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Game UI layout in .NET is more painful than it needs to be. Gum is an open source layout tool built specifically for games that works with MonoGame, FlatRedBall, raylib, and more (including Skia-based environments like WPF and Avalonia).
Andy and Stacey sit down with Vic, the creator of Gum and FlatRedBall, to dig into what Gum is, what influenced its design, and how it handles real-world UI challenges. Then Vic walks through building a Cookie Clicker-style game live, showing how the Gum editor, layout engine, and MonoGame integration work together in practice.
**🚀 What You’ll Learn**
– What Gum is and where it fits in the .NET game dev ecosystem.
– How Gum’s layout engine handles flexible, resolution-independent UI.
– How to design UI visually in the Gum editor and wire it up in code.
– How Wrap and Clip work for common UI layout scenarios.
– How to display and interact with Gum UI in a MonoGame project.
⏱️Chapters
0:00 – Surprise! You have layout issues
0:31 – What we’re covering today
1:10 – Meet Vic from FlatRedBall
2:21 – What is Gum?
5:42 – What influenced Gum’s design
8:16 – Extensibility: how far does it go?
9:30 – Demo: building a Cookie Clicker-style game
18:43 – Designing layouts in Gum
31:35 – Wrap and Clip explained
34:45 – Displaying UI in MonoGame
36:29 – Hooking up game code
40:34 – The finished working game
44:33 – Final thoughts
🔗 Links & Resources
DOCUMENTATION
• Gum Docs: https://docs.flatredball.com/gum
• FlatRedBall Docs: https://docs.flatredball.com
TOOLS
• Gum (GitHub): https://github.com/vchelaru/Gum
• MonoGame: https://monogame.net
• FlatRedBall: https://flatredball.com
DEMO SOURCE CODE
• Cookie Clicker Demo: https://github.com/vchelaru/QuestToCompileGum
COMMUNITY
• FlatRedBall Discord: https://flatredball.com/chat/
• FlatRedBall on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/flatredball.bsky.social
📺 Watch the full series: aka.ms/Quest-to-Compile
#Gum, #GameDev, #DotNet, #MonoGame, #FlatRedBall, #IndieGameDev, #CSharp
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