UVic Startup Slam September 2014 (TinyMob Games)

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


Game Dev on mobile is a Pain

Draw Calls Memory CPU


2D Drawing in Unity


2D Drawing in Unity


2D Drawing in Unity


Problem: Not Scalable


“Solution” - 2D ToolKit


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


“Solution” - Smash and Burn


Problem - Draw Calls…Again


“Solution” - Dynamic Sprite Atlas


The Game Works…Ship It!


Problem - The Game is Too Big


“Solution” - Asset Bundles


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


“Solution” - Reduce Quality


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


Questions?

Technology

UVic Startup Slam September 2014 (TinyMob Games)