MonoGame release 3.8.2

By: MonoGame Foundation Aug 16, 2024
releases, foundation

The first of many

Celebration

MonoGame 3.8.2 has been officially released

We are proud to announce the official release of MonoGame 3.8.2, the first of many releases we hope to start shipping more regularly with the formation of the MonoGame Foundation.

In memoriam for Bill Reiss

Due to the passing of a dear friend to MonoGame Bill Reiss, the 3.8.2 release commemorates his achievements and past contributions. His lifelong dedication to promoting open-source game development and championing technology education will be long remembered.

We thank you Bill for everything you have given!

This is mainly a maintenance release including all the fixes and changes since the last release (over 300 commits), this includes:

  • Update to .NET 8, including the MGCB tool (now a local tool rather than global, allowing different projects to use different versions)
  • Removal of Windows UWP due to Microsoft shutting support for it (you can still use UWP if you remain on 3.8.1)
  • Updated to building dependencies to improve support.
  • New documentation, including the continuing migration of the older XNA documentation.
  • A MASSIVE clean-up of the MonoGame XML documentation, big shout out to (@AristurtleDev and his team).
  • Build system improvements (mainly a MonoGame building backend thing).
  • Various bugfixes to so many areas of the Framework.

Full Change notes available

As always the more detailed changes can be found in the change log - Coming soon!

To start using this release, please refer to the getting started documentation.

For existing MG users please read the what's new section in the documentation, other than .NET 8 support, there should be no immediate migration issues that we are aware of.

Breaking changes

The situation for Mac/Linux users in 3.8.2 has not changed and you still need to use the alternate steps for building content. However, the a fast following release will include a major update for Mac / Linux to make the process a lot simpler and easier to use.

See this article for more info.

Most notable changes

There is a lot to take in, even with a maintenance release like this (from the list above), but these are the key points:

Support for .NET 8 projects

As MonoGame and the MGCB tool are now built natively with .NET 8, all the NEW project templates have also been updated to .NET 8. The end-to-end update will see performance improvements with the framework as well as the other language benefits from C# 12.

The MGCB tool is now Local

Rather than being installed as a Global tool which affected all projects using MonoGame, with 3.8.2, the MGCB tool is now local, meaning each project can use and manage its own dependencies with the MGCB tool. This has been possible for a while, but it is now official with 3.8.2.

New release schedule

Release Schedule

One of the promises we made was to accelerate both the development and shipping of releases and while we have been hard at work forming Bounties, pushing hard to get the Documentation updated and expanded, we admittedly have fallen short on getting more releases out. THAT IS ALL ABOUT TO CHANGE

As has been hinted, following the shipping of the backlog that has built up in the development branch over the last 2 years (the 3.8.2 release), we are officially committing to the following:

  • New preview releases will be available via NuGet as new features become available.

    This will include all committed functionality in the develop branch that passes base testing, ideally on a Bi-Monthly schedule (approximately every two months), assuming there are changes to push.

  • New full release every 6 months (or sooner if required).

    This will encompass a fully tested release shipped with the features built up over that time.

Both schedules are subject to change to meet the demands of the community, if there is a demand to ship sooner we will.

MonoGame community proud

We are all supremely proud of the community that envelopes the MonoGame Framework and welcome everyone to contribute however they can to make this the best open-source framework out there for shipping games.

Keep an eye out for New Bounties as we develop them and get involved if you can, and feel free to Let us know if you feel we can do better or if you have a suggestion, either:

Support

  • Financially - several tiers and options available for Github, PayPal and Patreon.
  • The MonoGame Store - MonoGame branded gear and merchandise.

Get Involved

  • Code, we accept Pull Requests.
  • Help in the Community discord and beyond (we also love blog posts).
  • Bounties, Fix bugs and add features faster as well as get paid for your work :)

Onwards and Upwards

The MonoGame Foundation team