Installing Penumbra

[KristopherJR]

Hi,

I'm having some issues getting Penumbra into my project, I'm hoping to use it for lighting in my 2D game. So I've went into Visual Studio 2019 and used the NuGet Package Manager Console to install Penumbra ("Package-Install MonoGame.Penumbra.WindowsDX")

This installed without any issues in the CLI and when I check the "packages.config" file I can see:
package id="MonoGame.Penumbra.WindowsDX" version="2.1.0" targetFramework="net45"

The issue is when I go into my main .cs file and type "using Penumbra;" I just get a namespace assembly reference error. I'm sure this is an easy fix but I'm not experienced with NuGet and using other peoples packages.

Can anyone give me a little more insight on how to properly install Penumbra and get it working in my project?

Thanks

[discosultan]

Hi @KristopherJR , what type of a MonoGame template did you use to create your project? And are you using the latest version of MonoGame?

[KristopherJR]

Hey @discosultan, I think it was a ‘Monogame WindowsGL Project'. The version from what I can see is '3.8.0.1641'. I actually managed to get past this particular bug, I just had to add a reference to the .dll file in the VS project. I've hit another wall though and I'm guessing it's to do with the version of MonoGame I'm running, but maybe you know otherwise? Here's the screenshot:

everything builds/compiles fine but I get that error at runtime.

Cheers

[discosultan]

Hey @KristopherJR

When creating a MonoGame DesktopGL project, make sure to also use the DesktopGL version of Penumbra (https://www.nuget.org/packages/MonoGame.Penumbra.DesktopGL/). When creating a MonoGame WindowsDX project, make sure to use the WindowsDX version of Penumbra (https://www.nuget.org/packages/MonoGame.Penumbra.WindowsDX/). They use different graphics backends and need to be compatible with each other.

Next, I would ensure that you use the latest versions of everything, but that looks to be already the case (MonoGame 3.8 and Penumbra 2.1).

[KristopherJR]

Hi @discosultan

So I've tried all of those steps and I'm still getting the runtime error. I don't suppose you could walk me through the installation steps from creating a brand new VS MonoGame project to installing Penumbra just in bullet points?

So far I'm creating the MonoGame WindowsDX project from scratch, then installing Penumbra with NuGet and including it with "using penumbra;" everything compiles fine but I still get that runtime error. Once I comment out the Penumbra code in Game1, the application runs fine.

Thanks!

[discosultan]

Hey @KristopherJR

I just tested locally and the scenario you described worked without issues (latest VS 2019 16.11.5, latest MonoGame 3.8.0, latest Penumbra 2.1.0). Most probably it's some missing component on your machine. What you can do:

1. Make sure you have the DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010) installed. This is required to compile shaders on WindowsDX.
2. If the previous step doesn't solve the problem, you can try cloning the Penumbra repository and see if you can build either the WindowsDX or DesktopGL solutions.
3. If you were able to build the WindowsDX solution from step nr 2, check the Samples folder for various example games using Penumbra to figure out if it might've been bad usage of Penumbra.

One last thing that popped to mind: if your project just happens to be also named Penumbra, I think Visual Studio won't be able to use the actual Penumbra library. Though that's probably not the case, as your project was named Panacea based on the screenshot above.