4 ms·

If you are wondering about the capabilities, Stardew Valley was made in MonoGame. I wonder how it compares, if at all, with Godot nowadays.

by oAlbe 7mo ago

charcircuit 7mo ago
What are the capabilities needed for Stardew Valley? Drawing 2d sprites. Playing audio? That's a pretty low bar to reach. MonoGame doesn't even support animated sprites. You have to build support for them yourself. That sounds like a pretty low bar.
dismalaf 7mo ago
> wonder how it compares, if at all, with Godot nowadays. It doesn't. Godot is a 3D game engine and editor. Monogame is more like SDL or Raylib: just a library to make writing games from scratch easier.
anonymous908213 7mo ago
There isn't really a comparison to be made between MonoGame and Godot. MonoGame is for programmers. Godot is for people who want to make games but don't care for programming and would rather use a GUI for development. Godot locks you into the Godot way of doing things. MonoGame is a thin cross-platform abstraction over platform APIs for sprite rendering, audio playback, input, and font, leaving you to build your game engine yourself however you like. I think the greatest flaw in MonoGame, however, is that their cross-platform abstraction notably excludes web. Given how relatively thin MonoGame is, I think you're better off building your own framework that supports compiling to WASM as well, if you have any experience as a developer already. It is what I did and took some effort but was pretty well doable and didn't take all that long, and the payoff of being able to share your games instantly in the browser for anyone to play with just a click of a link is so worth it. The other notable flaw in MonoGame is that the content pipeline thing it has is horrendous. When I tried it, I ended up simply bypassing using that pipeline at all. They are currently in the process of reworking it completely, I believe, but I'm not sure when that's supposed to release. Maybe the value in MonoGame is that it does support consoles, though; I have no idea what developing for console is like, and only target web/computer/phone OS platforms myself.
- PretzelPirate 7mo ago
  > Godot is for people who want to make games but don't care for programming and would rather use a GUI for development. You can write a lot of code when using Godot and mix that with capabilities provided by their editor. You never have to use editor features, but can use them to avoid wasting time reinventing the wheel. Your comment is like saying that game engines are used by people who don't care for programming and would rather make a call to handle physics interactions.
  - anonymous908213 7mo ago
    > wasting time reinventing the wheel It's always funny to me that this metaphor is used to indicate a bad thing, but re-inventing the wheel is actually very valuable. Note that our vehicles do not run on stone wheels. Thank goodness we kept re-inventing wheels that were more suitable for our specific use cases! This metaphor is, therefore, exactly apt for describing off-the-shelf game engines. All of the big open game engines are heavy and make a ton of decisions for you that will not be optimal for your specific game, because they make generalized decisions necessary to support all kinds of games. This does save you time, and you can absolutely make games that are good enough with them, but it's ridiculous to me to describe making your own engine as wasting time. It's spending time to gain a benefit, which is a trade-off that is worth it for some and not necessary for others.
    - da_chicken 7mo ago
      Are you going writing your own programming language as well? Can we call it Tolkien? Because you're making a game like J.R.R. Tolkien wrote books, and there's a reason nobody writes books the way he wrote his. Writing your own engine is great if you want to learn how to write a game engine. Knowing how to make a game engine can be helpful when making a game, but it's not necessary to make a game. Further, if you want to learn how to make a game, it might be more worth your time to simply use an engine that already does all the things you need. That way your time and energy can be focused on making the game, which is what your goal is. Being condescending or dismissive of tools that do everything your tools you're going out of your way to construct will have to do is... weird logic. Because the same argument goes all the way down. Why wouldn't you make your own text editor? Why wouldn't you make your own compiler? Why wouldn't you make your own kernel? Why wouldn't you make your own architecture? "If you wish to make a pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." The answer is: because we're human beings with limited lifespans. We must stand on the shoulders of giants to see further.
raincole 7mo ago
MonoGame is more like a library than a game engine (a very loaded term nowadays). It's too different from Godot to make a comparison.
- EQmWgw87pw 7mo ago
  You can compare the idea of trying to make a game with a framework versus an engine rather than compare MonoGame and Godot directly.
- rienbdj 7mo ago
  Yep. MonoGame is closer to RayLib than Godot. In fact RayLib has C# bindings so worth considering these two.
chii 7mo ago
Monogames is closer to something like SDL, or Raylib, than Godot (which is more like unity/unreal engine, but thinner and lighter weight). They exist at different abstraction layers, so not really directly comparable.

If you are wondering about the capabilities, Stardew Valley was made in MonoGame. I wonder how it compares, if at all, with Godot nowadays.

by oAlbe 7mo ago

If you are wondering about the capabilities, Stardew Valley was made in MonoGame. I wonder how it compares, if at all, with Godot nowadays.

charcircuit 7mo ago

What are the capabilities needed for Stardew Valley? Drawing 2d sprites. Playing audio? That's a pretty low bar to reach. MonoGame doesn't even support animated sprites. You have to build support for them yourself. That sounds like a pretty low bar.

dismalaf 7mo ago

> wonder how it compares, if at all, with Godot nowadays. It doesn't. Godot is a 3D game engine and editor. Monogame is more like SDL or Raylib: just a library to make writing games from scratch easier.

anonymous908213 7mo ago

There isn't really a comparison to be made between MonoGame and Godot. MonoGame is for programmers. Godot is for people who want to make games but don't care for programming and would rather use a GUI for development. Godot locks you into the Godot way of doing things. MonoGame is a thin cross-platform abstraction over platform APIs for sprite rendering, audio playback, input, and font, leaving you to build your game engine yourself however you like. I think the greatest flaw in MonoGame, however, is that their cross-platform abstraction notably excludes web. Given how relatively thin MonoGame is, I think you're better off building your own framework that supports compiling to WASM as well, if you have any experience as a developer already. It is what I did and took some effort but was pretty well doable and didn't take all that long, and the payoff of being able to share your games instantly in the browser for anyone to play with just a click of a link is so worth it. The other notable flaw in MonoGame is that the content pipeline thing it has is horrendous. When I tried it, I ended up simply bypassing using that pipeline at all. They are currently in the process of reworking it completely, I believe, but I'm not sure when that's supposed to release. Maybe the value in MonoGame is that it does support consoles, though; I have no idea what developing for console is like, and only target web/computer/phone OS platforms myself.

PretzelPirate 7mo ago
> Godot is for people who want to make games but don't care for programming and would rather use a GUI for development. You can write a lot of code when using Godot and mix that with capabilities provided by their editor. You never have to use editor features, but can use them to avoid wasting time reinventing the wheel. Your comment is like saying that game engines are used by people who don't care for programming and would rather make a call to handle physics interactions.
- anonymous908213 7mo ago
  > wasting time reinventing the wheel It's always funny to me that this metaphor is used to indicate a bad thing, but re-inventing the wheel is actually very valuable. Note that our vehicles do not run on stone wheels. Thank goodness we kept re-inventing wheels that were more suitable for our specific use cases! This metaphor is, therefore, exactly apt for describing off-the-shelf game engines. All of the big open game engines are heavy and make a ton of decisions for you that will not be optimal for your specific game, because they make generalized decisions necessary to support all kinds of games. This does save you time, and you can absolutely make games that are good enough with them, but it's ridiculous to me to describe making your own engine as wasting time. It's spending time to gain a benefit, which is a trade-off that is worth it for some and not necessary for others.
  - da_chicken 7mo ago
    Are you going writing your own programming language as well? Can we call it Tolkien? Because you're making a game like J.R.R. Tolkien wrote books, and there's a reason nobody writes books the way he wrote his. Writing your own engine is great if you want to learn how to write a game engine. Knowing how to make a game engine can be helpful when making a game, but it's not necessary to make a game. Further, if you want to learn how to make a game, it might be more worth your time to simply use an engine that already does all the things you need. That way your time and energy can be focused on making the game, which is what your goal is. Being condescending or dismissive of tools that do everything your tools you're going out of your way to construct will have to do is... weird logic. Because the same argument goes all the way down. Why wouldn't you make your own text editor? Why wouldn't you make your own compiler? Why wouldn't you make your own kernel? Why wouldn't you make your own architecture? "If you wish to make a pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." The answer is: because we're human beings with limited lifespans. We must stand on the shoulders of giants to see further.

raincole 7mo ago

MonoGame is more like a library than a game engine (a very loaded term nowadays). It's too different from Godot to make a comparison.

EQmWgw87pw 7mo ago
You can compare the idea of trying to make a game with a framework versus an engine rather than compare MonoGame and Godot directly.
rienbdj 7mo ago
Yep. MonoGame is closer to RayLib than Godot. In fact RayLib has C# bindings so worth considering these two.

chii 7mo ago

Monogames is closer to something like SDL, or Raylib, than Godot (which is more like unity/unreal engine, but thinner and lighter weight). They exist at different abstraction layers, so not really directly comparable.