XNAssets

XNAssets is MonoGame/FNA asset management library that - unlike MonoGame Content Pipeline - loads raw assets.

Adding Reference

There are two ways of referencing XNAssets in the project:

1. Through nuget(works only for MonoGame): https://www.nuget.org/packages/xnassets

2. As repo(works for both MonoGame and FNA):

   a. Clone this repo.

   b. Execute git submodule update --init --recursive within the folder the repo was cloned to.

   c. Add src/XNAssets.MonoGame.csproj or src/XNAssets.FNA.csproj to the solution.

   • If FNA is used, then the folder structure is expected to be following:

Creating AssetManager

In order to create AssetManager two parameters must be passed to its constructor: GraphicsDevice and IAssetResolver. Latter is simple interface that opens asset stream by its name.

XNAAssets provides 3 implementation of IAssetResolver:

• FileAssetResolver that opens Stream using File.OpenRead. Sample AssetManager creation code:

    FileAssetResolver assetResolver = new FileAssetResolver(Path.Combine(PathUtils.ExecutingAssemblyDirectory, "Assets"));
    AssetManager assetManager = new AssetManager(GraphicsDevice, assetResolver);

• ResourceAssetResolver that opens Stream using Assembly.GetManifestResourceStream. Sample AssetManager creation code:

    ResourceAssetResolver assetResolver = new ResourceAssetResolver(typeof(MyGame).Assembly, "Resources.");
    AssetManager assetManager = new AssetManager(GraphicsDevice, assetResolver);

• TitleContainerAssetResolver that opens Stream using TitleContainer.OpenStream. Sample AssetManager creation code:

    TitleContainerAssetResolver assetResolver = new TitleContainerAssetResolver("Assets");
    AssetManager assetManager = new AssetManager(GraphicsDevice, assetResolver);

Loading Assets

After AssetManager is created, it could be used following way to load SpriteFont:

    SpriteFont font = assetManager.Load<SpriteFont>("fonts/arial64.fnt");

Or following way to load Texture2D:

    Texture2D texture = assetManager.Load<Texture2D>("images/LogoOnly_64px.png");

XNAssets allows to load following asset types out of the box:

Type	AssetLoader Type	Description
Texture2D	Texture2DLoader	Texture in BMP, TGA, PNG, JPG, GIF or PSD format. Alpha is being premultiplied after the loading
SpriteFont	SpriteFontLoader	Font in AngelCode's BMFont .fnt format
string	StringLoader	Loads any resource as string
SoundEffect	SoundEffectLoader	SoundEffect in WAV format

Custom Asset Types

It is possible to make XNAssets use custom asset loaders by marking custom types with attribute AssetLoaderAttribute.

I.e. following code makes it so UserProfile class will be loaded by UserProfileLoader:

    [AssetLoader(typeof(UserProfileLoader))]
    public class UserProfile
    {
        public string Name;
        public int Score;
    }

Now let's say that we store user profiles as xml files that look like following:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
    <UserProfile>
      <Name>XNAssets</Name>
      <Score>10000</Score>
    </UserProfile>

Then UserProfileLoader class should look like this:

	internal class UserProfileLoader : IAssetLoader<UserProfile>
	{
		public UserProfile Load(AssetLoaderContext context, string assetName)
		{
			var data = context.Load<string>(assetName);

			var xDoc = XDocument.Parse(data);

			var result = new UserProfile
			{
				Name = xDoc.Root.Element("Name").Value,
				Score = int.Parse(xDoc.Root.Element("Score").Value)
			};

			return result;
		}
	}

Now it should be possible to load user profile with following code:

  UserProfile userProfile = assetManager.Load<UserProfile>("profile.xml");