"We handle everything in-house: from programming and art, to QA and community management. The mobile version is all the more impressive when you consider that it was predominately ported by just 13 people working on the title for a little over a year. That’s where most of our memory savings came from, along with determining which high-level features just wouldn’t fit in memory, such as the bosses." The developer reiterated how integral UE4 was in the porting process and stated, "It would have taken twice as much time without the Unreal toolset." Then we re-parented all of the MICs in the game to these new materials and tweaked values," they added, "New assets entirely consisted of some detailing textures we sampled on top of diffuse textures to get away with a lower texture resolution. "First we created about 20-30 simple materials that replicated the general look of each type of asset (dinosaur skin, beach sand, building materials). How did War Drum Studios get the mobile version looking so good? The developer credits UE4 for much of the help, "Unreal Engine 4 enthusiasts will be very happy to know that 95 percent of this happened just in the editor! This is not too hard if you are working with a complete game that already has an established look and feel, it’s just a lot of asset work." To keep frame rates smooth, War Drum Studios employed a few intelligent performance-saving measures. The development team is impressively squeezing every ounce of performance from mobile processors. Like the desktop version, it features vast draw distances, an immersive day-to-night cycle, and great water and fire effects. It raises the bar for how good games on phones can look. Whether you've played the mobile version of ARK or have just seen snippets of its gameplay, you know that it looks visually amazing.
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We removed the boss fights due to size constraints, but we’ve got over 80 different creatures in addition to all of the engrams from the original PC release." The developer elaborated that the port was based on the PC's Early Access 2017 build, "We feature all 50 square kilometers of the island and its surrounding body of water with only a few caves omitted. While War Drum Studio did tweak some elements of the mobile version to run optimally on phones, they assert that the game is very similar to its desktop counterpart. Fortunately, they were able to engineer a solution. "Early on, we weren’t sure if we’d be able to support the aquatic and flying creatures," they told us. One of the main goals that War Drum Studios set out for itself was to faithfully recreate the desktop version for phones and to maintain its high-graphical pedigree in the process, but even they questioned whether they would have to make significant compromises. To see how War Drum Studios accomplished this colossal task, we interviewed CEO Thomas Williamson and Community Manager Jordan Kleeman to learn how they were able to port such a gargantuan title to the smallest of platforms using Unreal Engine 4. This certainly isn't a heavily trimmed-down version of the base game. While many mobile ports of AAA games offer watered-down mechanics, players of the mobile version of ARK: Survival Evolved largely get the same great experience. Available across iOS and Android, it features a massive island, over 80 dinosaurs, and the same crafting and building mechanics from the established game. The mobile version of the action-adventure survival game offers an equally thrilling experience as its PC and console counterparts. The recent release of the mobile version of ARK: Survival Evolved sets a stunning example for how developers can port AAA console-quality titles to mobile devices. To turn this monumental task into a reality, the publisher enlisted the help of War Drum Studios, a seasoned developer who's worked on acclaimed mobile games that include Bully, Grand Theft Auto, and Auralux.
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Considering the graphically-intensive open-world game takes full advantage of high-end PCs and modern consoles, how could it possibly run on significantly less powerful smartphones? By Jimmy Thang When Studio Wildcard announced that ARK: Survival Evolved would be coming to mobile platforms earlier this year, the news stunned the video game industry.