Delta Engine Multiplatform Development Presentation 2011-05

Multiplatform Development Benjamin Nitschke CTO Delta Engine & exDream & MobileBits [email_address] MobileBits GmbH Lerchenstrasse 28 22767 Hamburg exDream GmbH Hildesheimer Str. 35 30169 Hannover MobileBits GmbH

Overview 2
Who is MobileBits?
Why Multiplatform?
Market Analysis
Engine Comparison
Mobile Development is challenging
Example Game on iPhone, Android, WP7
Our Solution: The Delta Engine

Who is MobileBits? 2
Founded 2009 by Holtz, Griga, Nitschke & Wysk
Focus on Mobile Games
Developed many smaller Mobile Games
iSkat, ZombieParty, FlightSchool, Ewe Doodle, ..
Also is developing www.DeltaEngine.net
Allows developing games and apps in Windows
Deploys with one click on many platforms:
iPhone, iPad, Android, WP7, Xbox 360, Windows, MacOS, Linux, and many more

Who is MobileBits? 3
Same team as exDream, known 10+ years for:
Twork (1997), WebWars (2000)
Rosho: Games for Kids (2001)
EuroVernichter (.NET, 2003)
Arena Wars (RTS, first commercial .NET game, 2004)
Armies of Steel (Prototype, RTS, 2005)
Rocket Commander (Open Source, 2005)
XNA Racing Game (Xbox 360, first XNA game, 2006)
Arena Wars Reloaded (RTS, 2007)
Fireburst (PC, Xbox 360, PS3, UE3, 2009/2011)
ZombieParty (iPad Party Game, 2010)
SoulCraft (iPhone, Android, WP7, 2011)
Many smaller iPhone Games and other projects …

Why Multiplatform? 10
Past: Start with Single Platform Game Development
Recent: Multiplatform Shift on Consoles, Web, iOS
Present: One platform or all platforms
Most teams still focus on one platform
Successful games are often rewritten on other platforms, but only exceptional games
Or you need an engine to be on many platforms:
Unreal Engine 3 (Consoles)
Unity (mostly iPhone)
More examples later

A game programmers life was hard in the past (1980)
Writing programs in low level languages
Hardware was slow as hell
Good performance was only possible in a very low level and it is heavily hardware dependant
Usually no good tools around
Everyone build their own engine, tools and libraries
Software was simplistic (because of all this)
Consoles and Handheld devices were not different, programmed on a very low level by very few

Why Multiplatform? 10 Commodore 64

Why Multiplatform? 10 Prince of Persia (1989, first released on Apple II, then DOS, Amiga, Atari, etc.)

Windows dominated App-Development in the 90 th
Games getting more complex (RTS, Shooters)
Libraries and better tools emerge
DOS: Still very direct, most games still have to write their own drivers, VGA games mostly
Windows: Getting very popular for game programmers due DirectX , also OpenGL and many emerging tools, libraries and frameworks
Visual Studio still today the de facto standard
There is also Consoles, but only few develop for them

Why Multiplatform? 10 Doom (1993 on DOS, later ported to many platforms, including Linux, Mac OS, Amiga, Xbox, iPhone, etc.)

Why Multiplatform? 10 Fury3 (1996, on of the first DirectX Windows games), based on a popular DOS game Terminal Velocity

2000-2010: Development still dominated by Windows
Consoles are getting more popular (Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, etc.)
Games are also getting much more popular
Complexity goes crazy, teams grow in the hundreds
Lots of frameworks, libraries, tools and engines
Quake3 engine dominated early in 20 th
Halflife game and engine also very successful
Unreal3 dominated late in 20 th
Many other engines and frameworks

Why Multiplatform? 10 2004 many great PC games came out that were the foundation for many nowadays popular game engines: Halflife: Counter-Strike, Halflife1, Halflife 2, Left4Dead, Portal, Team Fortress, Garry's Mod, etc. Farcry: Farcry, Farcry 2, Crysis, Crysis 2 Doom & Quake: Many games in 1998-2004 used the Quake3 engine, not so many since then Unreal3 Engine: Unreal 2 was used a bit, but Unreal 3 a lot: Is currently the most successful PC and Console engine BTW: Unity3D was also started in 2001 and became usable around this time (2005) ^^

Most of the time small teams could focus on one platform
In the 80 th you could focus on C64 or Amiga
In 1990 as a game developer DOS was most used
1995 Windows 95 and DirectX was a good choice
2000 Windows was a good choice for most teams
2005/2006 Many consoles came out, many developers would focus on one platform
2007/2008 iPhone came out, many focused on just iOS development and many simple apps were extremely successful in 2008 with Apples AppStore

Why Multiplatform? 10 Angry Birds (2009, one of many very successful iPhone games, was ported to many other platforms later)

By now you should have noticed a trend:
All those games were only developed for one platform
If your game is successful, it will be ported later
Not all games are this successful and have this luxury to make port later if the initial version is already selling
There are also Multiplatform-Games from the start
Those are mostly sequels or done by big teams
This trend is changing a bit as many software giants provide multiple platforms: Apple with iOS (iPhone, iPad), Microsoft with XNA (Xbox 360, Windows, WP7)

Market Analysis 11

Market Analysis 12 1 bn USD (2009) 10 bn USD (2015)
Why not just develop iPhone Games?
Mobile game market is shifting towards Android and WP7
And growing on all platforms and devices (e.g. tablets this year)
Most apps are games (iPhone, Android,
WP7), but usually costs only 99 cents.
Sell many apps on many platforms!

9 2010 Developer Distribution 2015 Developer Distribution ca. 80% development under Windows Most developers will still work in Windows or use tools or engines AppStore (iOS, Android,..) Consoles PC Consoles PC AppStore > 2 * AppStore developers needed Market Analysis

Market Analysis 12 Mobile Platforms are a pretty good target platform for games: The popularity of mobile games has increased in the 2000s, as over $3 billion USD worth of games were sold in 2007 internationally, and projected annual growth of over 40%. Ownership of a smartphone alone increases the likelihood that a consumer will play mobile games. Over 90% of smartphone users play a mobile game at least once a week. In recent years, there has been a move towards mobile games which are distributed free to the end user, but carry prominent, paid advertising. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_game

Engine Comparison 13
These days lots of Multiplatform Engines are available:
Unreal3 (Consoles, PC)
CryEngine (High Performance PCs)
Unity3D (Mobile, Mac, Web)
Torque (popular before Unity for Indies)
Many other possibilities:
Vision Engine
Irrlicht
Ogre
Many proprietary and closed engines, etc.

Most other engines are either:
Black boxes (Unity, UDK, Editors, Modding)
Just graphic frameworks for specific platforms (DirectX, XNA, OpenGL ES)
Or huge native code engines with high license costs (only suitable for big teams: Unreal, CryEngine, etc)
We like .NET, it allows more rapid development!
Only recently possible on all platforms
Xbox 360, WP7, Windows -> Microsoft
iPhone, Android, Linux, Mac -> Novell

Most platforms have specific frameworks and usually only support 1-2 languages well:
iPhone : Objective-C (not very pretty)
Android : Java (lots of config files, can compile C too)
Windows Phone 7 : Only C# (Silverlight or XNA)
Xbox 360 : Native C++ (XDK, or C# with XNA, Xbla)
PS3, Wii : C++ (have their own frameworks, ES)
Linux : Mostly C++ (gcc), Java, also .NET (Mono)
MacOS : Objective C and C++ mostly
Windows can do everything (.NET, Java, Scripts, …)

Unreal 3 Engine/UDK
Targeted to big teams
Heavily focused on Editor
Lots of tools and support for Artists
Unreal Script
With a license can be programmed natively (C++, Huge Code base)
Expensive, Complex, 15+ Years Old
PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Recently iOS and Android too

CryEngine 1 was FarCry (2004)
CryEngine 2 was Crysis (2007) and used in a few other games
CryEngine 3 is used in Crysis 2 (2011)
Focus on great visuals, shader heavy
Cool sandbox features
Struggling with low performance PCs
With a license can be programmed natively (C++, Huge Code base, Lua)
Expensive, Complex

Unity3D
Mac oriented engine
Editor based
Scripting: C#, JS, Boo
No source code access
Huge community
Focused on small teams and individuals
Became very successful in the last few years
Huge community
Mac, Web, iOS, Wii, recently added Android

Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (10 quick examples)

Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (1/10) You need a lot of actual devices to test

Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (2/10) Different Programming Languages, Different Challenges

Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (3/10)
Different Frameworks, Libraries, Engines
Often you will end up writing your own libraries
DirectX vs OpenGL
Physic Engines, which one is for you
Multimedia formats
Objective-C library not useful to a Java developer and vise versa

Write game natively or use a engine?
Early when a new platform comes out most games are written without engines
As games get more complex more and more libraries are needed
Many engines to choose from, each one has advantages and disadvantages:
Unity3D, Unreal3, Vision, Torque (GarageGames), XNA, Vision Engine, Delta Engine, etc.

Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (5/10) Different device capabilities = Different file formats

Many devices have different resolutions
iPhone 2G, 3G, 3GS: 480x320
iPad: 1024x768
iPhone 4: 960x640
Android: 320x240, 480x320, 640x320, 800x480, 864x480, 1024x600, 1280x720, and many more
WP7: 800x480
PC, Xbox 360, PS3: 720p, 1080p, many more
Aspect ratio can be 3:2, 16:9, 16:10, 5:4, 17:10, etc.

How to get big content on small devices?
Xbox 360, PS3 is challenging with 256 MB Ram
iOS can have as little as 15MB left to work with
Even newer devices might only have 50-100MB of memory free to use.
Mobile devices are not build for multitasking
There is no swapping memory
Compression is key, keep content small
Swap out loaded content yourself (streaming, etc.)

Often existing games need to be ported
Web games run too slow, a native port is better
PC and Console games need a lot of rethinking
Handling input is challenging, devices were not really build for gaming

Compiling game source code and/or content can be very time consuming
Deploying also needs time, testing is crucial, but if your build takes long times you have less time developing
Some tools are horrbily slow (PVR texture compression)

Optimizing complex games is very important
Simple games can get away with messy code
Complex games MUST NOT leak memory or they become unmanageable and unplayable after a while
GPU is usually very slow (few instructions per pixel)
CPU is even worse, you can‘t really compare it to a desktop PC. Even multiple cores does not help you if your game code is slow.
Try to separate parts (physics, multimedia, logic, gfx)

Example Game 14
Blocks Game (in just 40 lines of code)
Written as a sample game for an article

Example Game 14
WP7 Version is about 200 lines of code

Example Game 14
Android Java Example code from a different game

Example Game 14
Objective-C is even more complex and verbose
Even drawing a simple box with OpenGL ES is many hundred lines of code

Example Game 14
We as game developers tried out both options
Using game engines was good and easy in the beginning, but very challenging later when extending
Writing games natively was hard in the beginning, but more extensible later
Major problem was always maintainance and tools
Started in 2009 with the Delta Engine to solve this
Delta Engine is a multiplatform engine in .NET
Idea was to port and deploy games with a single mouse click

Delta Engine 14
The blocks game is just 40 lines of code with the Delta Engine (no tools or features used), with comments 60 lines
Runs on all supported platforms (PC, Linux, MacOS, Consoles: Xbox 360, Mobile Devices: iPhone, iPad, Android, Tablets, WP7, more in the future)
Uses C# code, very similar to XNA
Resolution independant
1s compile time on Windows and for emulators, few seconds to minutes for a full deploy on other platforms
Automatically optimized and reduced for you

Delta Engine 14 Full source code with comments for the example game: Blocks

C++ vs C# (setup graphics) 13

Open Source vs Proprietary 16 Unity Editor Game Code Game Assets Unity Engine Modules & Features (not customizable) Unity3D: Closed Model Delta Engine: Open Model Delta Engine Framework Game Code Game Assets Delta Engine Modules Third Party Engine Modules Custom Modules Black Boxes (Closed) Customizable (Open)

Extremely Open Engine 17
Source code available for free (starting July 2011)
Develop and publish your games on Windows
No costs for you!
If you want to deploy on any other platform than Windows:
You need a Delta Engine Multiplatform license
Access to easy to use tools (Launcher, Simulators)
Which will be cheap or royalty based, no worries
One click deploy, fast and easy with the Launcher

Launcher Addin for VS 18 e.g. Start Unit Tests
Directly integrated into Visual Studio 2010
Also available as Standalone App for Testers
Starts programs, games, tests, tutorials, samples on all supported devices
Also shows lots of information about your project (Tests, Assemblies, Todo-List, etc.)

Content, Content, Content 19
Today's games are mostly content driven
Especially on Consoles and PC
You usually have a powerful engine ready to go
Sharing content between games was almost impossible in the past, formats changed too often
The Delta Engine makes all content always available and will always work on all supported platforms

Example with XNA on Windows Phone 7
Artist saves .png image file or 3D Model
Content pipeline converts all files to .xnb
.xnb is the only format allowed for WP7
Images are best stored as DDS files
XNA’s content pipeline does the conversion for you
3D Models or Levels often need custom importers because of different needs

Step 1 : Add Content file to Content Project
Step 2 : Load and use content in code

Many content files depend on each other usually
With the Delta Engine it works very similar and on all platforms, content is just not needed at compile time!
Things get more complex if you add more platforms

When testing on Windows needs 1-2 files per content
Makes no sense to keep all formats for all platforms.
Converting formats takes time. For example a single 2048x2048 iPhone PVR Texture takes 30-40 seconds to save on really fast PC with 3.6Ghz (we got hundreds)
So content is only converted when you actually need it and it has been changed (cache)
Content is processed on Servers in the Cloud (currently one server can handle everything, but this will be expanded as more demand is needed)

Content is always automatically requested and build, there is no button to do it and a human will make too many mistakes choosing options anyway.
Instead the build server decides all this and makes sure all content files work together, optimized as much as possible
Unused content is removed, Atlas textures are generated, content is optimized by the shaders used
Crazy compression rates of 100:1 and more, which is really required for mobile games (ZombieHockey 2.8MB on WP7, 6 MB iPhone, PC version is 40MB, uncompressed >120MB)

Content, Content, Content 23 Example Atlas Textures (generated automatically, 2D & 3D)

Developed to create games for all AppStore platforms at once
High quality 3D RPG game SoulCraft to demonstrate the capabilities and speed
MobileBits cooperates with companies like NVIDIA, EA, Chillingo, Microsoft, Bigpoint and more
4 What is the Delta Engine?

6 What is the Delta Engine? D evelop with .NET for all AppStore platforms No need to learn different and dated languages for different platforms such as iPhone, Android and WP7 E asy to learn and to build Use your favorite Windows-tools, check out our examples and just press the magic button to build for other platforms L ightweight and fast We did the hard work to optimize performance for all platforms - just include the parts you need for your game T eamwork made easy With our advanced content management system, editors for game designers and full support of all your favorite tools A ssets and code are Open Source The Delta Engine and our example games are Open Source and you are invited to participate or to integrate other libraries

Early version of the Soulcraft Tech Demo in January 2011 at the CES in Las Vegas with NVidia 7

ZombieParty runs already on many Platforms 9 October 2010

Delta Engine Release 24 Questions? I hope you liked the presentation and the Engine. Delta Engine Release July 2011 (v0.9) v1.0 coming end 2011 www.DeltaEngine.net Already working on Windows, MacOS, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone 7, Android, Android Tablets, Nvidia Tegra, Xbox 360 and more soon 

Multiplatform Development Benjamin Nitschke CTO Delta Engine & exDream & MobileBits [email_address] MobileBits GmbH Lerchenstrasse 28 22767 Hamburg exDream GmbH Hildesheimer Str. 35 30169 Hannover MobileBits GmbH

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Delta Engine Multiplatform Development Presentation 2011-05

by Benjamin Nitschke on May 06, 2011

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Delta Engine Multiplatform Development Presentation 2011-05 — Presentation Transcript