Most game developers around the world often wonder how to increase the number of engaged users. Obviously, there are many strategies to attract new players to join the project. One of the highly effective solutions today is game porting. Simply speaking, this is the translation of a game from one platform to another.
If your video game is only available for mobile devices, porting will help you make it available for PC or consoles. Do you want to know more about what the porting process consists of and how much it can cost for development companies? You can read our article to learn more specifics and tips about game porting at this link.
Common challenges in game porting
For many beginners, game porting services sound like something simple and easy. However, when developers start to get down to the real action, they encounter various problems. Any new platform means different screen sizes, different technical requirements, and a whole range of nuances. Let us tell you more about what challenges you are likely to face once you start working on porting your game:
- Limited hardware resources. It's no secret that all devices have different processors and performance capabilities. However, the goal of developers is to make the game conditions as equal as possible for all users. If the product was originally created for powerful devices, you should try to optimize for compatibility with weak devices.
- Changes in input methods. PCs are controlled by a mouse and keyboard, consoles by gamepads, while smartphones are controlled by a touchscreen. Such differences between platforms stimulate a new challenge for developers - adaptation in input methods.
- Graphics optimization. Actually, graphical changes can be attributed to a separate category during the porting of games. Each device has its own specifics regarding graphics, supported libraries, and so on.
Another difficult thing that the majority of professionals from the game development industry face is working with plugins. Why is it so? Some plugins that are supported on PC may not be supported on smartphones and the contrary. This forces system administrators to look for new and effective solutions, including replacing/adapting existing plugins.
Key areas of performance optimization in game porting
As you may have already realized, to make the game available on other platforms, specialists do a lot of hard work. There are a number of items that need to be optimized to work properly on all devices. You should pay attention to CPU, GPU, and memory management optimizations. Moreover, rendering and physics also require adaptations due to differences between devices.
CPU and GPU optimization
Many game developers associate the porting process primarily with CPU and GPU optimization. This is not surprising because these are the dominant factors affecting performance in various sides of the platform. Reducing CPU load is often simply about finding more efficient algorithms. For GPUs, sometimes minimizing draw calls and optimizing shaders are good graphics strategies. Shader optimization is about using a huge series of approaches and sometimes that's about reducing the complexity of calculations.
The next thing we want to mention is that optimization involves finding a balance between CPU, GPU, and RAM usage. Optimizing one generally means increased usage in the other two as well. To achieve this, developers ensure smooth performance for different hardware configurations by keeping this equilibrium.
Memory management
Memory management efficiency is key, especially so for some constrained platforms. Usually many compression algorithms are used and the most important thing is to make sure that the approaches can be used on a particular platform. However, you should understand that memory optimization is not the main solution in the whole process. It will not result in what you want to see and is worth spending time on other aspects.
Pools are also used by developers to optimize the CPU and provide additional load for RAM. Memory management alone does a great job eliminating crashing, reducing loading times, and ensuring smooth gameplay. This is especially true on platforms with restricted memory capacity, such as mobile or old consoles.
Graphics and rendering optimization
Usually, the load on the GPU is reduced when the number of polygons is reduced. However, it depends on how you are able to reduce the amount of triangles. Since rendering efficiency is improved further by reducing complex calculations, optimizing the shaders gives it an additional boost.
Physics and collision detection
Gamers highly appreciate when a game has realistic physics. This allows users to better immerse themselves in the atmosphere of your game. That's why this is another area you need to work on carefully during the porting process.
Obviously, reducing the number of active rigid bodies or using approximate collision shapes can help hugely reduce the complexity of these systems. However, this is a complex process that is difficult to achieve in reality. Developers sometimes use different physics precision based on the distance from the camera to reduce unnecessary collision checks. In turn, on mobile devices, these optimizations are essential for having smooth gameplay.
Platform-specific optimization techniques
Surely, there are many options for users to play their favorite games nowadays. According to the statistics on the devices chosen, most people prefer to use their mobile phones to play games. Personal computers and gaming consoles are also popular. The type of platform will differ, as well as optimization techniques, which we will talk about below.
Optimizing for mobile devices
About 70% of Internet users these days use their smartphones for mobile gaming. This is a great way to have fun anywhere when you have some free time. Developers should know all the specifics of games on mobile devices so they can think about special optimization techniques.
It's no secret that the main feature of games on mobile devices from PCs and consoles is touchscreen control. That's why one of the most urgent tasks is to adapt the interface for the small screen of smartphones and tablets. It should be flexible and adaptable to different screen aspect ratios and DPI.
Optimizing for consoles
Consoles are considered as devices where players can smoothly enjoy games. They support highly demanding and new games. Based on this, your game should be well-adopted for game controllers.
Memory management is another one of the major issues that needs detailed consideration and optimization. Why? Users don't like playing products that often glitch on their devices. You need to find unnecessary data, reduce it significantly, and increase resource streaming.
Optimizing for PC
Personal computers are what gamers have been used to playing on for over 20 years. However, PCs are versatile because of the variety of equipment they can connect. For example, players can use monitors of different resolutions or play with a keyboard, mouse, and gamepad. All these factors make adaptation and porting difficult.
You should take care that your game can adapt to different monitor sizes. Another point is to have low launch requirements so that gamers with weak PCs can also enjoy your creation.
Tools and techniques for performance profiling
Undoubtedly, for a quality game port from one platform to another, you will need a large staff of experts and a wide technical stack. You should have people who know how to test, analyze, and perform performance profiling. Frame Debugger, Unreal Engine Profiler, RenderDo, and other tools are perfect for such tasks.
Profiling tools overview
Even beginners in the game development field know very well that bottlenecks require proper optimization. To find them quickly and correctly, you can use some tools.
- In most cases, experts use Frame Debugger for GPU profiling.
- One more option is Unreal Engine Profiler. This tool is capable of providing detailed, in-depth metrics to analyze frame timing and resource consumption and draw calls.
RenderDoc is common for use when rendering analysis in order to debug and optimize GPU workflows. It includes detailed frame data for developers.
Debugging and identifying bottlenecks
Now you know what tools can help with game performance profiling. What should you do next? With the help of these tools, you cant try to find bottlenecks that further require detailed work.
Let's take a look at one of the most common bottlenecks - high CPU utilization. To address this, developers are going to optimize algorithms or reduce redundant calculations. Memory leaks are another frequent problem, but profiling tools can help detect these. The solution may be to avoid the need to free memory properly and use object pooling methods.
Testing for performance across platforms
Experts often experience cases when performance on different platforms significantly varies. This may be due to the requirements and peculiarities of the platforms. When you test the performance of a created game, you have to do it simultaneously on the whole supported device list. Of course, handling such tasks manually is something that can take you a lot of time and effort. That is why professionals advise to perform all regression and functional testing processes manually.
Balancing performance and visual fidelity
Any video game development company strives to create a product where there will be a perfect ratio of performance and graphics. Unfortunately, not all devices are able to withstand huge loads due to a large number of shadows, small elements, and other things. For this reason, you need to find the optimal balance of performance and visual fidelity.
Visual quality vs performance trade-offs
When you overload graphics with a lot of elements, it can have a bad effect on FPS (frame rate) for players with poor devices. What are some solutions for this issue? Most experienced professionals use adaptive resolution technologies. However, adaptive resolution works only on a PC and consoles with the most recent GPUs. This allows you to automatically lower the resolution in places where heavy graphics are present. Regular players will hardly notice any degradation in graphics, but performance will remain at a high level.
Moreover, there are many AI tools for such tasks. For example, DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) uses AI algorithms to upscale images.
Using level of detail (LOD)
We know another tactic that will allow you to achieve optimization when porting a game. We are talking about LOD, thanks to which you can easily reduce the complexity of existing 3D models. The point is that the complexity of such objects directly depends on their distance from the camera.
Using the level of detail, complex elements are replaced by simpler ones. This practice also works effectively because, for ordinary players, the changes remain practically invisible. However, on the technical side, such changes have a positive impact on the overall optimization of the video game.
Best practices for game porting performance optimization
What tricks and practices help experienced developers port games successfully? This question is of interest to many newcomers who are faced with the task of porting a game from one platform to another. We've gathered some best practices for game optimization that you should know about.
Start optimization early
Developers can prevent costly fixes and huge delays by addressing performance bottlenecks in the final stages of development. For example, late profiling provides an opportunity to fix rendering, physics, or memory management issues. However, this all depends on the specific product. Premature optimization, on the other hand, can add a lot of costs to your game.
Continuous testing and refinement
Indeed, throughout the porting process, regular performance testing is probably the No.1 factor. Continuous testing enables identifying platform-specific challenges. For example, you can face hardware limitations or differences in render pipelines. Gaming products can be tested incrementally so that you can see what each optimization does and how much it improves.
Based on test results, refinement will provide performance, yielding a polished and stable product. It also leads to a performance that is optimal overall for target devices while ensuring a good user experience.
Conclusion
Porting games is a great way for developers to attract more users and increase revenue. However, to complete this task, you must pay attention to optimizing the CPU, graphics, and physics aspects of the game. Developers should take into account the peculiarities of each individual platform in order to perform successful optimization.
