Windows 8 XNA and MonoGame Part 2 Getting Started

Check out Bob Familiar's blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bobfamiliar/

Also, check out our Windows 8 sponsored section.

In part 1 of this series I gave you an overview of MonoGame, an open source cross platform implementation of the XNA namespace and class model and how you could use that to port you existing XNA code to Windows 8. In this article, I will show you how to get your development environment setup to support your porting effort.

Note: special thanks for Dean Ellis (dellis1972 ) who posted a video on YouTube outlining this process. I highly recommend that you view Dean’s video as well as follow the steps below.

After you install the GitHub Windows Client you will have 2 programs available, GitHub (GUI) and Git Shell. The Git Client is a Metro ‘Styled’ desktop application that provides a GUI interface. Git Shell is a PowerShell based command line interface to Git. We will use Git Shell for our purposes.

There are a lot of developers who contribute to MonoGame. The Windows 8 support is being developed by Tom Spillman and James Ford of Sickhead  Games as well as several other talented developers. We will be using their MonoGame Fork. In particular we will be using the develop3D branch. That is where the Windows 8 support is being submitted.

Note: If you would like to contribute to  the Windows8 implementation of MonoGame, contact Tom Spillman (requires codeplex account) 

Cloning the MonoGame Source Code

1. Run Git Shell
2. Navigate to the location on disk where you want to clone the source code (use CD command)
3. Type the following command to clone the Sickhead fork:
   
   
   

   git clone https://github.com/SickheadGames/MonoGame

4. Once that command completes, navigate to the MonoGame directory by typing:

   CD MonoGame

5. Now we will initialize the project submodules by typing the command:

   git submodule init

6. And then update the submodules

   git submodule update

Create and Deploy the Visual Studio MonoGame Project Template

1. Open an Explorer Window and navigate to the MonoGame Project directory, then to the templates folder:

   C:\Users\[you]\Documents\GitHub\MonoGame\ProjectTemplates\VisualStudio11.MonoGame.2.5\VS11MGWindowsMetroTemplate

2. Create a Zip of the all files in this directory
3. Copy the ZIP file to this directory

   C:\Users\[you]\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#

Testing your MonoGame Setup

1. Open Visual Studio 2012 and select New Project
2. Under Visual C# you should see the MonoGame project template listed. Select that and click OK.

   

3. Right click on your solution and add the MonoGame Framework Windows 8 Project. You will find the project file in this directory:

   C:\Users\[you]\Documents\GitHub\MonoGame\MonoGame.Framework

   The file is called:

   MonoGame.Framework.Windows8.sln

4. Add a reference to the MonoGame Framework in your game project by right clicking on references, select Add Reference. Under Projects choose the MonoGame Framework project and click OK

   

5. Compile and run the solution. You should get a cornflower blue screen (not a blue screen, a cornflower blue screen, very different!), the default XNA application.

Now you are ready to add your XNA graphic assets and code. In part 3 of this blog series I will cover the basic format of an XNA application and my code migration experience. – bob