I love xna/monogame for 2d. I use it for my own games and any type of apps that need 2d graphics. I tried 3d with xna/monogame and found it complex. I was wondering why people here use xna/monogame for 3d instead of commercial engines like unity or unreal?
Multiple reasons, maybe they want a lightweight engine. Maybe they like to experiment. Maybe they want some practice. Maybe they want to do something very specific and customized and another engine would just get in the way. In the end, doing complex 2D in monogame isnât that much easier than doing complex 3D.
Itâs more about upper limit and if you need to do something really modern, MG wont be able to support requirements no matter if 2D or 3D (after all, itâs pretty much the same).
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Multiple reasons, maybe they want a lightweight engine. Maybe they like to experiment. Maybe they want some practice. Maybe they want to do something very specific and customized and another engine would just get in the way. In the end, doing complex 2D in monogame isnât that much harder than doing complex 3D.
Itâs more about upper limit and if you need to do something really modern, MG wont be able to support requirements no matter if 2D or 3D (after all, itâs pretty much the same).
Adding to this, MonoGame is F R E E, for example: no licences required to pay.
Whereas certain engines want your first born child, and your kidney, and a leg⌠allegedly⌠[usually 30%, but this is changing lately]
Also, you should⌠I mean, please do consider contributing to MonoGame when you do make some good money.
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Unreal engine wants extremely low 5% revshare for cutting edge technology and only after you make the first 1M USD, it is also completely void for profit generated through Epic Game Store. 30% Parasite comes in form of some storefronts like Steam, not engines.
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Unreal does seem to be very good for indies. Not sure about Unity.
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Unreal is very good for both Indie and AAA and thatâs something, if your target audience is audience with HW that can run whatever you want to make in UE, itâs absolutely way to go, I canât imagine picking Unity for pretty much anything in 2021. If I want lightweight and I want simple c#, then I will pick MG, if I want big guns and cutting edge technology then UE it is.
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Game developers/programmers are not the same. There are roughly 3 groups (in my idea). For one who is strongly artist-minded, he may not love coding, he just masters it just as much as he has to. The other group is the hard coder, he prefers to code and to write more mature, optimized, professional code (these are usually engine writers). And thereâs a third group (I belong here too) that both parts are interested in on a certain level. I personally am very weak in math, so as long as Iâm working on a project that doesnât require realistic physics and is limited to a 2D world only, I definitely prefer monogame because I feel like Iâm putting more work into coding. , as if I were just clicking together in a finished engine.
For those who can code from strong math and at a lower level language, it is not a problem to develop a 3D game not only with MonoGame but also in plain C/C++.
The answer to your question, I think, is that for some, itâs not enough to have a good game, but they find more joy in being able to work harder for the result.
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Yup. Iâve gone back to Unreal. The project compile times for iterative changes arenât nearly as long as they used to be. Clean install on an SSD in an old machine 15 to 20 seconds for trivial changes. Shaders of course take more time but only once and on export/build.
#unreal
Game engines such as UnrealEngine and Stride(Xenko) boast âstate-of-the-art 3D technologyâ. This would be great for epic PC games.
However, my main platforms are Android and iOS. On these platforms, it is important to be able to handle old-fashioned technology, how easily and how stably.
Also, in mobile games, âlightnessâ is the most important thing. No one wants to play a game that requires tens of seconds of loading before the game starts.
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I have seen 3d games built off of MonoGame but usually a LOT of 3rd pary libraries are involved.
3d physics and maybe even some ECS are involved to make things more manageable.
The reason Iâm looking at other engines is 2 foldâŚ
- Need an account to use Unity. If you create a big project, think of how it might have to expand in 10+ years. In the almost 7 years Iâve used Unity now, Iâve seen it evolve into a corporate silicon valley machine.
If youâre making your BABY with this software, you have to think, what will it be like in 5, 10 years from now? Will you be able to just boot up Unity 2030, or will you have access to the Unity 2017 or something it was built in? - To fix bloating, I was starting to create an âEasy 3D Game Makerâ made with Unity, by creating an Easy 3D Game Maker in the Unity Editor, but having it be able to build into the game and work on the game in the game itself⌠It was making projects less than 100MB excluding that big bloated 30GB Library cache folderâŚbut it states in their terms of service that building can only be used for publishing, but not for creation of a product or game.
The biggest positive of Unity is the cross-platform, modern rendering, everything all in one place etcâŚ
The worst parts are bloat and being locked into their system. Itâs subtle too, you donât realize youâre being locked in until you are and itâs too late.
Picking Unity over Unreal Engine these days is borderline insane.
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Well both Unity and Unreal Engine suffer from the same bloating problems. 
When I try loading Unreal on my average worker desktop
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