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

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:

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);

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:

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");