While I continue to contribute to FNA and dabble with Galactic Aggressors, I’ve also been looking at engines others have created for making games with XNA/MonoGame. Specifically Monocle, and LDEngine.
I may look into Monocle’s code more at a later date, but here’s my immediate impression:
Pro’s:
- Flibitijibibo has already created a project file so that it will compile with FNA.
Con’s:
- There are no docs.
- There are no examples.
- There are over 12,000 lines of code in the engine, and fewer than 100 real comments.
- Tiling appears geared towards Matt Thorson’s other project, Ogmo Editor, which on a cursory glance has some Windows specific dependencies (WebHost) that don’t run when compiled on Linux. Even after commenting out the System.Deployment features, it fails on execution (Probably due to incomplete System.Windows.Forms.Design.WebBrowserDesigner implementation, but that’s a guess).
I want to use the Tiled map editor. I simply think it’s the best available free option, with the longest potential lifespan. Monocle’s invested in its own editor, and the internal changes needed to support the Tiled imports might be considered unwelcome bloat.
Okay, so what about LDEngine?
Pro’s:
- Seems to be very active as far as improvements. I think they’d welcome contributions.
- Gareth Williams’ Ludum Dare entries can be used as really good examples of what you can do with it.
Con’s:
- Not geared towards building on Linux at the moment; The tiling support relies on Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline items that have not been implemented in Mono.
While LDEngine does use Tiled files, it uses them via the Content Pipeline. But, Gareth seems to be open to the idea of decoupling TMX support from the content pipeline.
Long story short, I think I’ll take a detour and look into LDEngine a bit more.