A Gentle Intro To Game Development Using C# and MonoGame

Well implemented and reasonably structured course. Being not the greatest novice when it comes to C# (and programming overall) and neither to Game Development (mainly done in Unity so far) I didn’t expect to be facing an abundance of new stuff to learn, I mainly got the course because I wanted to familiarize myself with the MonoGame Framework anyway. Yet I have to say even if the Game Development principles taught aren’t completely new to me, Chalie’s approach helped me to grasp one or another concept better. Generally, this is a great course to have in your Udemy Repository loose and engaging approach by a likable and knowledgeable instructor. Thanks, Charlie!

so far but it is really early in the course

I liked this course, pretty much what it says: a gentle intro to game development. Author covers all the basics, mostly coordinates/collision detection/animation/scrolling/input processing in a great detail (maybe even excessive for more experienced people). What I personally missed though, having some professional experience in C#, is better usage of the language and IDE features. I understand this is meant for beginners, and the central topic is the game development, so it’s only distracting to spend time on pure programming, but I think it would be also useful to teach appropriate style along with the topic. For me, it was a bit painful to see magic numbers everywhere (instead of calculated constants), encounter enums for the game states only in the very end (even later after the states were introduced), very little and limited usage of classes (and no sensible explanation of difference between fields and properties, for example). Most of the time, it’s plain straight procedural programming, which might become bulky to work with, should your game be even slightly more complex than those covered in this course. However, I think it’s a deliberate choice of the author to demonstrate game development principles in this way (it’s clear that the author himself knows C# and OOP well enough). It’s understandable, and it allows to see the real result, the game to play, even faster, as you code it. In the end, I even liked that the course started with Windows Forms and not the MonoGame first, because it allows to feel that you can code games with bare hands if you want it, and better realize what a game engine may help you with. All in all, it’s a great introduction for people who know basics of C# and have never developed any games. If you know C# well but is also new to a game development, this is still a good start, just could be too simple here and there. In case you plan to become a game developer that meets an industry standards, of course (after taking this introduction) you’ll also need to learn more about MonoGame features (like content management or multi platform solutions) and game design patterns elsewhere. But this is a nice place to start, overall, and I’m glad that I’ve sat through it.

cool

So far the course is more about building Windows Forms app, rather than anything MonoGame related. It’s basically what I learned when I just learned to write C#, but without the explanation of the various programming concepts that you need to know.