Hi all, I'm looking to use monogame to make a 2D top-down tile-based RPG. Quick intro, I've had experience writing game logic and the like, but I've never actually built a game from scratch and that's what I'm intending to do. I'm not looking to make the next big game, this is instead a chance to learn and improve myself as a programmer, working towards my dream job of actually developing the next big game. I know that maybe I should be trying to learn 3D or something, but I've always enjoyed playing the indie 2D ORPGS. I spent a lot of time as a kid playing Mirage Source(http://www.key2heaven.net/ms) games and developing my own in my spare time. It was a great learning experience on general programming knowledge and also the horrid, deprecated language known as VB6. Since then, I've learned a fair amount of C# and learned my way decently around OOP.

After studying monogame for a while, I'm now semi-confident(i'm sure I'll be back with more questions) that I'm able to do the programming required to work on the project.

However, to the real problem, I've been looking at tutorials for XNA/MonoGame/etc. for developing 2D games, but a lot of them seem old and perhaps out of date. I've been able to develop small platformers and such with basic physics and collision detection, but when it comes to making something like a whole tile-based RPG, I'm not sure of how the architecture lays out. I know that it takes Rendering, I/O, Input Handling, etc. but I'm lost when it comes to putting it all together and I know that there are missing pieces. I have searched google to no avail for information on the problem and was wondering if you guys have any nifty sites or tutorials, or simply a flowchart that would explain the hierarchy/architecture/whatever-word-is-more-appropriate used in developing the engine?

Thanks in advance, and be gentle, I'm still a newbie.

Many of the MonoGame and XNA tutorials are old because the technology is old. I'm not saying you should change technologies, I'm just explaining why the tutorials were written so long ago. XNA stopped being supported quite some time ago, while MonoGame is an opensource port (and still has an active community I think). If you're going to start working with the XNA technology, I recommend starting with MonoGame. And any XNA tutorials you find should work with little or no changes on your part.

I share your interest in tile-based stuff and XNA and started down that path a while ago. Let me try and find some of my old links for you.

R B Whitaker's tutorials are really good:
http://rbwhitaker.wikidot.com/xna-tutorials
http://rbwhitaker.wikidot.com/monogame-tutorials

Some more awesome tutorials about tiles and other subjects:
http://xnaresources.com/default.asp?page=TUTORIALS

Code samples from xbox create:
http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/?contenttype=4&devarea=0&platform=0&sort=1

Great Hexagon Grids resource:
http://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/

These links were some of the best I found. The "xnaresources" site is really good for tile-based tutorials.

Enjoy the fruits of my googling over the years!
- Eck

Hey, thanks! I'd checked out R.B. Whitaker's monogame stuff, but I actually hadn't seen the XNA section, which seems to have a lot more content. I hadn't found XNAresources, so also thanks for that!