
Pipeline Tool running on MacOS
Pipeline Tool on Linux
The Linux installer/tar script is still being worked on but should be available in the near future.
For MacOS users you can download the Pipeline Tool installer from the downloads page. You will need to have mono installed on your system for it to work, so if you do not have mono installed head over to go-mono.com and download the latest release (3.10). The Pipeline Tool will be installed as a normal Mac App in /Applications/Pipeline.app.
The install includes the MGCB tool within the package so if you want to run that manually from a terminal you will need to use:
mono /Applications/Pipeline.app/Contents/MonoBundle/MGCB.exe
The tool will behave exactly as the one on windows does. You can use it to create a .mgcb project and compile Textures, Fonts, Audio and 3D Models as well as use Custom Content Processors.
There are a few things that current do not work on MacOS or Linux, the first is custom Effect compilation. At the time of writing the 2MGFX tool does not run on Mac or Linux because of a dependency on some DirectX tooling so for now if you want to use custom Effects you will need to compile those on Windows.
For more information on the Pipeline tool and the underlying MGCB tool checkout the documentation.
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New Breed of Samples for MonoGame
April 17, 2014 by Simon Jackson in News
One common question surrounding MonoGame has always been the quality of the samples currently maintained in the various branches of the project.
Being an opensource project this has always been a challenge to manage and maintain, sure there are a lot of samples provided by many hard working developers but they were very sporadic and not always kept up to date (some it was noted, don’t even run any more)
Seeing this, the core MonoGame team set out with a purpose to being a new samples repository for the project. Its goals were simple:
- The samples had to be of high quality
- They had to work on ALL platforms not just one
- Best practices had to be used where possible
- They had to be testable and re-usable to test the latest builds (builds may not pass if samples tests failed)
It has been an ambitious journey, with a lot of in depth discussions and debates, but now the first of the samples has just been accepted in to the new samples repo.
The first sample is just a taste of what is to come and is born of the already tried and tested Platformer 2D sample from the age old XNA library.
The sample itself isn’t too much to should about as it only implements basic rendering, input and audio capabilities. However it is laid out in such a format and is working on ALL supported platforms, including:
- Android
- Linux
- MacOS
- Ouya
- PSM
- Windows Phone
- Windows 8
- WindowsGL
The sample serves as a guide for how to build and manage your game project in a fully multi-platform way with all the code in one place and shared across all projects.
If the platform supports NuGet, then the platform is using the latest MonoGame 3.2 NuGet package. Where NuGet support isn’t available, it references back to the main dev repository (which you’ll need to manually link until the new samples repository is fully integrated with the main repo),
More To Come
The new samples repo isn’t stopping there of course and we welcome anyone to submit new samples to the project so long as they meet the criteria mentioned earlier.
Come one, come all and get involved!
Original post can be found on DarkGenesis
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MonoGame 3.2 NuGet packages are GO!
April 15, 2014 by Simon Jackson in News, Releases
Just over a week ago the MonoGame released the latest full package for the MonoGame framework, now baselined at Version 3.2. This release brought numerous fixes, improvements and new features to the MonoGame platform and updated the Windows installer that had long needed some love.
It took a while but I finally managed to find some spare few hours to get the MonoGame NuGet releases updated to the 3.2 release, with a few extra surprises.
MonoGame NuGet 3.2
This contains the project templates for WindowsGL / Windows 8 / Windows Phone
iOS / MacOS / Android templates coming soon.
Has a dependancy on the MonoGame.Binaries NuGet package
MonoGame/Binaries NuGet 3.2
Contains the DLL’s and references for the following platforms:
- Android (new)
- iOS (new)
- MacOS (new)
- Windows GL
- Windows 8 / 8.1
- Windows Phone 8 (silverlight projects)
MonoGame.ContentProcessors NuGet 3.2
This contains the DLL update references for Content projects built using a MonoGame Content Builder Project.
To use remove the ContentProcessors reference from the “Content” project and install this NuGet as normal
**Note, you will need to exclude the “packages.config” file from the project when installed,
NuGet puts that in automatically but content projects don’t recognise it as a valid content type
MonoGame.Portable NuGet 3.2
Updated again in line with the 3.2 release.
Added some new support that was added with 3.2, including GamePads, keyboards and a few other tidbits.
Still only supports Windows based platforms but we are working on a plan to increase the scope of the portable project for all client platforms
MonoGame Portable is still maintained by me separate to the main MonoGame repo, so any issues please direct them to me and the separate MonoGame.Portable fork. once the new way of generating the Portable package and it gets consumed by the main project, this too will join the official family.
A note about the recent release of Windows Phone 8.1
At present MonoGame doesn’t support Windows Phone 8.1 APP projects, this includes the new Universal App templates. Nearly managed to add support through the NuGet packages but there are just enough subtle differences still between Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 that it will require code changes to handle.
Although I suspect a PR will no doubt appear soon enough to resolve this.
When MonoGame can support Windows Phone 8.1 App projects, the Nuget’s will get a refresh.
Original post can be found on DarkGenesis
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Changing of the Guard
April 11, 2014 by Dominique Louis in News
There’s no way of saying it, other than, it is with much sadness that I must step away from the MonoGame project co-ordinator role.
I’ve been a part of it since about 2010 and being part of this project has been one of the greatest experiences of my 20+ year IT career. Being part of this project literally changed my life and I don’t say that lightly. For example I probably would not be working for Xamarin today, if I had not joined the MonoGame project so many years ago. Or been invited to //Build a couple of years ago and lots more.
From its humble beginnings as XNATouch when I helped José Antonio Leal de Farias on the iOS port, I felt it was a worthy project. So much to do, so much to learn. There were lots of contributors who helped us out in those early days. THANKS!
When José left I stepped up to try and lead the project. I hope I’ve done an adequate job over the years.
Then to seeing it grow with Dean Ellis and Kenneth Pouncey working on the Android and Mac ports respectively and then seeing the project take off when Tom Spilman and Steve Williams joined us and we released the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 ports. Back in the early days one of my goals, when I started believing this project had potential, was to see it on a console and recently, thanks to the awesome work of Tom Spilman and his band of merry coders at Sickhead Games, that dream was realized with the PS4 port!! I’d like to thank the Core team for putting up with my stupid questions over the years and still answering them with a straight face :).
Sure there were naysayers in the early days, who doubted the viability of the project, who asked why bother, said Microsoft would shut us down! But those of us who contributed just loved what we were doing and I think we all saw that our efforts would ultimately not be futile because, if nothing else, we would have met and worked with some gifted people and learned so so much in the process. The journey is more important than the destination.
To everyone that has supported the project over the years, with code contributions, bug reports, donated money, I just wanted to say a massive THANK-YOU!! You have made this project what it is today and have made this period in my life *unforgettable*.
It has been an amazing journey and one I would not swap for anything in the world, but the fact is that I have not had time to contribute anything meaningful to the project recently, so it seems only fair to pass on the baton to people how have the best interests of the Project at heart and the time to move it forward. So I have officially handed all control and rights to Tom Spilman and Steve ‘Sly’ Williams. The project is in amazing hands and I think has an amazing future. I cannot step away totally, as I am still very passionate about the project, but will hopefully do more evangelising as the project targets more platforms/consoles.
As hinted to above, my latest mantra is “The Journey is More Important Than the Destination!”. In our lives it does not matter how we are born, or how we die that defines us. It is how we fill the time between those end-points and how we live our lives, that is paramount and what defines us. Same too with being part of the MonoGame project. It matters not that I joined and that I’m now leaving, but everything that happened in between is what it most important to me. Thanks again for making the last 4 years, incredible. Whatever project you are working on, or goal you are trying to achieve, remember that the journey is more important than the destination. 😉
Dominique Louis.
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MonoGame 3.2
April 7, 2014 by Tom Spilman in News, Releases
This is the long awaited release of MonoGame 3.2 with over a year of fixes, features, and improvements across 1,600 commits. This release only has an installer for Windows as we are currently reworking our Mac and Linux release packaging.
The notable changes in this release:
- Implemented missing PackedVector types.
- VS2013 support for MonoGame templates.
- Big improvement to XInput performance on Windows/Windows8.
- Added GameWindow.TextInput event enhancement.
- Added Xamarin.Mac compatability.
- Support for WPF interop under DirectX.
- Enhancement to support multiple GameWindows on Windows under DirectX.
- Various SpriteFont compatibility improvements.
- OpenAL performance/memory/error handling improvements.
- Reduction of Effect runtime memory usage.
- Support for DXT/S3TC textures on Android.
- Touch support on Windows desktop games.
- Added new RenderTarget3D enhancement.
- OUYA gamepad improvements.
- Internal improvements to reduce garbage generation.
- Various windowing fixes for OpenTK on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
- Automatic support for content reloading on resume for Android.
- Support for TextureCube, Texture3D, and RenderTargetCube on DirectX.
- Added TitleContainer.SupportRetina enhancement for loading @2x content.
- Lots of Android/Kindle compatibility fixes.
- Added enhancement GameWindow.IsBorderless.
- OpenGL now supports multiple render targets.
- Game.IsRunningSlowly working accurately to XNA.
- Game tick resolution improvements.
- XACT compatibility improvements.
- Various fixes and improvements to math types.
- DrawUserIndexedPrimitives now works with 32bit indicies.
- GamerServices fixes under iOS.
- Various MonoGame FX improvements and fixes.
- Render target fixes for Windows Phone.
- MediaPlayer/MediaQueue/Song fixes on Windows Phone.
- XNA accuracy fixes to TitleContainer.
- Fixes to SpriteBatch performance and compatibility with XNA.
- Threading fixes around SoundEffectInstance.
- Support for Song.Duration.
- Fixed disposal of OpenGL shader program cache.
- Improved support of PoT textures in OpenGL.
- Implemented missing EffectParameter SetValue/GetValue calls.
- Touch fixes to Windows Phone.
- Fixes to orientation support in iOS.
- Lots of PSM fixes which make it usable for 2D games.
- New Windows desktop platform using DirectX/XAudio.
- Old Windows project renamed WindowsGL.
- Fixed offsetInBytes parameter in IndexBuffer/VertexBuffer SetData.
- Fixed subpixel offset when viewport is changed in OpenGL.
- Tons of content pipeline improvements making it close to complete.
Thanks for supporting MonoGame!
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[…] The MonoGame Pipeline tool is available on Windows, OS X, and Linux. This walkthrough will run the tool on Windows, but it can be followed along on Mac and Linux as well. For information on getting the tool set up on Max or Linux, see this page. […]