At Unite Copenhagen, this session looked at profiling and optimizing games with realistic styling for mobile platforms. Get a look at Plarium's approach to optimizations, Xcode profiling, optimizing environment shaders, character shaders, shadow rendering and VFX. Speaker: Stanislav Herasymenko – Plarium Watch the session on YouTube: https://youtu.be/tsGmWvf7I6c

2. WHO WE ARE:
PLARIUM GLOBAL
We’re one of the world’s fastest growing developers of mobile, social
and web-based games with over 250M registrations and 3M DAU.
● Founded in 2009
● HQ in Israel
● 8 Offices & Studios
We’re home to some of the best talent in the social and mobile gaming industry.
Over 1200 professionals in 8 offices and development studios across Europe
and the United States.

3. OPTIMIZING
GPU PERFORMANCE OF
RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS
Without Graphics Programmers
Stanislav
Herasymenko
Lead Technical Artist

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INTRODUCTION
What Is Raid: Shadow Legends
...And Who Is This Guy?

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6Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS
INTRODUCTION
■ Hero collector RPG
■ Realistic “Dark fantasy”
graphic style
■ 7 million downloads
■ 500k active players
■ Users spend 30 mins/day
in Raid
■ Featured in Google Play
and Apple App Store

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7Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
TECHNICAL ART TEAM
INTRODUCTION

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8Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
RENDERING OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
■ Characters
■ Environment
■ Shadows
■ Particles
■ Reflections
■ Effects
■ Bloom

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9Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
XCODE FRAME CAPTURE
INTRODUCTION

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UNITY FRAME DEBUGGER
INTRODUCTION

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ENVIRONMENT
RENDERING
Tiles | Shadows | Lightmaps | ShaderGUI

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ENVIRONMENT SHADER
ENVIRONMENT RENDERING
■ Fills a large screen area
■ Supports texture blending
■ Highest priority
for optimization
■ Can be used in different
variations: with or without
lightmaps, with or without
texture blending, etc.

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ENVIRONMENT SHADER
ENVIRONMENT RENDERING
Total frame time:
5.8 ms
Total environment
time: 1.87 ms (32%)

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BENEFITS OF SHADERGUI
ENVIRONMENT RENDERING
var tilesHaveAlpha = false;
if (secondTex || thirdTex)
{
var textureProps = new[] {_mainTex, _secondTex, _thirdTex};
foreach (var tex in textureProps)
{
if (tex.textureValue == null)
continue;
var path = AssetDatabase.GetAssetPath(tex.textureValue);
var textureImporter = (TextureImporter) AssetImporter.GetAtPath(path);
if (!textureImporter.DoesSourceTextureHaveAlpha())
continue;
tilesHaveAlpha = true;
break;
}
if (tilesHaveAlpha)
{
_depthBlend.floatValue = 1;
material.EnableKeyword("DEPTHBLEND");
_materialEditor.ShaderProperty(_depth, _depth.displayName);
}
else
{
_depthBlend.floatValue = 0;
material.DisableKeyword("DEPTHBLEND");
}

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SHADOW FILTERING
ENVIRONMENT RENDERING
■ Soft shadows
■ Rendering cost of depth test
■ Limited number
of shadowcasters
■ Low shadow resolution
■ Controlled environment
OFF ON

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SHADOW MASKS
ENVIRONMENT RENDERING
■ We position the shadow mask camera
not according to camera position, but
based on average character position.
■ No need to do any shadow related
computations in environment shader,
we just multiply it by shadow mask
texture, and that’s it.
■ Blur is applied to low res shadow pass.

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SHADOWS IN XCODE
ENVIRONMENT RENDERING
Shadow mask rendering took
1.94 ms, or 9.2% of frame
time on iPad Air.

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CHARACTER
RENDERING
A Song Of PBR Ice & Fire

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CHARACTER SHADER
CHARACTER RENDERING
■ About surface shaders
■ PBR
■ Shader Forge
■ Channels
■ “Freeze”
■ Other Effects

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CHARACTER EFFECTS
CHARACTER RENDERING

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21Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
CHARACTERS IN XCODE
CHARACTER RENDERING

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22Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
DEVICE-BASED SETTINGS ADJUSTMENT
CHARACTER RENDERING

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23Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
PROFILING ON DIFFERENT DEVICES
CHARACTER RENDERING

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24Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
SHADOW MAPS?
CHARACTER RENDERING

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25Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
MULTI COMPILE ISSUES
CHARACTER RENDERING
#pragma shader_feature __ VERTEX_ANIMATION
#pragma shader_feature __ EMISSION
#pragma multi_compile __ CHARACTERSHADOWS
#pragma multi_compile __ MATCAP
#pragma multi_compile __ FREEZE
#pragma multi_compile __ INVISIBILITY
#pragma multi_compile_shadowcaster
#pragma multi_compile_instancing
#pragma multi_compile_fwdbase_fullshadows
#define LIGHTPROBE_SH 1

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VISUAL EFFECTS
Artistic Freedom VS Hardware

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OVERDRAW :(
VISUAL EFFECTS
iPad Air 2 (2014)
Lava particles rendering
took 3.26 ms,
Other particles and
transparent effect parts
took 5.82 ms.
As a result, total frame
time went up to
20.6 ms, which is
substantially more than
target 16 ms.

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OVERDRAW
VISUAL EFFECTS
iPad Air 2 (2014)
Blades effect rendering
took 0.05 ms,
Other particles and
transparent effect parts
took 3.6 ms.
Total frame time in this
case is 12.8 ms, which is
good.

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RAIN EFFECT
VISUAL EFFECTS
iPad Air 2 (2014)
Rain took 0.504 ms
to render.
Vertex shader took
0.405 ms.

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RAIN EFFECT
VISUAL EFFECTS
float random = v.uv2.y;
float secondRandom = v.uv3.x;
float thirdRandom = v.uv3.y;
float startTime = lerp(0.0f, _BurstTime, random);
float particleLifetime = _Lifetime - startTime;
float maxLifetime = lerp(_MinLifetime, _MaxLifetime, secondRandom);
particleLifetime = fmod(particleLifetime, maxLifetime);
particleLifetime = max(0, particleLifetime);
float timeRatio = particleLifetime/maxLifetime;
float4 particlePos = float4(v.uv1.x, v.uv1.y, v.uv2.x, 1.0f);
float particleSpeed = lerp(_MaxSpeed, _MinSpeed, thirdRandom);
particleSpeed = lerp(particleSpeed, particleSpeed * _SpeedDamp, timeRatio);
_Force *= particleLifetime * particleSpeed;
float4 movement = float4(_Force.x, _Force.y, _Force.z, 0.0);
float4 worldCoord = mul(unity_ObjectToWorld, particlePos) + mul(unity_ObjectToWorld, movement);
float4 viewPos = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_V, worldCoord) + float4(v.vertex.xyz, 1) - particlePos;
float4 outPos = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_P, viewPos);
o.vertex = outPos;

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32Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
BLOOM
VISUAL EFFECTS
OFF ON

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33Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
BLOOM
VISUAL EFFECTS
● We really want it
● Low Resolution Buffer
● We only need it for VFX
● We can manage without depth
testing for bloom
● Post effects are normally drawn
on full screen and cause a lot of
overdraw

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34Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
BLOOM OPTIMIZATION
VISUAL EFFECTS

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35Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
BLOOM OPTIMIZATION
VISUAL EFFECTS

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36Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
BLOOM OPTIMIZATION
VISUAL EFFECTS
o.vertex = float4(v.vertex.xy * 2, 0, 1);
o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.texcoord, _MainTex);
float2 sampleMiddle = float2(0.5f / _NumberOfQuads.x, 0.5f / _NumberOfQuads.y) + v.texcoord1;
float2 sampleLowLeft = v.texcoord1;
float2 sampleLowRight = float2(1.0f / _NumberOfQuads.x, 0.0f) + v.texcoord1;
float2 sampleUpLeft = float2(0.0f, 1.0f / _NumberOfQuads.y) + v.texcoord1;
float2 sampleUpRight = float2(1.0f / _NumberOfQuads.x, 1.0f / _NumberOfQuads.y) + v.texcoord1;
float4 texSample = tex2Dlod(_MainTex, float4(sampleMiddle, 0.0f, 0.0f));
texSample += tex2Dlod(_MainTex, float4(sampleLowLeft, 0.0f, 0.0f));
texSample += tex2Dlod(_MainTex, float4(sampleLowRight, 0.0f, 0.0f));
texSample += tex2Dlod(_MainTex, float4(sampleUpLeft, 0.0f, 0.0f));
texSample += tex2Dlod(_MainTex, float4(sampleUpRight, 0.0f, 0.0f));
if(texSample.r + texSample.g + texSample.b < 0.0001f)
{
o.vertex = float4(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
}

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38Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
LIGHT SHAFTS
VISUAL EFFECTS
Scene View Game View

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39Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
SIMPLE VS MEGA SHADERS
VISUAL EFFECTS

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40Graphical Tricks in Raid: Shadow Legends
ANDROID PROFILING
VISUAL EFFECTS
■ GAPID – good for general frame
overview, but any profiling information
is missing (you don’t get your FPS
or frame time metrics).
■ Snapdragon Profiler – better, you can
get many useful performance metrics.
Has a snapshot feature, though
I couldn't get it to work with our game.

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CONCLUSIONS
We Are Definitely Not Perfect

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SOME THINGS WENT WRONG
CONCLUSIONS
■ Frame drops occur on some devices
■ Some effects need optimization
■ There are many places in our game
with noticeable lags
■ Our VFX shader workflow can be optimized
■ Character shader can be optimized

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SOME THINGS WENT RIGHT
CONCLUSIONS
■ Most people think that the game looks good
■ It runs on most modern phones
■ Graphical performance is acceptable
■ Some parts are decently optimized (environment shader)
■ There is a lot of content (including VFX), this was crucial
for game’s success
■ The game is overall successful
■ 120 fps on iPad Pros with 120Hz screens

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JOIN US
talents@plarium.com
linkedin.com/company/plarium
instagram.com/plarium
company.plarium.com

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QUESTIONS?
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1
pZt8k1EjMFuxdRLekwpze8nzcyEW0u4E
HVeko6u0BKs/edit?usp=sharing

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THANK YOU