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Mono,Tao,SDLSharp,XNA?

Started by Bluefirehawk Jan 10, 2013 at 2:13 PM 5 replies 2.4k views

Original Post

Jan 10, 2013 at 2:13 PM

Hi guys

I am switching from C++ to C# and find the available API wrappers strangely confusing and I hope you can help me with the decisions.

My main worry is that I come out with a program that runs windows only and that's why I was looking at mono. There is a OpenGL binding for mono (Tao) but the last release seemed to be from 2005 (http://www.mono-project.com/Tao). Is there a more recent release or are there more up to date libraries? Are there any other useful libraries for mono?
I don't know, I have a hard time finding useful information anything mono related...

Just out of curiosity, there is monogame which I understood is the platform specific implementation of the XNA API, does monogame work well in reality?

FalconDragoon

Jan 10, 2013 at 5:11 PM

I've heard some generally positive things about Monogame though I've not used it myself. Give it a shot and see what you think.

Xanather

Jan 10, 2013 at 5:14 PM

Ive only ported one VERY SMALL XNA game from PC to Mac using MonoGame, but it worked perfectly, no code changes needed, solid 60 fps.

MonoGame basically re-implements almost all of the XNA classes that's why its so easy to port.

Many released games use monogame, look on their new website http://www.monogame.net/showcase

edit: Ive been looking closely at the project and their plans are for a solid 3D support on all platforms first (which is almost there I think) and then later development of a DirectX11 variant of MonoGame for windows desktop (which would be awesome ).

Bluefirehawk

Jan 10, 2013 at 7:03 PM

Alright, sounds like I am going to use XNA, whats about the OpenGL API? Tao seems awfully old.

NickGravelyn

Jan 10, 2013 at 7:34 PM

If you want to go OpenGL use OpenTK. It's a generally solid wrapper, though you'll find it's much lower level than XNA.

kop0113

Jan 10, 2013 at 9:51 PM

Yes, OpenTK is pretty good, it wraps OpenGL, OpenAL (and some other Open* libraries).

MonoGame (Open-source XNA uses it underneath) and the best thing about it is that the OpenTK.dll will work on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD etc... without any recompiling. (It just loads in the correct native library such as libGL.so etc...).

Learning OpenTK is also useful because it is sufficiently close to it's native counter-parts that when you do decide to give C++ another chance, you will still be familiar with their APIs. Though, if the APIs are the reason why you are switching to C# in the first place, then you might not find OpenTK much easier afterall :S.

Bluefirehawk

Jan 11, 2013 at 9:38 AM

It was the toolchains that frustrated the hell out of me (CMake and friends). I am actually very fond of C++ and the cool stuff they did with the 2011 standard. I definitely will have a look at OpenTK, thank you, I got all what I need.

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