xna 4.0 - Disposing only certain resources in XNA?

The ContentManager in XNA 4.0 only has one Unload() method that Unloads all Assets.

I want to have some "global" Assets that are always loaded, but then I want per-Level Assets which should be Unloaded when the level is changed.

Should I create a second Instance of the ContentManager as part of the Level.cs Class? Or should I use Game.Content and then call .Dispose on the Assets I load? Or should I create my own ContentManager on top of the ReadAsset function as outlined here?

Answer

Create a second instance of ContentManager.

You should never Dispose() of things you load from a ContentManager (using the default implementation), as these instances are shared and reused.

Creating your own version of ContentManager is kind of orthogonal. Either way you'll be creating a second instance of ContentManager (or a class derived from it). So if the existing implementation suits your purposes - then use it, otherwise override what you want to change.

Of course, if your game is relatively small - then it won't really matter if you just use the one ContentManager and not bother unloading content between levels.