hey dev, why did you decide to use XNA over MonoGame?

[darksouls]

just curious. Ive seen 5 other devs make the same choice?

[AvatarMan]

https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4b8s7v/im_concernedape_developer_of_stardew_valley_ask/?sort=qa
"Anything you regret while developing?
I regret a lot of stuff about the development, but that's part of the learning process. One of the big ones is going with XNA (totally outdated now). I'm going to try and apply everything I learned to my next game!"

https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4b8s7v/im_concernedape_developer_of_stardew_valley_ask/d175k0f

[darksouls]

Publicado originalmente por Sir Ruffington:

https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4b8s7v/im_concernedape_developer_of_stardew_valley_ask/?sort=qa
"Anything you regret while developing?
I regret a lot of stuff about the development, but that's part of the learning process. One of the big ones is going with XNA (totally outdated now). I'm going to try and apply everything I learned to my next game!"

but why do other devs choose XNA over MonoGame?
weird...

anyway thanks for teh piost\

[AvatarMan]

Second link, edited too slow.

[Zyfie]

Publicado originalmente por yeaah ultra jay:

but why do other devs choose XNA over MonoGame?
weird...

Because they throw books about XNA at you from every side.
Not like with the few you've got for MonoGame.

Most C# tutorial things for game programming also use XNA.

[darksouls]

ahh, yeah forcing yourself to design things like that yourself is good for the overall quality of your product, but probably not so good for your brain.

Hmm, yeah I think I understand now, thanks for the links

[darksouls]

Publicado originalmente por Nepnep:

Publicado originalmente por yeaah ultra jay:

but why do other devs choose XNA over MonoGame?
weird...

Because they throw books about XNA at you from every side.
Not like with the few you've got for MonoGame.

Most C# tutorial things for game programming also use XNA.

true, I wish there was more out there for Monogame. I've had to use books from XNA and sometimes you dont get 1:1 comparison for certain features. But it still helps.

[Damaskar]

XNA officially died around the beginning of 2013 (see http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/185894/Its_official_XNA_is_dead.php ). At that time ConcernedApe was already busy developing Stardew Valley (I think he mentioned having been working on it for over 4 years).

Now you have to keep 2 things in mind:

1. It is usually a bad idea to switch languages/frameworks/engines while being in the middle of development, because you have to stop development and first learn the new stuff before you can work with it. You often have to redesign / redo a lot of stuff that you have already implemented, because not everything translates well from framework A to framework B etc.

2. When XNA died there haven't been any stable and definitive alternatives. MonoGame and some other variations have just been born and were quite untested and not ready for production yet. If you browse around gamedev forums (for example https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev ) and search for MonoGame you will also notice that MonoGame to a certain degress still has a bad reputation and there is a lot of discussion regarding its implementation and dev team. It used to be buggy and slow as hell for a long time (which caused frameworks like FNA and Ultraviolet to spawn... search for them on github if you want to have look).

Another thing that XNA still offers that MonoGame etc. were not offering for a long time: it tightly integrates in Visual Studio 2010 and makes developing games very easy. Need sound effects, some textures or shaders? Simply put them into your content project and leave the rest to XNA. XNA makes sure everything runs and you can concentrate on coding. MonoGame only recently got their own content pipeline into a stable state.

Long story short: MonoGame is a very good option for games now, but back in 2013 it was not in a usable state.


Note: MonoGame aims to be 100% compatible to XNA. Every tutorial, resource and book about XNA is still valid and works fine with MonoGame. The only difference is how to set up your project and the content pipeline.