Lightspeed Studios is a global improvement 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 strategies in sport improvement. PocketGamer.biz was current through the talks about Lightspeed Studios’ tech methods, together with Fan Zhang’s speak, entitled “PUBG MOBILE: Efficiency Optimization on Cell Platform”.
His speak coated the challenges of: aggressive video games requiring increasingly gamers; cellular units are fragmented and numerous, with over 22,000 fashions obtainable; and the proportion of these units that are low-end is over 55%.
After his lecture, we sat down with Fan Zhang, engine workforce lead of PUBG Cell. With 9 years of expertise in cellular sport improvement, he’s labored on quite a lot of video games, primarily concentrating on cellular sport efficiency optimization and real-time rendering. We spoke about these challenges and the instruments which can be obtainable to the builders of PUBG Cell immediately.
Unreal, RenderGarden and different instruments
Let’s get straight right down to enterprise – what’s the greatest optimisation problem dealing with a sport like PUBG Cell? “The problem is the various units we’ve got out there,” he stresses. “We wish to ensure that all of the units supply a superb efficiency and a superb expertise.”
Zhang continues: “Primarily, we’ve got two steps to sort out 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 selected in-house software to assist for testing these performances. We’ve got a set of instruments we use for numerous 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 features of modules. We additionally use instruments from Samsung, and even RenderGarden to establish rendering issues.”
The problem is the various units out there. We wish to ensure that all units supply good efficiency
Fan Zhang
As a result of PUBG Cell is “a practical art-style sport”, Unreal is the apparent selection of 3D engine. But in addition, confirms Zhang, “Unreal can be higher acting at supporting an enormous world type 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 attempting to ensure that the sport will be appropriate on as many units as we are able to,” he tells us afterwards. “We’ve got 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 observe our entire, total technique. But when they’re attempting to be a extra visually interesting product, they could select a distinct strategy, as a result of these may convey 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 attempting to do in the intervening 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 attempting 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 attempting to do extra optimisation to convey higher efficiency. There are high-end units the place we’re attempting so as to add a couple of new graphic options. We’re attempting to make it look good, however that may 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 cellular survival sport, UNDAWN. Fan Zhang’s colleague Richard Li lectured a couple of new XPR methodology for optimising and scaling open-world video games, and PocketGamer.biz interviewed him right here.
