Developing New Experiences

VST16 Coding 4 Fun: 8-bit Game Emulation in .NET

11/14/2023

4:15pm - 5:30pm

Level: Intermediate

Alex Thissen

Architect, Lead Developer, and Mentor

Retro gaming is coming to .NET. Did you know that it is really possible to emulate the game consoles from the eighties and nineties using the .NET Framework and cross-platform? You can use .NET Standard Libraries and MonoGame to develop an emulator to make your childhood computer games come to life on Windows 11, Linux and MacOS. This session will show you how game emulation works, how to program it in C# with Visual Studio 2022 or Visual Studio Code and create apps using MonoGame. With plenty of demos and nostalgia this session is a welcome break even if you do not intend to write an emulator of your own.

You will learn:

  • About building emulators in .NET and C# emulation strategies
  • Unit testing complex compute heavy processes
  • About creating a game UI using MonoGame