How to write a game in C#?

Question

C++ / C#

Recently I came up with the idea of ​​a game with a friend. Since we both know C# at a normal level, we wanted to implement it in this language. But here there was one hitch. I don’t want to write from scratch, I need to take a game-oriented engine. The choice first fell on Microsoft XNA, but later they learned about MonoGame - the same thing, but cross-platform. Rummaging around on the Internet, it turned out that there are not so many developers on MonoGame - many, as I read, left for Unity3D. Now, when Unity 5 has become essentially free (all the necessary functions for an ordinary person are in the Personal (Free) version), I again pulled and remembered this idea. This time we are focusing on a promising and modern engine for something like an online MMORPG. Should I choose this (unwieldy for me) Unity over MonoGame, which I don't know much about?

Answer 1

Knowing Unity is definitely cooler than knowing MonoGame. Well, depending on what kind of game. I haven't tried MonoGame, but I really liked 2D in Unity.
Decided to make the first game - and immediately MMORPG? Are you sure you can? There after all it is necessary to write also the server. The unit, by the way, also has many ready-made features for working with the server.

Answer 2

We at the research institute have our own engine used for low-level, highly realistic rendering. Its main developer, a fan of domestic game development, writes a shooter based on it.
(Initially it was done in the image and likeness of XNA; you can read it here, the topic starter is the main developer: www.gamedev.ru/code/forum/?id=198301 )
I’ll add on my own that as a person who is far from gamedev, unfamiliar to me initially with shaders, meshes and other dishes of this cuisine, it was not difficult to learn how to write visualization packages on it for the needs of their scientific activities.

Answer 3

Given that a week of free engines has been announced, there are already plenty to choose from. UE4, Unity 5, Source 2. There is an alternative to XNA in the form of SharpDX, but the project is half dead, almost never developed.

Answer 4

XNA is dead, Microsoft no longer supports it. MonoGame is sparse, there is nothing there: no functionality, no documentation. Online MMORPG on Unity can be done, but not together on unfamiliar technology, try something simpler first.
Where to start learning Unity3D?