Great. Let me know if you have any trouble getting started with MonoGame.Extended.
MonoGame.Extended doesn’t really do 3D. We are currently focused on making good 2D library. 3D might come in the distant future, possibly as a different library.
Cool. We are always considering new features to the library. Raise an issue on our github issues page and we can talk about it.
Hey,
My name is Lucas. I’m a student at a university in Canada studying Computer Science / Software Engineering. I’m currently 22 years old, but have been programming since I was 12 years old out of self-interest and self-discipline. I originally learned how to code in Visual Basic 6 from reading and contributing to a open source project called Mirage Source and it derivatives such as Konfuse Engine / Elysium Engine. At one point, around age 15, I attempted a port of Mirage Source from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic.NET with some success but it kinda collapsed and over time I lost my backed up copy of the code. From then I learned C#, found XNA, started university and overall learned a lot about programming, computer science and software engineering in general.
Welcome @LithiumToast. You’re contributions to the library have been fantastic. Thanks so much.
I’ve also been coding since I was 12 although, back then I was coding in Visual Basic for DOS! Fun times.
Hello, my Name is Bastian. I have been jumping from language to language hoping to find something that clicked. I started with PHP when I was 11 years old, and has since tried Objective-C, Java, Javascript and recently Visual Basic. Last week I decided to try out C# and finally found the language that made it click in my head, the other languages also makes much more sense, since there are much in common! It might also be because of Visual Basic, that it made sense in my head?
I have searched for a way to implement Tiled tilemaps in MonoGame and found this excellent framework! I am wanting to use it for a Pokemon clone, with monster capture/fighting, rock paper scissor mechanic and all the bells and whistles!
I hope you take kind care of me, and help me where I need it!
Whenever I hear someone tell the story of how they got into programming it always goes one of two ways. Either they started with web technologies and moved towards desktop tech or the other way around. For me it was the other way around 
In any case, I’m glad you’ve found your way to C#. It’s a very nice language. There’s definitely some benefits to having a wide exposure to a variety of different languages so I wouldn’t worry too much about it clicking. After a while, you’ll get more comfortable with the idea that a language is just a tool to build something awesome.
Thank-you. We’ve been working hard to make the library better. The Tiled maps feature is definitely one of the more popular ones and has had a lot of improvements. We’ll be doing another release of the library at some point but if you want to take advantage of the latest changes I recommend building from source with MonoGame 3.5.
Last but not least, welcome to the community 
I’m looking forward to seeing some screenshots of your Pokemon clone posted here on the forums!
Hi - I’ve not been working long with MonoGame - approx. a week or so. My game (which I started in Jan) was based on SDL 2.0 but written in C#. Having ported the basics so that it now runs, I was delighted to come across MonoGame.Extended as I was about to embark on porting my event-based InputHandler from SDL only to find you’ve written one already - saved me a job! In addition, as my game uses Tiled, I was thinking about a custom ContentHandler for TMX files only to find you’ve already written one - another job saved!
One question though, my current C# Tiled classes are based on Tiled 0.15.1 which I need for Hex TMX maps. What version does MonoGame.Extended support?
Hi @Andy_E
Welcome to the community. We created MonoGame.Extended for exactly that reason, to save people from having to do everything themselves. I’m glad it’s serving it’s purpose
Currently only Orthogonal and Isometric maps are supported. However, I don’t think it would be a huge job to add Hex to the current code. If you’re interested in adding this functionality it would be really appreciated.
MonoGame.Extended is fairly easy to build from source. I’d be more than happy to help you get up and running. I’ve raise a new issue on github so we can discuss it further.
I may well do that - I already have code that loads and renders the hex map using MonoGame and it would be helpful to be able to use the content pipeline for my maps. Currently I don’t support “pointy-top” hexes and I haven’t ported the polygon rendering for the hex grid yet but it’s functional at least.
One reason I switched from SDL to MonoGame because it was becoming clear I was going to need to produce my own GUI library (or uplift a FOSS one) and I’m hoping to mix WFP/MonoGame to do the UI elements - menus, dialogs, toolbars etc. Microsoft buying Xamarin was probably the clincher.
One thing to note - Tiled treats “staggered” differently from “hex” orientation…
You can get MonoGame working with WPF to make tools, level editors and stuff like that. Here’s a video of one I did a while back.
Using WPF inside your game window on the other hand is quite a different story. The empty keys guys are doing something along those lines.
Personally I don’t feel like WPF is the right technology for game UI’s. In MonoGame.Extended we are working on something similar to the one found in LibGDX using scene graphs as the base. This makes it easier to create UI’s out of sprites and animations.
Microsoft buying Xamarin certainly feels like a good thing. My theory is that they’ll roll Xamarin tech into Visual Studio which should make things less expensive to get on platforms like Android and iOS. However, I think this is still a while away before it hits the market.
Yep. I’m aware of that. The code above was written before “hex” orientation was even a thing.
Couple of very interesting links you’ve given me. I’ll take a look.
(I was more planning to stick my game window inside my WPF app than the other way round)
I’m going to start up a fresh topic for any questions I have on getting started with Monogame.
Seems legit 
I prefer to go by my user-name, but I have been using monogame for some time now. Migrated from xna you might say.
I have no computer related education at all, so I’ve learned everything I know from my desk at home, but that works just fine for my needs, it seems…
So I make games as well as I can and strive for quality, but I am definately a USER-level-person of monogame. I have very little knowledge of how it all comes together, and what makes for a good library etc…
As a home-brew-programmer though, I have noticed the ‘grind’ in setting up tilemaps,and a scrollable viewport, menu navigation, user input, same old same old…
I’m just concerned extensions might be so difficult to use, for some reason. -I mean the methods and tools already in monogame are definately very generic. Thus the “from scratch” feeling for every game, building from the ground up…
Is it not more complicated to use more specialized libraries? -Like you have to comply with a certain set of overloads, or use very particular syntax, or accept return-data in a particular way…? and learning to understand new data types perhaps, if there are many of them…
Is it in fact so easy to use your extension, that learning it doesnt exceed the trouble saved
What level of developer is your target-group for this, I guess would be the QUESTION here…
Well from my POV, I hate re-inventing the wheel - particularly if someone has provided me with a nice round one . I’ve found the stuff in this library immediately usable because, primarily, it already includes stuff I was planning to write myself. There’s always a feeling of “not-invented-here” when using other people’s APIs but for me, the time-saving aspects outweigh that by a considerable margin. A cursory glance has provided me with event-driven input, Viewports and Tiled support built into the content pipeline (these were all on my need-to-do list)
At the end of day, it’s open source and you can modify it to your own tastes. I’m currently adding Hex map support to it for my own requirements - if it’s deemed a robust implementation no doubt it can be merged into the master development branch and offered to anyone else that needs it.
As for the target audience - if you’re using MonoGame, I see no reason why you wouldn’t also use this if it meets some of your needs.
Sounds convincing enough! Is there good documantation with examples of implementation? like the tile map wiht viewport stuff?
And is istallation nice and easy?
Hey @monopalle
Documentation comes in many forms. We’ve only just started building up a wiki which is a good place to start. However, we also have other forms of documentation. There’s a handful of demos built right into the github repo. The good thing about these is that they are live examples of the latest code and features so they don’t get out of date as easily.
You’re always welcome to ask questions in our various places including these forums, stack overflow, github issues and of course our live gitter chat.
Installation is intended to be as easy as possible. If you’re familiar with how NuGet packages work and you’re running the latest tech (Visual Studio 2015) everything should just work out of the box.
However, given that MonoGame 3.5 has just been released and we’ve recently updated our develop branch to work with it, I recommend building from source until our next official release.
Thank you! lots of info.
Now to find out, what is:
-github repo
-gitter chat
-nuget packages
also
-I’ve never built from source, and
-I use 2010 Express…
lol
Dude. Start by downloading VS2015 and your other problems will get a lot easier.
Look. I get it. There’s a learning curve with this stuff, but it’s all things you can figure out on the internet and they are good skills to have.
I actually just did a clean install of windows, and now would be a good time to switch…
I’ll look at vs 2015… And on my next project, ill try the extended library. Im sold on the idea.
hi, dylan and friends. sorry for my english.
…monogame.extended is awesome.
i was thinking to code ghost & goblins , amstrad cpc 8 bits version.
Your library with tiled support was my strengh to start writing.
The game is in early development too, in c# with visual studio 2015
you can see the first level (TILED) with movement here:
there in my youtube channel i have others remakes of amstrad games and some experiments, jaja.
i like monogame
i love monogame.extended.
i would like monogame with xamarin in project templates in visual studio free ;-DD
regards and thanks for your awesome and hard job, dylan.
adolfito.
Hi my name is Conor Stephens. I have been programming for the last 3 years and have wrote a couple of C++ games http://greencheesegames.com/ I have just fell in love with C# through Xamarin and I cannot wait to make cool games with Monogame and Monogame Extended.
The game is looking awesome.