Welcome to the home of my MonoGame tutorial series: A Summoner’s Tale! This series builds on the spirit of my Shadow Monsters tutorials—with a fresh twist, powered by the cutting-edge Visual Studio 2022 and MonoGame 3.8.1.
Set in a richly imagined fantasy world, A Summoner’s Tale invites you into an epic saga where a select few possess the extraordinary ability to summon powerful monsters from a mysterious realm known as the shadow plane. In this world, summoned creatures are not mere tools—they are formidable combatants locked in battles of strategy, magic, and sheer will.
Ten years ago, an unexplainable disruption shattered the delicate balance between light and darkness. Without warning, shadow monsters started materializing on their own, upending the order of the realm. In the wake of this chaos, the protagonist’s father, alongside five other brave summoners, embarked on a perilous quest to uncover the source of this eerie phenomenon. They set out in search of answers and, like whispers on the wind, vanished without a trace.
Now, the mantle falls to the protagonist. With the echoes of past mysteries reverberating through the land, they must delve into the shadows to solve the enigma of the rogue monsters—and perhaps, unravel the mystery surrounding their father’s disappearance.
Prepare to explore the intertwined realms of innovative game development and immersive storytelling, where every line of code and every narrative twist illuminates a world teetering between chaos and order.
The complete source code for the tutorial series is available on GitHub at the following link.
https://github.com/Synammon/SummonersTale-eBook
Tutorials
Chapter One – Getting Started
In this chapter I introduce the MonoGame Framework, why it is good framework and a bit about its history. Like building a house, software needs a strong foundation. I create the base projects and add classes for managing game state and monitoring frames per second.
Chapter Two – Tile Engine
There are some visual results in this chapter as I implement the tile engine. A tile engine is used to break up large maps into smaller pieces, or tiles. It is an integral part of this game, so I am adding it early.
Chapter Three – Pulling It All Together
The purpose of this chapter is to pull together everything from the previous two chapters into a single cohesive unit. I also introduce a basic version my input manager, Xin, that was written for the XNA Framework and has been improved upon over the years.
Chapter Four – Graphical User Interface
As development progresses, one of the next major features will be the map editor, which will allow players and designers to create and modify game environments with ease. To ensure maximum accessibility and flexibility, I want to build this editor as a cross-platform tool, meaning it must be fully compatible with multiple operating systems, rather than being restricted to Windows.