Book Image

Unity 5 Game Optimization

By : Chris Dickinson
Book Image

Unity 5 Game Optimization

By: Chris Dickinson

Overview of this book

Competition within the gaming industry has become significantly fiercer in recent years with the adoption of game development frameworks such as Unity3D. Through its massive feature-set and ease-of-use, Unity helps put some of the best processing and rendering technology in the hands of hobbyists and professionals alike. This has led to an enormous explosion of talent, which has made it critical to ensure our games stand out from the crowd through a high level of quality. A good user experience is essential to create a solid product that our users will enjoy for many years to come. Nothing turns gamers away from a game faster than a poor user-experience. Input latency, slow rendering, broken physics, stutters, freezes, and crashes are among a gamer's worst nightmares and it's up to us as game developers to ensure this never happens. High performance does not need to be limited to games with the biggest teams and budgets. Initially, you will explore the major features of the Unity3D Engine from top to bottom, investigating a multitude of ways we can improve application performance starting with the detection and analysis of bottlenecks. You'll then gain an understanding of possible solutions and how to implement them. You will then learn everything you need to know about where performance bottlenecks can be found, why they happen, and how to work around them. This book gathers a massive wealth of knowledge together in one place, saving many hours of research and can be used as a quick reference to solve specific issues that arise during product development.

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Unity 5 Game Optimization
Chris Dickinson
Nov, 2015 | 296 pages
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Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Unity 5 Game Optimization
Unity 5 Game Optimization
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Detecting Performance Issues
Detecting Performance Issues
The Unity Profiler
Best approaches to performance analysis
Targeted profiling of code segments
Saving and loading Profiler data
Final thoughts on Profiling and Analysis
Summary
2
Scripting Strategies
Scripting Strategies
Cache Component references
Obtaining Components using the fastest method
Removing empty callback declarations
Avoiding the Find() and SendMessage() methods at runtime
Disabling unused scripts and objects
Consider using distance-squared over distance
Avoid retrieving string properties from GameObjects
Update, Coroutines, and InvokeRepeating
Consider caching Transform changes
Faster GameObject null reference checks
Summary
3
The Benefits of Batching
The Benefits of Batching
Draw Calls
Materials and Shaders
Dynamic Batching
Static Batching
Summary
4
Kickstart Your Art
Kickstart Your Art
Audio
Texture files
Mesh and animation files
Summary
5
Faster Physics
Faster Physics
Physics Engine internals
Physics performance optimizations
Summary
6
Dynamic Graphics
Dynamic Graphics
Profiling rendering issues
Front end bottlenecks
Back end bottlenecks
Lighting and Shadowing
Optimizing graphics for mobile
Summary
7
Masterful Memory Management
Masterful Memory Management
The Mono platform
Memory usage optimization
Prefab pooling
The future of Mono and Unity
Summary
8
Tactical Tips and Tricks
Tactical Tips and Tricks
Editor hotkey tips
Editor interface tips
Scripting tips
Custom editors/menus tips
External tips
Summary
Index
Index

About the Reviewers

Clifford Champion has a broad background in software engineering, with years of experience spanning 3D games, Internet applications, and artificial intelligence. He holds degrees in mathematics and computer science from UCLA and UCSD, respectively. In the past, Clifford worked for video game technology company Havok (now part of Microsoft), and interactive media and design company PlainJoe Studios. Currently, he leads a software team at zSpace (zspace.com), a VR company specializing in 3D for classrooms and industry.

Clifford can be found on Twitter at @duckmaestro and welcomes discussions on any topic.

Dr. Sebastian T. Koenig received his PhD in human interface technology from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, developing a framework for individualized virtual reality cognitive rehabilitation. He obtained his diploma in psychology from the University of Regensburg, Germany, in the areas of clinical neuropsychology and virtual reality rehabilitation.

Sebastian is the founder and CEO of Katana Simulations, where he oversees the design, development, and evaluation of cognitive assessment and training simulations. His professional experience spans over 10 years of clinical work in cognitive rehabilitation and over 8 years of virtual reality research, development, and user testing. He has extensive experience as a speaker at international conferences and as a reviewer of scientific publications in the areas of rehabilitation, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, software engineering, game development, game user research, and virtual reality.

Sebastian has developed numerous software applications for cognitive assessment and training. For his work on the virtual memory task, he was awarded the prestigious Laval Virtual Award in 2011, for the Medicine and Health category. Other applications of his include the virtual reality executive function assessment in collaboration with the Kessler Foundation, New Jersey, USA, and the patent-pending Microsoft Kinect-based motor and cognitive training JewelMine/Mystic Isle at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, California, USA.

He maintains the website at www.virtualgamelab.com, which features his research and his software development projects. His website also contains a comprehensive list of tutorials for the Unity game engine.

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