Board Meeting Minutes

By: MonoGame Foundation Mar 14, 2024
foundation

Attendee's

  • Dean Ellis - President
  • Dominique Louis - Treasurer
  • Simon Jackson - Corporate Secretary
  • Tom Spilman - Banking Matters
  • Marko Jeremic - Board Chairman
  • Thomas Altenburger - Board Member

Agenda

  • 3.8.2 release
  • Documentation update
  • Fixing macOS experience
  • Fixing font rendering regression that 3.8.1 introduced
  • Updating SDL2
  • Bounties

Outcomes

Bounties, Bounties, Bounties, this is the core focus for the team, making big plans and projects for contributors to pick up and enable the Foundation to distribute the funds donated, as well as further accelerating documentation and samples.

Here is a summary of the outcomes from March's meeting:

  • Talk to accelerate the update of the NuGet templates, as they are not functional for iOS/Android as .NET 6 templates. Templates to be refreshed for the 3.8.2 release.
  • Work is needed to improve the Mac build experience, efforts are underway to address the Mac build pipeline experience.
  • Issue being tracked for Mac build issues - macOS and Linux setup experience · Issue #8124 · MonoGame/MonoGame (github.com)
  • Only blocker for 3.8.2 release are the Mac & Content pipeline updates.
  • Font Rendering issues also high priority for 3.8.2.
  • Considering updates SDL2 for 3.8.2, automation to be updated to improve the workflow.
  • NativeAoT bounty had no applicants, so this bounty will be awarded to Tom Spillman, on top of the new Native Framework.
  • The DX12 bounty has a single applicant, process underway to award them the bounty and sign NDA's so that work can commence.
  • Issue clean-up is progressing, feedback support from community required to help identify non-issues.
  • The Content Pipeline update is mostly complete, so no bounty required. Targeting 3.8.2.

MWOAR Bounties

All bounties are still tracked primarily from the Bounties GitHub issue. Each bounty has its own issue to keep communication open (subject to NDA requirements), including:

As you can see, the community are jumping in where they can to help the Foundation, the awards are more of a recognition for the effort and enabling developers to commit dedicated time to the contributions. On those items still open, have a read of the bounty and see if YOU can help out.

The following bounties are currently still being written up:

  • A more modern getting started (installation process, content pipeline and 1st simple game)
  • A cross platform MonoGame setup, including the content pipeline
  • A sample endless runner game in 2D.
  • A multi-player sample game.
  • A 3D first person game.
  • A 3D 3rd person game.

These are expected to be well-rounded tutorials and samples which should be re-usable as templates for developers to pick up and extend, each sample should also include well written docs for how they were put together and the the extra mile, (although optional) a good video rundown of the content.

The ultimate aim is that these should both "Stand out" and also help accelerate developers goals to build their own projects.

A new "Sample Template" is in its final review to be used as the basis for the expected level of quality, based on an old XNA favorite.

A Note about use of dependencies for samples/tutorials

Other than all assets MUST be freely contributed and re-distributable, as well as dependencies, there are no limits or restrictions on how these samples are built. If using public libraries helps to accelerate the project, this is allowed (we are NOT limiting to ONLY MonoGame Framework code).

There must simply be no licensing restriction for anyone to be able to take the sample forward, even commercially.

Documentation, Documentation, Documentation....

(needs Steve Ballmer gif)

Documentation is a HUGE factor for the future of MonoGame, leading up to the formation of a MonoGame University style of education that developers can undertake.

  • The current docs are being polished.
  • Existing XNA documentation is being migrated, freshened up and made presentable.
  • New Samples, to be used as the basis for all future samples are being published (keep an eye on the MonoGame.Samples repository)

We encourage everyone to get involved and share their learnings, or even submit suggestions to a Project board that one of our members setup to track requests, everyone's voice should be heard and we welcome everyone to join in.

Contributions are welcome through:

  • Code.
  • Help in the Community discord and beyond (we also love blog posts).
  • Patreon, several tiers are available.
  • Paypal.
  • The MonoGame store (coming soon) with MonoGame branded gear and merch.