Here is an email I recently received from a satisfied ExEn user:

Believe me, comparing ExEn to a well crafted clock is neither an exaggeration nor a compliment. It’s a solid truth. I once again realized this fact. For a few days, I’ve been trying to port my new game to MonoGame. And I succeeded it at last. But the result is appalling. First of all, it crashes very frequently; font rendering is unacceptably bad, the application starts very slowly (I think because of the large XNB files). I’m not listing other problems that might be solved in the process. So I decided to stay with ExEn. MonoGame is not an option. If I can’t live with ExEn, I consider switching to Unity or to similar engines.

This puts a smile on my face

First of all, because ExEn has achieved its original goal: to be a replacement for MonoGame that developers would love using. The community entrusted me with over $10 000 of crowd-funding to make this happen. It happened. Thank you.

And also, because I appreciate the recognition of the craftsmanship that I put into my code. I don’t know much about clockmaking, but I imagine that master clocksmiths work to a similar philosophy: elegant, functional, precise, integral. It would be foolish to say that my code is absolutely these things – but when I fire up my IDE, this is always the aspiration.

~

The email goes on to say that the only problem with ExEn is the iPad 3 retina font bug. In an earlier blog post I described it as finally triggering my long-time-coming decision to retire from ExEn.

I am now happy to say that the iPad 3 font bug in ExEn is fixed!

This garbled text is no longer a problem. If you have an iPad game using ExEn up on the App Store, I recommend you update ASAP. You can get the latest version of ExEn from CodePlex.

This fix comes with a big thanks to Michael Falk, who originally reported the bug (in his game Ms. Particle-Man – show him your appreciation by buying it!) and who has been helping me narrow down the cause and the fix.

I should say that this fix is only a band-aid. Neither myself or Michael have an actual iPad 3, and the bug is apparently hardware-only. Not having an iPad 3 means that I haven’t been able to test this fix up to the standard that I usually keep for ExEn. But it has been verified to work by a few people.

My understanding of the issue is that there is an underlying problem with the way ExEn sets up its retina-display surface. If I somehow get my hands on an iPad 3, I will do a proper investigation and produce a proper bug fix.

I know this is not really what you might expect for someone who just retired from a project. But until MonoGame get their act together, I still feel a responsibility to ExEn users – like the gentleman who sent me that email – to keep their games running smoothly.