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Behaviour Interactive and Dragons Lake
Behaviour Interactive, the video game studio behind the popular survival horror game Dead by Daylight, asked us to help launch Meet Your Maker on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, and PS5.
In Meet Your Maker, you are a survivor in a post-apocalyptic world. You need to scavenge resources from Outposts made by other players to upgrade your gear, progress, and evolve your Chimera, a mysterious experiment meant to save humankind. You also need to build your own Outposts with guards and traps. You also need to create impregnable Outposts, fortified with traps and guards to protect your resources from raiders. Killing other players who try to raid your Outposts, provides you with valuable materials essential to your survival.
Killing raiders gives you more materials to survive and advance.
The game relies on outposts made by players, which made the porting process very challenging. We had to deal with platform-specific differences to make the content run smoothly on each platform, without compromising the game's stability and performance. Keep reading to learn how we solved the technical challenge and achieved a successful porting result.
Our project started with a compact team comprising 5 skilled engineers. However, as the workload gradually intensified, we recognized the need for additional resources to meet the demands. At some point during the project development, we had 15 engineers and quality assurance (QA) specialists on the team. This expansion allowed us to better handle the mounting workload.
We chose our team members carefully for each stage of the project, based on their expertise and abilities. This way, we could adjust our capacity and make the most of our skills throughout the development process. This was our approach to team composition for the whole project.
We worked closely alongside our client’s core team, operating in a co-development setup. This close integration allowed us to have access to the same source code and assets as the internal developers. While they focused on adding new content, we took on the responsibility of optimizing the game for porting to different platforms, automating performance testing across all platforms, and ensuring the game met the certification requirements of Sony and Microsoft.
We managed to ensure continuous and streamlined development, despite the time difference. Behaviour Interactive would launch builds at night, and we would promptly address any problems that arose by the next morning.
As the collaboration progressed, the client made improvements to their process by formalizing rules for making changes in the build and implementing tests prior to assembly.
This proactive approach led to a decrease in the number of bugs we needed to address, streamlining the overall development process.
The core essence of Meet Your Maker revolves around user-generated content, which adds complexity and scope to the porting process and presents a unique testing challenge.
Traditional testing methods fall short of adequately addressing the complexity of user-generated content. To make sure players have a smooth experience, testing this game required us to apply more advanced and automated techniques.
We created numerous maps representing different player-created scenarios, including all kinds of traps and AI-controlled guards. In total, we developed around 40 maps for construction mode and raid mode to thoroughly validate the performance of these elements and their combinations.
To figure out where the game could use some performance boosts, we used the PerfReportTool that comes with the Unreal Engine.
It allowed us to gather all the important performance data during gameplay, delivered in CSV format, which we could then analyze further.
To really get into the nitty-gritty of how the game was performing and make decisions on how to optimize it, we used a custom tool developed by our R&D team. With this tool, we could analyze the CSV files from the Unreal CSV profiler and get useful stats like frame time, CPU time, GPU time, memory use, and network replication time on a user-friendly multilevel dashboard. This helped us see how close we were to hitting our performance goals.
Our custom tool also let us play around with different performance scenarios, like checking out the average performance, finding those pesky spikes, and figuring out which frames were causing trouble. We could also dig into specific components like graphics and gameplay to see how they were holding up. With this improved workflow, we didn't have to sit around waiting for QA reports. We jumped right in and fixed problems as soon as we spotted them.
We used a combination of manual testing and automation to compare performance over time, assess the effectiveness of optimizations, and observe any potential regressions.
Tailoring the game for Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, and PS5
We used the Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) to make the game work smoothly on Xbox One, Xbox Series X. But that wasn't all – we had to tailor the game's functionality to suit the unique specifications of each platform, addressing specific challenges along the way.
We had some interesting challenges integrating third-party functionality with Unreal Engine.
First up was voice chat integration. Unreal Engine provides a standard voice chat feature, which we decided to leverage for Meet Your Maker. But, during the development process, we found some bugs within the engine itself that affected the voice chat functionality.
Determined to overcome this hurdle, we dug deep into the source code of Unreal Engine and managed to identify what was causing those issues. We promptly reported these bugs to the Unreal Developer Network (UDN), a platform for licensed developers, to contribute to the improvement of the engine's voice chat capabilities.
It was a rewarding experience knowing that our efforts would benefit the wider community of Unreal Engine developers.ʼ
Another integration we worked on was FSR, or FidelityFX Super Resolution. At the request of our client, we integrated this rendering technology developed by AMD into Meet Your Maker. FSR is a dynamic resolution scaling technique that maximizes GPU performance while maintaining excellent visual quality. By incorporating FSR within the Unreal Engine framework, we were able to enhance the game's performance, delivering a smoother and visually stunning experience to players.
To be able to release the game on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, and PS5, we needed to adhere to a strict set of Microsoft's and Sony's rules and requirements.
For multiplayer games like Meet Your Maker, the certification process becomes even more demanding. Since content is available on various platforms, we had to ensure optimal performance on both Sony and Microsoft platforms.
Meeting the certification requirements while delivering a smooth and enjoyable multiplayer experience required careful attention to detail and thorough testing to identify and fix any issues that could impact gameplay or performance. With content being available to play across multiple platforms we did our best to provide players with equal joy with the game to its fullest.
Meet Your Maker is an awesome game that combines user-generated content with intense FPS combat, resulting in a truly unique experience.
We met the performance goals for the game, even with the user-generated content that made it challenging. Optimizing the game to run at 30 FPS on Xbox One and PS4, and 60 FPS on Xbox Series X and PS5 was no small feat, considering the dynamic nature of UGC and the diverse range of hardware platforms.
Working alongside Behaviour Interactive on this project was an incredible experience that showcased the importance of collaboration and adaptability in game development.
By working closely with our partners, we were able to streamline the development process, divide responsibilities, learn from each other, and improve the overall player experience.
By providing our partners with valuable assistance, we helped them reach a larger audience of players, ensuring that Meet Your Maker was accessible to as many people as possible. We feel proud that our work enabled an even greater number of people to experience and enjoy this captivating game that is truly hard to put down.
Dragon’s Lake Entertainment has been a critical contributor in bringing Meet Your Maker to market. DLE displayed an impressive technical expertise, showcasing a deep knowledge of low-level optimization evidenced by an ability to fine-tune performance and bring technical resources and imaginative approaches to the table.
Over the course of the project, DLE seamlessly integrated with our internal team to create a collaborative, communicative environment that made exchanging ideas easy and ensured constant smooth progress. We appreciate their engagement and team spirit and were thrilled to find what felt like colleagues within our co-development partnership. We hope to work together again in the future.
