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Facilitating Time to Market of Video Game Production by 80%

C#
.NET

Description

A video game developer turned to Altoros to build a sequel to its bestseller, streamlining delivery of future games and enabling ease of maintenance.

Brief results of the collaboration:

  • The customer released a sequel to its best-selling sports simulation in 3 months instead of 6 and delivered 1.5x more features than planned initially.
  • Thanks to a modular architecture and reusability of system components, the company reduced time to market by 80%, saving up to €87,000 on game production for multiple platforms (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, etc.).
  • The engineering efforts around porting C++ to C# allowed to prevent critical bugs in production, while facilitating daily activities for the customer's in-house designers and developers.

The customer

Based in Australia, the customer develops sports video games. Since its foundation in 2001, the provider has sold around 359,000 game copies. In 2021, the customer was acquired by a leading European gaming company for €35 million.

The need

The provider had a best-selling video game with around 100,000 unique players. To continue the success of its smash hit, the company wanted to build a sequel using NoesisGUI. This Windows Presentation Foundation–like (WPF) framework offers cross-platform capabilities to speed up development, advanced navigation options, improved performance, etc. However, the expertise around WPF coupled with C# and C++ is quite rare in Australia, and recruiting might take up to 6–12 months.

Relying on Altoros, the company wanted to employ the necessary talent in .NET development to accelerate onboarding and reduce associated costs. Aiming to streamline the production of new games, code reusability was a top priority.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

  • NoesisGUI imposed certain limitations affecting user experience in the sports simulation. The framework version available at the time did not support custom shaders used to deliver a realistic computer image. Furthermore, it was impossible to customize logos created by players for their teams.
  • The customer's in-house designers utilized Microsoft Expression Blend to build user interface elements (e.g., buttons). The tool generates the XAML markup language, which is then compiled by developers to deliver an executable program. With no expertise in XAML, designers could not notice any inconsistencies that might lead to unexpected errors in production (e.g., object displacement) after compilation.
  • NoesisGUI uses C++, while Microsoft Blend works on C#. For the convenience of the customer’s in-house specialists responsible for the game’s animation and graphics, it was important to port C++ code to C# without any bugs.

The solution

Stage 1. .NET engineers at Altoros started off by building a proof of concept (PoC) that imitated the functionality of a tab controller. Based on the PoC, the customer chose Altoros as a partner among multiple competitors to develop a fully fledged sequel. The team at Altoros was able to kick off the project immediately after that.

Following the Agile methodology, the developers moved in frequent iterations, delivering viable results in the first weeks. To meet nonfunctional requirements, the engineers opted for a modular architecture that promotes independence and reusability of system components, contributing to ease of maintenance and troubleshooting. This also helped to isolate XAML markup from production environments.

Then, the team built the modules that enabled users to track avatar's health and game progress, tweak multiple settings, etc.

Stage 2. The developers at Altoros utilized the NanoSVG library to upload/create logos. The engineers also delivered an algorithm allowing to customize logos with geometric elements.

Stage 3. The team at Altoros decided to manually port C++ code to C# as available automated tools often bring about errors and bugs, which are then hard to identify and time-consuming to fix.

Stage 4. By upgrading NoesisGUI to the latest version, the team at Altoros achieved realistic visual effects. The developers enabled different navigation options (swiping, scrolling, etc.) via a keyboard/mouse/touchpad/gamepad.

€87K

saved per project

2x

faster delivery

80%

less time on development

The outcome

Partnering with Altoros, the customer released a sequel to its best-selling video game in just 3 months instead of 6. Thanks to the Agile methodology, the company also delivered 1.5x more features than planned. With reusable system components, the organization saved up to €87,000 on game development and shortened time to market by 80%, while launching the product on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, and other platforms.

Technology stack

Programming languages

С++, C#

Frameworks and tools

NoesisGUI, Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Expression Blend, NanoSVG, XAML

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Alex Tsimashenka
Business Development Director
a.tsimashenka@altoroslabs.com
Headquarters
+1 (650) 419-3379
Toll-Free
1-855-ALTOROS