These are probably a dumb questions, but I haven’t found very much new info about them.
I’m a bit confused about the new Pipeline Extension Project template included in Monogame 3.5. Most tutorials are pre-3.5, and mention the Monogame.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Portable NuGet package. Do I still need this? My importer seems to be working, as I was able to add the dll reference and get the project files to build, which makes me think I don’t need it.
Here’s my second question. The new project template comes with an Importer class and a Processor class. I’m assuming I have to create from scratch the Reader and Writer classes, is this correct? Is there any reason why there aren’t any templates for those?
As far as I am aware, the only difference is you don’t get the content pipeline builder tool with NUGET, other than that and the lack of templates preinstalled I guess…
You don’t need the .Portable dll, the normal one will do fine
You don’t have to implement a reader and writer. MonoGame can fall back to a reflection-based reader and writer. These don’t handle everything correctly though and performance will be worse than when you write your own. For simple types there’s no harm in using the reflection reader/writer though.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know what “reflection-based reader and writer” means, but it seems to be working for me right now, so I’ll just go with that. My custom content is really light anyway, and performance is not an issue right now.
