The Game Performance Pillars: The Start of Your Journey

[Read the original post at Unity Game Performance Pillars — The Gamedev Guru]

What's going on with The Gamedev Guru? What can you expect from this blog in the game performance scene?

Here, let me tell you what's cooking... And what I have planned for you.

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What Happened This Weekend?

The Plan — The Game Performance Pillars

    [Week 1] Professional Performance

    [Week 2] CPU Performance

    [Week 3] GPU Performance

    [Week 4] Memory Performance

    [Bonus] Live Q&A on Game Performance

So, What Now?

What Happened This Weekend?

I got very upset, I admit...

And here's why.

This weekend is going to be awesome, I thought.

Just pizza and videogames.

After spending 7 years waiting on a new release, I finally got my hands into Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.

I started playing on a Friday after work... and failed the tutorial.

What a great start!

A few hours in, I was fully immersed into the medieval setting.

My speciality? Delivering sheep to other villages to earn enough denars to hire the troops no one had any use for.

The next moment when I regained real-life awareness, I looked at the window and somehow it was bright... unexpectedly.

Shit, it's 5AM, I cursed.

I sneakily went to bed, trying my best not to wake up my girlfriend (she's usually quite opinionated about sleep interruptions).

I had the perfect excuse... "I was doing game development research.".

Luckily, I didn't need to use it. I'm pretty skilled at being sneaky, apparently.

The next day (actually, the same day) I played a few more hours, but...

It didn't go as well.

I was excited to start my first 500+ battle.

The game was not performing well.

You know, I can handle sub-30 FPS games (after all, I work optimizing VR titles that often run below that).

But there's something I cannot bear...

Game Freezes

Every time I raised the bow to shoot an arrow, the game froze for almost 3 seconds, making me miss all targets.

Take a deep breath, Ruben.

And so I took a deep breath and decided to try the sword instead.

As soon as I charged on my horse to an enemy and prepared to deliver the fatal blow, it froze again for a few seconds.

F*** it, I'm outta here.

Angry, I quit the game.

That's not how an excellent weekend should end.

That's the thing... Low-performing games creates a frustrating sensation that you MUST avoid at all costs in your games.

Low performance breaks immersion

Low performance leaves players frustrated

Low performance makes players refund the game

Really.

This is why performance matters so much for the success of your game.

We all have the same goal, right?

We do our best to publish that we can be proud of. A game that players will love playing. And a game that sells.

So after so much rambling, here's my point...

I'm about to reveal to you the plan I developed to help you optimize your game.

The Plan — The Game Performance Pillars

Over the weekend, I came up with a concept for The Gamedev Guru that I call The Game Performance Pillars.

Here's a glimpse of this concept.

The Game Performance Pillars — The Gamedev Guru

Here's how it works:

For all of this, you need to achieve game performance.

And here's what most developers miss: performance is not only about high frame-rates.

It's also loading times, battery drain, development productivity and working on what the users want.

So, what's the deal and how does this impact you?

As a subscriber of The Gamedev Guru, this is what you can expect to learn in the upcoming months...

[Week 1] Professional Performance

I'll share with you performance tips that will make you a better game developer:

[Week 2] CPU Performance

I'll show you some of my secrets behind running high-performing gameplay mechanics that your players can enjoy:

[Week 3] GPU Performance

Are you into delivering top-notch, high-performing visuals? Then this is for you.

[Week 4] Memory Performance

One of my all-time favorites and yet most ignored game performance area.

[Bonus] Live Q&A on Game Performance

Once a month, I'll invite you by e-mail to join the Q&A where you'll get the chance to ask your most burning questions and to help me fill the uncomfortable silences.

As a meta-bonus, you'll see a game developer running his first Q&A without prior video experience.

So, What Now?

How does that sound to you?

I'll stick to this format for a few months and then see how it goes.

There's one thing I'd like to ask you, though...

I want you to join us in this journey towards game performance mastery.

And here's the best way to do it: Get your FREE Unity Performance Checklist Lite.

Why?

Because I'll use it as my guide to create content and to run our Live Q&A.

And remember? I want you to join us.

Oh dear, I'm looking forward to the next week already...

~Ruben