FNA Template is a simple, cross-platform way to start new projects using FNA (http://fna-xna.github.io/), Ethan Lee's excellent reimplementation of Microsoft XNA Game Studio.
It has been tested with Visual Studio 2010 (on Windows) and Visual Studio Community 2017 (on macOS), and should work with other versions of Visual Studio, MonoDevelop, or directly with MSBuild.
It uses MonoGame's content pipeline for building assets (except shaders), but does not use MonoGame at runtime. It does NOT require XNA or XNA Game Studio.
FNA Template is released under the Microsoft Public License. The contents of the "`FNATemplate`" directory, excluding the Roboto font, are additionally placed in the public domain and licenced under CC0.
At this point you should be able to open and build the solution. On Windows you can now run and debug the FNATemplate project. On Linux/macOS there is an additional step to run it in the debugger (instructions below).
(Linux/macOS) Installing the DirectX SDK on Wine
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On Linux and macOS, the DirectX SDK is still required to compile shaders. On these platforms we use Wine to run the DirectX SDK tools.
To install Wine and winetricks on **Linux**, refer to your distribution's package database. Typically the package names will simply be `wine` and `winetricks`.
**Alternative method:** Instead of installing the DirectX SDK, you can place a copy of `fxc.exe` from the DirectX SDK in the `build/tools` directory. Then use `winetricks d3dcompiler_43` to install the required DLL from the DirectX redistributable (this is a smaller download than the SDK). See `BuildShaders.targets` for details. The same fallback also works on Windows.
You will need to repeat these steps for any new projects you create from the template (because they are per-user debugging settings, not part of the project file).
If the template crashes inside FNA with a DllNotFoundException, possibly as the inner exception of a TypeInitializationException, you forgot this step!
Use the CreateTemplate tool to create new versions of the FNATemplate project (NOTE: Including any local modifications). This is easier than copying the files and fixing up names and GUIDs by hand.
- Move that zip file to the project templates directory for your platform (eg: "C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#")
FNA Template uses fxc.exe (from the DirectX SDK) to build shaders, rather than using a content pipleine. This produces raw .fxb files rather than the usual .xnb content files.
To add .fx (shader source) files to your project: Add them and then set their Build Action to "Compile Shader" in the Properties window (typically the F4 key). (Set "Copy to Output Directory" to "Do not copy".)
To load a shader, read it directly from the .fxb file. For example:
`myEffect = new Effect(GraphicsDevice, File.ReadAllBytes(@"Effects/MyEffect.fxb"));`
An example shader is included in FNATemplate.
Note that if you are not creating your own shaders, you can safely delete the shader file and associated code from the template, and skip installing the DirectX SDK.
A simple content rebuild system is included in FNA Template. To use it, press **F5** while running a Debug build of the game. This will rebuild any modified content, and then call `UnloadContent` followed by `LoadContent`.
On non-Windows platforms, it requires that `msbuild` is in your `PATH`.
If you wish to use this in builds other than Debug builds, remove the relevant `#if DEBUG`s from the source code, and remove `Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'"` from `build/ContentRebuilder.targets`.
