PUBG Cell co-developer discusses optimising Unreal for 1000’s of telephone sort | Pocket Gamer.biz

Lightspeed Studios is a global growth studio owned by Tencent. As a part of GDC in San Francisco final month, the studio held its personal summit with ten lectures overlaying the most recent methods in sport growth. PocketGamer.biz was current through the talks about Lightspeed Studios’ tech methods, together with Fan Zhang’s discuss, entitled “PUBG MOBILE: Efficiency Optimization on Cell Platform”.

His discuss coated the challenges of: aggressive video games requiring increasingly more gamers; cell units are fragmented and various, with over 22,000 fashions out there; and the proportion of these units that are low-end is over 55%.

After his lecture, we sat down with Fan Zhang, engine crew lead of PUBG Cell. With 9 years of expertise in cell sport growth, he’s labored on quite a lot of video games, primarily concentrating on cell sport efficiency optimization and real-time rendering. We spoke about these challenges and the instruments which are out there to the builders of PUBG Cell right now.

Unreal, RenderGarden and different instruments

Let’s get straight right down to enterprise – what’s the largest optimisation problem going through a sport like PUBG Cell? “The problem is the numerous units we’ve out there,” he stresses. “We wish to make sure that all of the units provide efficiency and expertise.”

Zhang continues: “Primarily, we’ve two steps to deal with that. One is, we’ll break up the engine performance into completely different modules, and measure the efficiency of the modules independently. We’ll additionally develop a particular in-house software to assist for testing these performances. We’ve a set of instruments we use for varied functions. Firstly, this in-house software, which we created for ourselves, is especially for monitoring the efficiency of the GPU, the CPU, the temperature. As soon as we discover an issue, we use the profiling software to diagnose the particular capabilities of modules. We additionally use instruments from Samsung, and even RenderGarden to determine rendering issues.”

As a result of PUBG Cell is “a practical art-style sport”, Unreal is the apparent alternative of 3D engine. But in addition, confirms Zhang, “Unreal can also be higher acting at supporting a giant world sort of sport.” In his GDC lecture, Zhang spoke at size about instruments for optimising Unreal. He recognized 4 key methods to do that: loading much less and easily, drawing much less, light-weight rendering, and ticking easily.

“Our present angle is making an attempt to make it possible for the sport may be appropriate on as many units as we are able to,” he tells us afterwards. “We’ve completely different methods for decrease and better degree units. So [my advice] for different builders: if they’re making a aggressive sport and try to achieve as many gamers as we do – we suggest they comply with our entire, total technique. But when they’re making an attempt to be a extra visually interesting product, they could select a distinct method, as a result of these would possibly deliver higher visuals, however at the price of efficiency.”

Lightspeed Studios at GDC 2023

What challenges nonetheless lie forward? “There are three features of what we’re making an attempt to do in the mean time,” reveals Zhang. “One is: with PUBG Cell itself, they’re nonetheless including options. There’s a pure distinction between the brand new options and the efficiency. We’re nonetheless making an attempt to maintain the efficiency good whereas we’re including extra marketing campaign pages.”

He continues: “The second is for the engine optimisation itself. We’re nonetheless making an attempt to do extra optimisation to deliver higher efficiency. There are high-end units the place we’re making an attempt so as to add a couple of new graphic options. We’re making an attempt to make it look good, however that can add a efficiency value. We’re nonetheless investigating the compromises!”

Lightspeed Studios is most well-known for co-developing PUBG Cell alongside Krafton. Nevertheless, it has created over 50 video games throughout a number of platforms and genres for over 4 billion registered customers. There’s extra about its work on the official web site. Different talks by its representatives included showcasing AI-based options, together with “Wobbledoll”, a self-developed, machine-learning technique for producing high-fidelity movement, and an unique have a look at the upcoming open-world cell survival sport, UNDAWN. Fan Zhang’s colleague Richard Li lectured a few new XPR methodology for optimising and scaling open-world video games, and PocketGamer.biz interviewed him right here.