Gamedev handheld project pitfalls, Part 1.

On this 365-day anniversary of my previous post - Part 0: https://devrant.com/rants/19193978/years-ago-we-had-been-developing-a-game-for-the-handheld-consoles-we-were-very-y , I provide you this follow-up. /* Just shows you how lazy I can be when it comes to writing things down... */ Enjoy.

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# Part 1 #
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The other reason the project had troubled development: incorrect assumptions.

Imagine you're developing a game w/ certain specs of the hardware in mind... only later to find out that your assumptions had been spectacularly wrong.

The project's development was going forward, as best as it could w/ the staff we had, && the problems coming down from the publisher. I was tasked w/ checking the project's compliance w/ the platform's requirements. One of the things that caught my attention was the amount of RAM the game assumed it had available. The game had been using twice as much as there actually was available on the retail version of the console.

I can't say for certain what the reason was for that. It could've been that the devkits had twice the amount of RAM for development purposes... or because the later model of the console had that amount of RAM. So... either someone failed to read the documentation to learn that the retail hardware has much less memory than they assumed or the idiots in charge though they could release the game by targeting the upgraded version of the console, only. /* Now, guess whether this was possible... come on, guess... */

Initially, when I brought up the problem, people dismissed it && told me to !worry about it. /* Yeah, sure. Whatever you say. */ I had a report for it, so my hands were clean. In fact, once the console creator provided feedback for the game during their periodical check-ins, they mentioned this as a problem, too. Laughed my ass off. Just imagine... you're somewhere around half-way into the game's development && you learn that you actually have only half of the RAM you thought you had. To meet the requirement, a lot of work had to be put into reshaping the game. Assets had to be redone or just recompressed, depending on what was feasible. Physics engine was one of the things that had been hit the most due to the change. Where in the initial builds you had the ability to interact w/ objects very far away from you, the change had to be so drastic, that the objects would get activated for interaction in a radius around 4 or 3 meters away from the player's character. It made things way worse for the gameplay, but at that stage of development this was the only way forward.

Lessons learned:
0. Read the fucking documentation,

1. Don't ever assume that your studio can get an exemption from the rules,
2. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

You read it first on devRant. https://devrant.com/rants/19448028/on-this-365-day-anniversary-of-my-previous-post-part-0-https-devrant-com-rants-1 ... the site's still kicking... somehow...