Need opinions on supported devices for Gravonaut

NexusGameStudio

I have a dilemma for Gravonaut... There seems to be quite a few people who are wanting to play the game on older devices, mainly iPod Touch 2nd gen. Now Gravonaut is playable on the Touch 2nd gen pretty decently, however it can be frustrating on the iPhone 3G since there is some lag (regardless of the optimizations). Apple used to have the option to select specific devices but now its either ArmV6 or ArmV7 processors is the only selection available. If I allow ArmV6 then I may get iPhone 2G/3G users which would be unfair to them and may hurt us in user reviews.

The issue is, do I allow ArmV6 and get those people the option to play the game WITH a warning describing the lower performance (as well as have some default settings for ArmV6 users for best performance) so that Touch 2G users can use, but risk iPhone 2G/3G users?

What do you think? Also is there an option still somewhere to allow Touch users but not iPhone 2G/3G users?

quantumsheep

Hey mate,

One option would be to try and figure out where the bottlenecks are, and if possible, remove them for the lower spec devices.

You could use tshirt's 'Find out what device the player's using' technique to determine what is fluff and what isn't.

MAybe that'll help - not sure!

Good luck!

QS

NexusGameStudio

The issue is mainly music, if you turn it off in the game options, you gain a few more frames, beyond that I do not believe there is much else we can do since the rest is just the nature of the game, we are still looking into it however.

mynameisace

Hmmm, tricky one, There are still a lot of 3G users out there so maybe it would be wise to do what QS said and do Tshirt's little trick to see what device they are running and disable a few features for the lower spec'd device, including maybe the music?

Ace

NexusGameStudio

Yeah that is what I have already done, I've already run tests but sadly it is still not enough performance on iPhone 3G but on the other hand, runs well on iPod Touch 2G.

AjBlue

you could run the device find tshirt found out, in the loading screen. and thus be able your app to turn off the music for devices that are under the required amount of power

mynameisace

There nothing at all you could lose with the lower version?

Possibly use non retina graphics if phone generates less squares?

Ace

NexusGameStudio

The in-game graphics are not retina, just looks good on retina displays lol.

The options right now to make it run "decent" on iPhone 3G is disable music and disable the "scan lines" effect I have on screen to get a tolerable framerate (around 40 fps depending on level). Regardless the load times are a bit on the long side on ArmV6 devices.

I would like to try it out but I'm just afraid of pissing people off from the lower performance on their device.

quantumsheep

Right, well get rid of the scan lines effect for starters on lower devices

Also - what format are you using for the audio and what bitrate? And is it mono? (stereo files effectively double the memory footprint and will affect performance).

Hope that helps!

QS

NexusGameStudio

Audio is MP3 format, reason why I used that instead of .CAF was due to the fact that .CAF format was extremely rough sounding on the audio, most of the music did not turn out when in CAF format. All audio files are normally under 200kb with the exception of the main theme of 400kb all of a bit rate of 64kbps or if needed to be higher quality, then 80kbps. All of which are mono.

Keep in mind however, the frame difference with audio and no audio is about 2fps.

quantumsheep

Sorry, missed this - are your audio files mono or stereo?

QS

HoneyTribeStudios

Ello, I can't seem to find that 'how to detect user device' demo on Tshirt's game list. Is it still there?

Cheers

Scoots

shaz said:
Ello, I can't seem to find that 'how to detect user device' demo on Tshirt's game list. Is it still there?

Cheers

http://www.youtube.com/user/Tshirtbooth#p/a/u/4/34KgJl0ZOgY

HoneyTribeStudios

Thanks for that. Great idea Tshirt.

Cheers

HoneyTribeStudios

By the way Scoots, is rat on a scooter your game on the app store?

Scoots

No, it's not. When I first joined I did a quick search for scoots and that was one of the images so I "borrowed" it not even knowing about the Rat on a Scooter games. I have been wanting to change that , Hopefully the profiles will be back up soon.

scoots