Description
Real Farm is a game developed by Triangle Studio originally released in 2017. In this farming simulators players can grow crops, keep animals and build out there farming operations. The Premium Edition was developed in house and includes all DLC as well as minor gameplay and graphical enhancements
info
Platform: Xbox Series X
Engine: Unity
Year: 2021
team Size: 1*
Responsibilities
- Getting the game to run on Xbox Series X
- Implementing gameplay improvements
- Complying to the new Xbox Series X standards
- Creating a porting back end
*the Tech team consisted of 8 programmers at the time, but I was the only one who was working on the Port or anything related to the Xbox Series X
LEARNING ACHIEVEMENTS
An Old Codebase
Being originally a game from 2017, it meant that the source code I received at the beginning wasn’t in the greatest state. From a lack of documentation and refactored parts of the code sitting in custom DLLs (of which we lacked the source code) meant it was difficult to get a clear understanding of the systems in the game. It taught me the importance of clear and concise documentation for a project. I might now how a system works but those who work on it after me can’t read my mind.
A New generation
Real Farm Premium Edition was SOEDESCO’s first port to the Next generation of consoles and on top of that the first port I did to a Xbox Console. I learned a lot about the differences between it and the PlayStation. Seeing what is required to port to both consoles has given me insight on what to think of when working on any new project, so that porting or development on that platform can be a lot smoother.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
With it being my second porting project, I was able to start developing my own backend for porting. I was able to reuse a bunch of code from another cancelled port I worked on, and even with my limited knowledge of console development I was able to set something up that greatly improved the stability of the port. It was made portable enough to be reused again for another project, which greatly reduced to time needed to port the project. I taught me how useful it is to make sure you can reuse your work to save time.