Friday, 15 May 2015

12+1 Tips to Optimize your Unity 2D Mobile game. iOS and Android


Learning how to optimize a game for mobiles is something that is hard to teach. Whatever you will read here now will be meaningless unless you find yourself in similar situations. iOS and Android devices are unfortunately weak and this will force you be a stronger developer. While optimizing a program should not be done at the beginning of the development cycle, you will encounter easy to follow practises that will prevent you for doing the same mistakes again and again.

Optimizing a game is half experience half art. You have to learn the shortcuts and second ways of every Import option, Unity behaviour and Line of code you write. When you will find yourself in the situation were your game is too slow in that old iPhone or Android phone of yours, you will have this guide to give you some ideas of how to proceed. In my particular case, it has been ROAR! The first game I have had to optimize seriously due to Vuforia AR plugin already using a lot of the device resources. :)

  • Tip #0: Choose your development device wisely
The slower, the better. However, don't overdo it. Having a too slow device will slow you down and will make you optimize too early, when is not necessary. I guess somewhere in the middle is where the virtue is.

There has never been so much hardware to choose from! :P