Sumo deelt vroege beelden van Snake Pass

Snake Pass is één van de games die al snel op op de Switch verscheen. De ontwikkelaar heeft nu wat inzicht in de ontwikkeling vrij gegeven.

Snake Pass is een kleurrijke puzzelgame waarin je als de slang ‘Noodle’ door levels heen moet kronkelen, puzzels moet oplossen en voorwerpen moet verzamelen. De game is het eerste spel wat op Unreal Engine 4 draait en voor de Switch is uitgekomen. Het concept van het spel kwam voort uit een interne game jam en zag er in eerste instantie een stukje realistischer uit dan het uiteindelijke product. Zoals ze eerder al gezegd hebben, kregen ze Snake Pass al binnen twee dagen ontwikkeltijd werkende op de Switch. Hoe dat precies gelukt is, legt de Technische Directeur, Pete Harrap, in onderstaande blogpost uit.

“While Unreal Engine efficiently handles cross-platform development, when a new platform comes along there is still work to be done to ensure your project is optimised for it. As noted above, new platforms bring new challenges, and not just performance related. Remember, there might be features on a new platform that are not available on the other platforms (like docking the Nintendo Switch controller in this case). One thing Unreal Engine does really well is help get your project over 90% of the way to completion on its own. The remaining optimisation is often down to the code team to figure out and since it’s the little things that can trip you up, it’s wise to allocate development time to cover them.

In December 2016 came the most impressive part of our experience using Unreal Engine for cross-platform development. That was when we were given the task of getting Snake Pass ready to be a launch window title on Nintendo Switch. “Hold on a minute, it’s not a supported platform.” was our immediate answer. True, but Nintendo Switch support was in development at Epic so we knew we could pull it off. It was scarily close to the launch window, but Nintendo Switch platform support in Unreal Engine was almost ready and we were confident that we could meet the goal.

To achieve the launch, we worked very closely with key Epic staff, including the NVIDIA GPU specialists. With that kind of help, we were able to get the first working build on Nintendo Switch made in under two days. Over the course of the next few months leading up to the launch, we managed to find all the required optimisations to ensure that platform’s unique docked and undocked modes were covered.”

Meer over de algemene ontwikkeling van de game kan je lezen door op “Bron” te klikken. Daar vind je de volledige post van Pete op de website van Unreal.

Bron