MonoGame.Forms is the easiest way of integrating a MonoGame render window into your Windows Forms project. It should make your life much easier, when you want to create your own editor environment.

The following is required to successfully compile the solution:

• MonoGame 3.7.0.1114 (WindowsDX) [Precompiled + Included]
• Visual Studio 2015

Note: It's possible to use older MonoGame.Frameworks like the 3.6 iteration, but you will then lose the Mouse.GetState() functionallity. You would then rely on the WindowsForms Event System for mouse input, which can be slower in some cases.

First you need to make your MonoGame.Forms library ready to use. This step is very easy; you just need to compile the PCL from source and then just add the compiled DLL to your project.

↳ This is the prefered route, when you want to make you own custom changes to the library or extend it.

Another option is to install the library with the NuGet package manager:

↳ This is the prefered and easiest route to be automatically up to date.

Note: You need to set the .Net Framework version to 4.5.1 to install from NuGet!

Let's start using the MonoGame.Forms library by creating a simple draw window!

(it's assumed that you already have created a new Windows Forms project with the installed library)

1. Create a new class and name it DrawTest
2. Inherit from MonoGame.Forms.Controls.DrawWindow
3. Override the Initialize() method from DrawWindow
4. Override the Draw() method from DrawWindow
5. Save & Build your solution
6. Double Click on Form1.cs so that the Designer opens
7. Open the Toolbox
8. Drag & Drop the newly created control onto the Form1 control
9. Open the Properties of the new control and set the Dock option to Fill

This is how it should look now:

10. Now run the solution and see the classical CornflowerBlue-Screen you are (surly) familiar with! ;-)

And yes, as you can see: it is realy THAT EASY!

Now I bet you wonder how to draw something to this control, right? I bet you think that this is now the difficult part, right? Well... it's not!

More than that it's basically the same like you are used to do in the MonoGame.Framework. Just with a small difference (no it's still not difficult!)

In MonoGame you could draw someting to the screen with the SpriteBatch. In MonoGame.Forms you will do the same but you need to use the DrawService for this.

In the DrawWindow class this service is called Editor. To draw something to the SpriteBatch you need to do this:

Editor.spriteBatch.DrawString();

Do you see? Easy! :)

The DrawService class inherits from GFXService. It contains some MonoGame specific stuff like a ContentManager. Examine everything calmly. I just want to explain a little how MonoGame.Forms works under the hood!

To sum things up, let's take a look at the final DrawTest class:

using Microsoft.Xna.Framework;
using MonoGame.Forms.Controls;

namespace nugetTest
{
    public class DrawTest : DrawWindow
    {
        string WelcomeMessage = "Hello MonoGame.Forms!";

        protected override void Initialize()
        {
            base.Initialize();
        }

        protected override void Draw()
        {
            base.Draw();

            Editor.spriteBatch.Begin();

            Editor.spriteBatch.DrawString(Editor.Font, WelcomeMessage, new Vector2(
                (Editor.graphics.Viewport.Width / 2) - (Editor.Font.MeasureString(WelcomeMessage).X / 2),
                (Editor.graphics.Viewport.Height / 2) - (Editor.FontHeight / 2)),
                Color.White);

            Editor.spriteBatch.End();
        }
    }
}

Result:

It's pretty much like in the MonoGame.Framework!

As you might though right: Yes, this is also very easy. It's the same like for the DrawWindow. I just want to show you the only difference:

protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime)
{
    base.Update(gameTime);
}

The update method makes realtime interactions with your game- / editor environment possible. Even complex mechanics are doable.

I just want to refer to the nice MonoGame.Forms.Test-Project, which is part of this repo. Take a look at it and learn from its samples.

Here is a funny pic of one of the samples:

Please watch the following YouTube videos in 1080p @ 60fps to see what is possible with MonoGame.Forms!

Twitter: #RogueEngineEditor

GitHub: PenumbraPhysics.Editor

• nkast from the MonoGame community
• everyone else from the official MonoGame.Forms_Thread
• the awesome MonoGame community itself :)