Game performance is crucial for creating a smooth and enjoyable experience for your players. However, not all players have the same hardware, software, or preferences when it comes to playing your game. How do you optimize your game for all players, without compromising on quality or features? In this article, we will explore some tips and techniques to help you achieve this goal.
Before you start optimizing your game, you need to know who your target audience is and what kind of devices they use to play your game. This will help you set realistic expectations and benchmarks for your game performance. You can use analytics tools, surveys, or feedback to gather this information. For example, you can find out the average screen resolution, frame rate, memory, CPU, GPU, and operating system of your players. You can also segment your audience by different categories, such as casual, hardcore, or competitive players, and adjust your game settings accordingly.
- Before embarking on the optimization process, consider establishing a clear set of criteria and delineating the minimum and maximum configurations within each device category. This strategic approach not only fortifies your game's performance in the present but also primes it for the demands of the future—underscoring your preparedness for what lies ahead.
Frequently running the game as it is being developed in the lowest targeted hardware is important. You can come to know right from the beginning which part of your game, which new system started causing lags on lowest hardware. Then it's all about deep profiling, refactoring code/shaders to keep in mind lesser memory usage, refactoring the art/audio to have the best possible output in least possible size and also going through every best practice of the game engine you are working on. Most best practices are in line with performance optimization.
Understanding your target audience means meeting your customers where they are. Understanding the target audience will inform your target platform and hardware specifications. Designing within those constraints is the first-step in creating an optimal experience for your customers.
When developing in 3D for portable devices such as the Quest or Hololens, minimising your batch count becomes incredibly important. Use texture atlases, common shaders/materials, and techniques like GPU instancing to get as many assets rendered in a single draw call as possible.
Understanding local market and target group is really important, it needs localisation methods. Optimizing game performance starts with the efficient management of game assets. Understanding the platforms your game will run on is the first step toward optimization. Each platform, whether it's PC, console, mobile, or VR, has its own hardware capabilities and limitations. Game developers need to tailor their games to perform well on each platform by adjusting graphical settings, resolution, and other factors accordingly. Cross-platform development tools and middleware can assist in creating games that run smoothly across various devices.
Once you have a clear idea of your target audience, you need to measure and analyze your game performance using various tools and methods. Performance profiling tools can help you identify and fix the bottlenecks, errors, and inefficiencies in your game code, graphics, audio, and network. For example, you can use Unity's Profiler, Unreal Engine's Stat Commands, or Visual Studio's Diagnostic Tools to monitor and optimize your game performance. You can also use external tools, such as Intel GPA, RenderDoc, or Nsight, to debug and improve your game graphics and rendering.
For the Unreal engine, the Stat commands are a very basic way of profiling, and they're not enough. You can use tools like Unreal Insight for more in-depth profiling, the New "Render resources viewer" to see what takes up VRam, "Size map" to check out how much disk/memory an asset takes, etc.
- From my perspective, the profiler proves to be an invaluable tool within Unity. - The profiler empowers you to delve deep into rendering processes and script performance during rendering. It's important to scrutinize the loading time of each component, often measured in milliseconds. - When aiming for a smooth 60fps, your target time per frame should be around 33 ms. For mobile platforms at 30fps, the goal is to keep it under 16 ms. - Additionally, when compiling from the editor, be mindful of potential high FPS caused by editor processes. To address this, consider building in developer mode and enabling the "connect compiler" option. By adhering to these guidelines, you can achieve precise optimization outcomes.
Optimizing game performance starts with the efficient management of game assets. Compress textures, reduce polygon counts, and employ level-of-detail (LOD) techniques to streamline 3D models. Minimize the size of audio files and use appropriate codecs to reduce loading times. Efficient asset management not only improves performance but also reduces storage requirements.
The most common mistake people make is trying to guess the performance issues and attempting fixes without confirming them using a profiler. In one case, we aimed to optimize draw calls, assuming they were the primary cause of performance drops. However, a comprehensive profiling revealed that overdraw was the actual culprit in that scenario. Therefore, we shouldn't blindly embark on game optimization without identifying the actual causes of frame drops. This ensures we make the most of our optimization efforts. While optimization without profiling can yield positive results, ensuring it's cost-effective is crucial in such cases.
Once you have profiled your game performance, you can apply various optimization techniques to improve it. Reducing draw calls and batches can be done through static and dynamic batching, instancing, or atlasing. Additionally, you can optimize mesh and texture quality with level of detail (LOD), mipmaps, compression, or streaming. To improve lighting and shadows, consider using light probes, baked lighting, cascaded shadow maps, or screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO). Minimizing CPU and GPU load can be done through multithreading, coroutines, or compute shaders. Furthermore, memory and garbage collection can be managed by using object pooling, caching, or structs. Finally, network performance can be enhanced through reliable or unreliable protocols, compression, or interpolation.
Based on my experience many memory and bundle size issues often arise from textures or sprites in game development. For example, in Unity, optimizing just 1-2 textures can save 2-5 MB, a quick and efficient memory and bundle size solution. Here's a tip: in Unity, ensure texture resolutions are powers of 2 or multiples of 4. This simple step can shrink a 1 MB texture to 0.5 MB or less, an effective optimization trick. In conclusion, the most important thing is that you need to know about optimization is the background of the game engine you've used, including how it renders and compresses your assets.
When optimizing your game, the most important step is finding the main problem that's slowing things down. You can use a tool called a profiler to see where the issue lies. It might be because your game isn't using the CPU, RAM, or GPU effectively. Also, if you're making a game for mobile devices, it's essential to think about how much power your game uses. Saving power (and battery life) is a big part of making your game run smoothly on mobile devices. So, finding and fixing performance issues and making sure your game doesn't use too much power are both key parts of making a great game.
Incorporate adaptive graphics settings within the game to allow players to adjust visual quality based on their device's capabilities. Provide options for adjusting resolution, texture quality, shadow quality, and other graphical elements. Optimize game logic to reduce CPU usage. This includes efficient pathfinding algorithms, physics simulations, and AI routines. Implement threading and parallel processing where possible to make better use of multi-core CPUs. Implement efficient loading and streaming techniques to minimize load times during gameplay. Use asynchronous loading to load assets in the background, preventing interruptions to the player's experience. Employ level streaming .
One thing to consider during memory optimization is the necessary load. Identify key points in the application's life cycle for asset loading and unloading, ensuring the best user experience. If your game has a home screen and gameplay screen, unload home screen assets when entering gameplay, and vice versa, enhancing core gameplay experience. Collaborate with the Art and Tech Art teams to minimize asset duplication. Use grayscale assets that can be colorized when needed, increasing flexibility in UI appearance and asset reusability.
One of the best ways to optimize your game performance for all players is to test your game on different platforms and devices. This will help you find and fix any compatibility, scalability, or usability issues that might affect your game performance or quality. You can use emulators, simulators, or real devices to test your game on various screen sizes, resolutions, frame rates, input methods, and network conditions. You can also use beta testing, user testing, or feedback to get valuable insights from your actual or potential players.
Continuously monitor player feedback and performance metrics after the game's release. Regularly release updates and patches to address any performance issues that may arise. This demonstrates a commitment to providing an optimal gaming experience for your player community and can enhance the game's longevity. Test in various different devices
To determine the influence of performance on the gameplay, you need to work as closely as possible on the player's neuro or psychological level. Some actions in the game may feel less intuitive and rewarding due to the minimal timing differences. For example - in one of the games we've tested, the flow was destroyed by a micro-second delay between clicking the jump button and the actual jump. The gamers were unable to explain what irritated them in the after-test questionnaire. We solved the problem using two technologies: eye tracking during the test and EEG reading (determining flow on the neuro level). Performance perceived by the player's brain differs from her/his post-rationalization and technical performance.
For a multiplatform game aiming to expand, testing across various devices is unavoidable. As the game becomes more intricate, adapting it for lower-end device performance often becomes financially challenging. It's crucial to ensure your team and stakeholders grasp this reality. Failing to address this situation can severely impact your business, particularly in mobile stores. You could end up facing negative reviews from players on lower-end devices while still needing more users engaged with your game for business purposes. Managing this involves acknowledging that supporting lower-end devices will demand either more development time or increased customer support costs. Finding a balance becomes key in mitigating these challenges.
Optimizing a game is like fine-tuning a performance for various stages. Just as a car handles differently on different roads, your game should shine on every platform. Gamers, developers, and business minds all grasp the importance of this. Whether it's E-Sports, mobile gaming, or console play, the game must fit like a glove. It's not just about running—it's about offering a seamless, top-tier experience. My advice is simple. Just dive into rigorous cross-platform testing with both hands on the keyboard, and ensure your game thrives, no matter where it's played.
Finally, you can optimize your game performance for all players by offering customizable game settings that allow them to adjust the game parameters according to their preferences and capabilities. For example, you can provide options to change the graphics quality, resolution, frame rate, sound volume, or controls. You can also use adaptive or dynamic game settings that automatically adjust the game parameters based on the device performance or network conditions. This way, you can ensure that your game is accessible, responsive, and enjoyable for all players.
Having wrestled with a 12-year-old MMO game that runs cross-platform and plays on some truly ancient devices, I can't recommend the customizable game settings and feature flags enough. It's a game-changer! It makes life way smoother for devs, reduces those heart-stopping moments of "Did we just break player progression?", and ensures players on all kinds of hardware get the best experience.
Maintain comprehensive documentation for your development team, detailing performance optimization techniques and best practices. Encourage knowledge sharing within your team and stay informed about the latest industry trends and technologies to continually improve your game's performance. A proper communication with development team and design team and testing team will result amazing for your game.
Gamers crave personalization, developers strive for inclusivity, and businesses understand the value of catering to diverse preferences. By offering a menu of choices, from graphics quality to control schemes, you empower players to shape their ideal gaming experience. This isn't just about accommodating hardware limitations; it's about enhancing immersion and accessibility. It's the secret sauce that keeps players engaged, fosters loyalty, and ensures your game's universal appeal across all player profiles. So, roll out the customization carpet and let players step into a world that feels uniquely theirs—because in gaming, one size never fits all. It's not just about giving players control; it's about making the game feel uniquely theirs.
In the ever-evolving world of gaming, optimization isn't a choice; it's a necessity. By understanding your audience, employing profiling tools, implementing smart optimizations, and offering customization, you're like a conductor orchestrating a symphony. Each note, from platform testing to user settings, harmonizes to create an experience that transcends hardware limitations and caters to the diverse tastes of players. It's a win-win for gamers seeking immersion, developers striving for excellence, and businesses aiming for success. When you optimize, you're not just improving performance; you're ensuring your game resonates with every player, creating a lasting connection that's music to all our ears.
If your game uses a backend infrastructure, it's important to optimize the amount of requests you make to the backend - especially on mobile devices. With regard to mobile, you can picture it this way: the more requests you make, the more battery you're consuming. If you're on a team of developers, keep in touch with your backend developers and also make sure they understand your use-case! That way they can optimize the database queries / machine learning algorithms / et cetera to consolidate as much data as possible into one request, as well as being able to handle load from (n) number of concurrent players =]
In my experience, you need to play your game. Run sessions with your friends, with children too. They can show some perspective. The way you can make software, ends when someone starts using it. The game, when in people’s hands, shows the truth about everything, including performance, large scale computing models, networking balance, etc.
It’s crucial not to overlook the establishment of performance benchmarks for FPS, CPU, GPU, and memory, as this leave testers in the dark about whether the current performance meets expectations. It’s imperative to attach comprehensive performance guidelines corresponding to the developed platforms and their expected specification ranges. Furthermore, consider implementing automated performance testing to be conducted nightly. Having a baseline with an alert system in place ensures that any deviation from the norm is promptly brought to the team’s attention. Ultimately, regardless of the richness of the content, player enjoyment will be compromised if performance issues are not addressed.