Video Games Porting

By Juegostudio | Video Games | September 24th, 2020

The significance and hurdles of porting video games to different platforms

One of the critical aspects of game development companies is determining the right programming language and platform for development. A game that you develop in a certain programming language might not be able to operate on a specific platform. Developing video games that can seamlessly be transported to and executable on cross-platform devices is a crucial task.

Often, video game developers need to pay attention to the operating system differences or browser compatibilities and incompatibilities to ensure that players have a frictionless and enjoyable video gaming experience.

What makes PC porting of games so important?

1. Cost and Efficiency

Inarguably writing a script right from the scratch is not only an exhaustive experience for developers but also bears huge implications in terms of operating efficiency and cost of the game development firm. Playing games on consoles comes at a considerably higher price as compared to PC gaming.

2. Flexibility

Although gaming consoles such as Playstation or Xbox are setting record standards, often a PC offers huge flexibility to the players. You can customize your viewing experience on a curved LED screen of an impressive resolution or go for LAN connections to play among your group of friends. You could even choose an emulator environment for playing your favourite game. A PC game is far better in terms of flexibility when compared to gaming consoles.

3. Better Graphics

A game looks much better most often on a PC than on a console. Although for low-cost PCs there might not be a significant amount of difference between PCs and consoles, however, if you were to compare with a little on the higher end PCs, the resolutions are much better. This is an important reason why game porting is so important.

Top challenges in video games porting

When it comes to video game porting there are several challenges that come in the way of even experienced developers. Though it is a known fact that not all video games might be fully functional across all operating systems and gaming platforms, a full-fledged testing across multiple platforms is often overlooked by beginner and intermediate game developers.

Although developers plan beforehand, a few details could always go unnoticed. Addressing them at a later stage would take up a significant amount of time, effort and resources.

In order to avoid such wastage of time, it is very important to start out with a clear project plan. The different stages in the game development project must be listed out, the failure models clearly outlined, and toll gates put to address them. Indigenous studios like. Juego Studio provides you with expert hands who are well-versed in cross-platform game development.

Some of the top challenges with respect to porting video games are as below.

1. Closed Source Tools

The major obstacle in porting a game is attributable to the usage of closed source tools. If you are using closed source tools then the libraries or packages are often rendered invalid in other tools. It is a lot more difficult and less feasible to make changes to the backend codes to allow support for the script or library function.

On the other hand, even if there is no support for a particular functionality in an open-source tool, there is always an option to code up something new and extend the functionality without much hassle. The usage of closed source tools and related packages and libraries often make the game porting task challenging.

2. Language

The choice of the right scripting language is also extremely critical in this entire journey of porting games. It is true that there is not one unique single language that can solve all the problems of platform portability. However, it is important for a developer to know the pros and cons of the system in and out and accordingly determine the best-suited language to use.

There are a lot of scripting and compiler level languages to choose from. What makes the best fit often depends upon a lot of factors – such as how easy or difficult the language is to learn or debug, or in terms of recalibration.

3. CPU Utility

Without mentioning resource utilization, the topic of game porting might remain incomplete. Efficient usage of resources, be it CPU or any other memory, is extremely important while making the consideration for porting a video game. Many times developers end up writing long drawn scripts or hard-to-understand codes, which hit the performance badly.

Latency in the development modes needs to be clearly ruled out and tested out thoroughly before deploying a game in the production environment. Unnecessary delay in rendering images and the environment can be a distasteful experience for a player. A lot of care and thought should go behind deciding on the right box of tools, language and technologies to ensure performance is not affected significantly.

Conclusion

Game porting is an important area and is crucial to understand for game developers and investors alike. Although Playstation and Xbox have created huge demand in the market, the limitations of gaming consoles make enough room for game porting to be an absolute necessity.

Not being vigilant about porting video games on different platforms could result in frustrating hiccups in game development. It is therefore crucial to get support from an experienced game development studio that has efficient and experienced teams and has a history of supporting such varied requirements.

Juego Studio is one such video game development company with a global presence and a happy clientele that speaks volumes about how their strategic engagement has helped create successful games. If you are worried about game porting or would like to learn more about the subject, it is a great idea to consult one of the local firms before jumping on your next game development initiative.

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