Build Notes Example

---

GenericFarmingSim Mobile Port

Build No

• 0.41
• 28 Feb 2025

Platforms

• Android
  • armeabi-v7a for most lower end devices
  • arm64-v8a for most medium to high end devices

General notes

• This is the second mobile port deliverable.
• Our primary focus was on fixing various regressions up to this point while getting the project up to speed and ensuring device compatibility.
  • Rendering and shading issues formed the bulk of this work.
  • Overall performance is improved.
  • Remedial work with various UI/UX improvements to make the mobile experience more consistent.
• There are still improvements to be made on the above, but this build incorporates various big strides so future updates will be more incremental.
• Performance expectations:
  • The framerate is currently capped at 30fps, largely yo ensure we're able to hit this across the board as a minimum for a wide range of devices with varying performance profiles. We will explore higher framerates for newer devices once we have a solid performance baseline.
  • Low end devices (older than five years) are still sitting at around 20fps on average.
  • Mid-range phones are mostly stable at 30fps with occasional lag spikes to ~25fps with lots of items on screen.
  • High-end phones maintain a constant 30fps with no spikes.

What is included in this build

Performance

• Optimized texture memory usage by compressing large textures and reducing the number of unique materials, resulting in faster load times and reduced memory footprint. (medium impact)
• Batched static objects and combined meshes where possible to minimise draw calls, significantly improving rendering efficiency on lower-end devices. (high impact)
• Reduced the frequency of physics calculations for non-critical background objects, freeing up CPU resources for core gameplay elements. (medium impact)
• Disabled real-time shadows for distant or off-screen objects, relying on baked lighting where appropriate to decrease GPU workload without noticeably affecting visual quality. (medium impact)

Functional Fixes & Improvements

• Resolved an issue where crop growth timers would pause if the player navigated away from the farm screen, ensuring all plants progress as expected regardless of player activity.
• Improved animal pathfinding to prevent livestock from getting stuck on fences or terrain, resulting in smoother movement and more natural farm behaviour.
• Enhanced the inventory system to allow for easier drag-and-drop of seeds and tools, streamlining the planting and harvesting workflow for touch controls.
• Fixed a bug where weather effects (such as rain or drought) would not consistently update crop status, ensuring environmental changes are accurately reflected in plant health.
• Updated the market interface to provide clearer feedback when selling or purchasing goods, including confirmation prompts and improved error handling for insufficient funds or storage.

What is not included in this build

• Complete migration of all shaders and materials to the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) for improved performance and compatibility across mobile devices.
• Comprehensive optimization of all character and animal meshes to reduce polygon count and improve rendering efficiency.
• Refactoring and optimization of the animation system to minimise CPU usage and support smoother transitions, especially for complex character actions.
• Implementation of a unified asset bundling and streaming system to reduce initial load times and manage memory usage more effectively.
• Full audit and optimization of particle effects to ensure consistent performance during weather events and high-activity gameplay scenarios.
• Integration of advanced occlusion culling techniques to further reduce draw calls in large or crowded farm scenes.
• Overhaul of the save/load system to support cloud saves and faster serialization/deserialization on mobile platforms.
• Expansion of localization support to additional languages and right-to-left text rendering.
• Final pass on accessibility features, including scalable UI elements and colourblind-friendly palettes.

Known issues

• The loading screen occasionally appears upside down on certain devices.
• Some UI buttons may become unresponsive after rapidly switching between menus.
• Audio cues for harvesting crops sometimes play at incorrect times or overlap.
• Tooltips may display off-screen or be partially cut off on devices with smaller resolutions.
• Weather animations (e.g., rain or snow) can stutter or fail to render after resuming the app from the background.

---