I've been thinking about writing a blog post about the future of the MonoXna project, but I haven't gotten around to it... until now that is :)
MonoXna at the present time has only a couple of active developers which contribute on their spare time from computer science studies, and as a result things are moving kind of slow these days. I'm currently working on my master thesis, and that has to be my first priority until it is finished (hopefully in May next year). My thesis is related to game engine design, and I've been hoping to use MonoXna to proove my concepts, but in order for that to be possible the platform has to mature quite a lot.
MonoDevelop addin and the Content pipeline
I spent a couple of weeks since my last post working on the MonoDevelop addin which will give the IDE support for loading and building XNA projects. I feel this is the natural next step in the development of the MonoXna platform. This would make it possible to compile XNA games and game content using our own content pipeline implementation in a powerful and popular IDE. This would provide a highly usable environment for developing on alternative platforms, not to mention make the process of developing with MonoXna a whole lot easier, Hopefully this would also spark an increased interest for the project and eventually lead to an increase in manpower. I've submitted a patch to the MD develop mailing list which makes it possible (or at least easier) to implement the addin, but I haven't heard back yet..
3D support
While waiting I started to work on what most other developers are likely to feel more important than the MD addin and content pipeline support, 3d support. It's not that I don't see the benefit of getting 3d working at the present time, and I would certainly need it in order to use MonoXna for my thesis, but to me the content pipeline support would add more value.
I've implemented VertexBuffer and IndexBuffer using OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects which to me seems like the best option. The GetData methods haven't been finished yet though. I would like to test the SetData methods first, but due to some dependency issues on my Ubuntu 9.10 installation this is easier said than done.
Other
To finish up this blog post I would like to mention that the MonoXna Google Group has been cleaned up and is now ready for use. It would be nice if we could start using the list for our discussions related to the development of the platform. That way we can reach more people and build an archive of our discussions all at the same time :)
