The document discusses MobileBits GmbH and its Delta Engine, a multiplatform development tool for mobile game creation, targeting platforms like iOS, Android, and Windows. It covers the shift in game development from single platform to multiplatform approaches, the challenges developers face, and the growing mobile game market. Additionally, it compares various game engines and emphasizes the advantages of the Delta Engine in rapid development and content management across multiple platforms.

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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 …

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7. 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

8. Why Multiplatform? 10 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

9. Why Multiplatform? 10 Commodore 64

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

11. Why Multiplatform? 10 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

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

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

14. Why Multiplatform? 10 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

15. 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) ^^

16. Why Multiplatform? 10 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

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

18. Why Multiplatform? 10 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)

19. Market Analysis 11

20. 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!

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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.

24. Engine Comparison 13 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

25. Engine Comparison 14 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, …)

26. Engine Comparison 14 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

27. Engine Comparison 14 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

28. Engine Comparison 14 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

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

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

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

32. 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

33. Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (4/10) 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.

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

35. Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (6/10) 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.

36. Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (7/10) 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.)

37. Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (8/10) 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

38. Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (9/10) 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)

39. Mobile Development 14 Mobile Development is challenging (10/10) 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)

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

41. Example Game 14 WP7 Version is about 200 lines of code

42. Example Game 14 Android Java Example code from a different game

43. 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

44. 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

45. 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

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

47. C++ vs C# (setup graphics) 13

48. 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)

49. 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

50. 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.)

51. 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

52. Content, Content, Content 20 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

53. Content, Content, Content 20 Step 1 : Add Content file to Content Project Step 2 : Load and use content in code

54. Content, Content, Content 20 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

55. Content, Content, Content 21 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)

56. Content, Content, Content 22 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)

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

58. 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?

59. 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

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

61. ZombieParty runs already on many Platforms 9 October 2010

62. 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 

63. 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