uvic startup slam september 2014 (tinymob games)
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
Squeezing a Big Game into a Small Device
Chris Hoefgen, Founder and CTOBen Hesketh, Senior Developer
Tony Christney, Senior Developer
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
About TinyMob
• Founded in 2013
• A game studio focusing on mid-core strategy games
• Our lead game is Tiny Realms
• Tech Stack: Unity3d, C#, Java, Redis, DynamoDB & AWS
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
Game Dev on mobile is a Pain
Draw Calls Memory CPU
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
2D Drawing in Unity
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
2D Drawing in Unity
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
2D Drawing in Unity
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
Problem: Not Scalable
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
“Solution” - 2D ToolKit
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
Problem - Memory ExplodedThe game has a lot of content: 560 MB of units / 400 MB of buildings / 100 MB of VFX
The iPhone 5 only has 300 MB of RAM to work with
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
“Solution” - Smash and Burn
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
Problem - Draw Calls…Again
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
“Solution” - Dynamic Sprite Atlas
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
The Game Works…Ship It!
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
Problem - The Game is Too Big
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
“Solution” - Asset Bundles
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
Problem - Older Devices Crash
• Game users ~200MB of RAM
• iPhone 4s & iPad Mini only has 170MB of usable memory
• Ran out of ways to optimize the game
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
“Solution” - Reduce Quality
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
Wisdoms
• Acquiring technical debt is not a bad thing as long as it is managed
• Optimization is an iterative process
• Working in a startup means solving the problems in front of you right now
• Game development is research on a production timeline
© Copyright TinyMob Games Inc, 2012-2014. All rights reserved.
Questions?