The Jumping Dead Development of a Graphics-Intense Smartphone Game

Abstract

With a team of five people for five months, a game engine is used to develop a 3D platform game for Android. The goal is to make the most of the graphics capability of the phone, while maintaining smooth gameplay at an acceptable frame rate. To fulfil the requirements, a number of problems have to be solved. Light and shadows can be implemented in several ways, with different looks and costs. 3D modelling, texturing and animation is explored to learn to create good looking characters and decorations without overloading the GPU with triangles. The tools and effects used are tested with regards to the frame rate of the phone, and the results are documented in detail. The resulting product is a platform game with animated models, interactive physics, and several types of light, shadows, and particle effects. The discussion is based around objective measurements of frame rate, in combination with the subjective opinions on the quality of visual effects used. Based on the results, our conclusion is that a graphics-intense smartphone game can be made, but it has to be done with care. Considerations include the shader interaction with models and textures, minimising the number of triangles for rendering and storage in memory, and maintaining an even rendering and game-logic workload per frame to avoid stalling the game.