Game porting projects are complex game development challenges beyond simply preparing a game for release on other platforms. The reality of game porting is that it’s a much more complicated process than it first seems and requires significant, thorough work to complete to a high standard.
At Magic Media, we have considerable experience with game porting projects. We adhere to a set of best practices for every project to ensure our game ports are high-quality. Though game porting is more complex than it initially appears, there are numerous ways to navigate these projects’ challenges.
Outsourcing Game Porting Projects
Some game porting projects can be relatively straightforward. Often, development studios will plan for future game ports during a game’s initial development, setting aside resources and using game engines such as Unreal Engine 5 and Unity to make this process more efficient. Even with these precautions, the challenges of game porting need to be met by a team with the experience to handle them.
For any game porting projects, working with a trusted and experienced partner can take the sting out of these projects. A viable partner like Magic Media has the experience required to take on the project and understand its ins and outs quickly – processes, technologies, communication pipelines, and even design and development quirks of the original game. While your development partner works on porting your game, your internal team resources are freed up to work on other projects.
For game porting projects where the original game is being brought to wildly different platforms that necessitate significant reworking, partners become even more valuable. Bringing games to new platforms is always time-consuming, especially so if UI elements, input methods, and visual fidelity need to be overhauled. Experienced partners can tackle these intricate porting projects to help manage resources wisely.
Understanding Target Platforms and Their Performance
The game porting process’s efficiency is heavily influenced by the development team’s understanding of the target platforms. Understanding hardware configurations is key, as this will inform how the game needs to be adjusted to attain optimal performance.
The capabilities of modern platforms differ wildly, with PCs having the most potential for running high-end games, consoles like PS5 and Xbox Series S and X being powerful with fixed hardware, Nintendo Switch being less powerful than its console competitors, and mobile being the most underpowered modern platform. Among these platforms are few commonalities outside their ability to run games – mobile relies primarily on touchscreen controls, PC builds vary wildly, and consoles experience obsolescence the longer they’re on the market.
Spending time to understand your game’s target platforms is critical to understanding what needs to be adjusted for your game porting projects. Visual fidelity will almost always need to be adjusted, sometimes lowered in the case of mobile ports, and sometimes increased in the case of consoles and PCs. Input methods need to be addressed as well, as each platform has different ways of accepting player input.
Game Porting Project Testing
Crucial to game development projects of any kind, testing is paramount in game porting projects. Even the most similar platforms, such as Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, feature differences under their respective hoods that require thorough testing to optimize game ports on both consoles.
Exhaustive testing is critical work and no aspect should be overlooked, especially parts of the game that have undergone extensive changes, such as user input, UI, and visual adjustments such as particle effects and resolution changes. Though time-consuming, this is a necessary step in delivering a consistent experience to players across the board regardless of their platform choice.
Magic Media is your one-stop solution for all game porting projects, in addition to other expert services for gaming, entertainment, and tech industry projects including full-cycle game development, co-development, art production, and more. Contact us today, and let’s create magic!
