C# Game Libraries

[hallsofvallhalla]

Any suggestions? Is XNA still okay to use?

Suggestions of MonoGame will be slapped.

[vitinho444]

When I think C# I think XNA right away... From the games that pop out I think XNA looks good to make a game, but I never tried so can't give you honest opinion.

Good luck.

[Xaos]

Well didn't XNA support end? Doesn't that kind of limit its usefulness as tech expands/grows?

[Jackolantern]

Yeah, Microsoft has buried XNA. I assume you could still use it for PC development, but I am not sure if there was a separate part of the .NET runtime that handled it. If so, future .NET releases could remove that if they haven't already, leaving the games basically unplayable.

I am not really sure if that is the case, though.

[vitinho444]

Wasn't XNA famous and stuff? Why did they buried it?

[Jackolantern]

No idea. Microsoft's decisions don't always make sense.

[vitinho444]

I really don't know what's in the head of those big companies... They seem a bit stupid, but again the final decision should be the majority of like 91481289721951989 people's votes..

[Jackolantern]

Well, I guess I do know why XNA died: Windows Phone 7 games were criticized as being too slow and simple compared to Android and iOS; particularly 3D games. Their answer was to just drop down to C++ with DirectX for Windows Phone 8, so that is the game dev model that they support. And Windows Phone was a big part of XNA.

Next was Xbox 360. The Indie Games on Xbox Live did not go over as well as they had hoped, but it is really their fault. They were really strict about pricing of Indie games, requiring them to be something like $5 at the absolute most. So commercial indie studios said screw that, since the big, nice indie games tend to retail for about $15. So that combined with no in-game purchases and no ability for DLC for indie games meant that all you were really going to get were hobbyist games, which for the most part didn't go over very well with XBLA players who expected higher quality. "Indie" on XBLA became synonymous with "crap".

Next platform was Zune. Enough said there.

And the final platform was Windows. And this is the platform where it was needed the least, considering how many competing game dev platforms there are for PC. Which is kind of sad, because PC is a platform with enough power that the fact that XNA was managed didn't matter much. Whereas on mobile, which does not have the power and RAM to spare on managed 3D games, the PC can spare it.

[vitinho444]

It makes sense now

[Valkyrie]

NetGore is a C# ORPG engine. It's not in active development anymore but is user-supported and open source, they're a friendly bunch. Haven't used it except for a few years ago for a little 24hour challenge but it might have some good jumping off points.