11 Lessons Learnt From Developing Take Cover! (White Nights Conference Prague 2017) The official conference website — http://wnconf.com

1. 11 LESSONS FROM DEVELOPING
TAKE COVER
MAREK-MARTIN MATYSKA
GAMAJUN GAMES

2. GAMAJUN GAMES
• Founded in 2012, Located in Brno
• Focused from the start on work for hire, to gather experience on Mobile.
• In late 2014 development of our own mobile game – TakeCover has begun.

3. TAKE COVER
• Take Cover is midcore strategy multiplayer game for mobile/tablet
• Combination of base builder and combat elements
• Player is able to directly control troops on the battlefield
• Featured by Apple in Europe
• Nominated for best mobile game and best multiplayer game on Casual
Connect in Tel Aviv 2016

4. DESIGN CLARIFICATIONS
• Initially game was designed to be Single-player soldier vs soldier experience
• After research, decision was made to switch to multiplayer
• Do we go Synchronous or Asynchronous?
• Due to technical side of Synchronous multiplayer, we had to redesign the game to fit Asynchronous
• Ended up being reversed tower-defense.

5. GAME ECONOMY DECISIONS
• Designing the game economy we had to come with set of currencies
• To simplify the system, we ended up with two soft currencies and one premium
• The amount of currency types limits developer control over player progression
as well as limiting the possibilities of special offering to generate extra
revenue
• Fixed by preparing the system to enable us to add additional currencies.
• However it is much harder to do after the game is already released.

6. SKILL ELEMENT IN FREE 2 PLAY ENVIRONMENT
• Unique twist of our strategy game is direct control of troops on the battlefield
• This allows players to leverage their playing capabilities to maximum
• Proven to be difficult challenge for us as developers to balance the game.
• Challenges the F2P model in a way, that even a higher level player can be defeated
by lower level player if he is playing perfectly

7. MATCHMAKING
• To provide the best possible experience for our players, we created a complex
ruleset for our matchmaking.
• Proven to be an error due to relatively small community in the early release of the
game.
• To improve the waiting times, we had to ease the restrictions
• Which caused higher unbalance and disrupted the experience of our players
• Create the server code to allow quick modifications based on the size of your player
base

8. MEMORY SIZE
• During the Soft-Launch we’ve noticed that our game has increased its memory
size to levels that we were not confident with
• By doing research we have found out extremely detailed textures
• By looking at the Data we have spotted places that did not require this
detailed graphics

9. MEMORY USAGE
• During the investigation of Memory size we’ve noticed Memory usage issues
• Upon looking at the data of tutorial completion of weaker devices we have noticed massive
drop between tutorial 1 and 2 when military base is loaded
• We have fixed this in two ways
A) first our graphic department had to repack all the sprite and texture atlases
B) We have created a priority list for all our assets what needs to loaded immediately
and what can be postponed
• This have resulted in massive improvement of performance on weaker devices as well as huge
improvement in loading times on all devices

10. LOCALIZATION
• During our preparation for global launch we were thinking what can we do to
improve the experience
• Decision was made to localize to multiple languages
• This proved to be a double-edged blade
• We have gathered a positive reviews, however it forces us to localize new
text we add to all the languages.
• Our lesson is to treat localization as a treat to the community, once the player
base in that given country reaches reasonable size.

11. RESPECTING THE DATA CULTURE
• During our soft launch we had to cut features to be able to launch the game
• When the data started flowing in, instead of scraping the existing designs, we
started to fit them
• This proved to be an error and the correct approach was to scrap everything we had
and craft new features to directly reflect the needs of our game

12. PUBLISHER PARTNERSHIP
• We have partnered with publisher to help us launch our game
• However we did not spend enough time unifying the 3rd party solutions
• We have ended up implementing different SDKs for Advertisement,
Attribution and Analytics
• This proved to be completely unnecessary if we would unite our views upfront

13. FEATURING CURSE OR BLESSING ?
• While Featuring is a blessing for any developer to have be sure you are
prepared!
• During our Soft Launch everything went well and smooth
• Being featured by Apple in most of Europe caused insane traffic and pressure
on our servers
• The Damage it causes to your reviews is very hard to repair

14. SUMMARY
• Create your high level design while respecting your technical possibilities!
• Craft your Game economy to give you control and options!
• Be cautious about Skill element in Free 2 Play Environment!
• Code your matchmaking so you are able to modify it quickly!
• Think why your game is increasing in size and if it brings value!
• Test your game after adding each new feature for memory usage!
• Use localization as a treat to the community!
• Don’t bend your data, bend the features!
• Be upfront with your publisher about 3rd party solutions and unite your vision!
• It is easier to prepare yourself for smooth featuring than repairing the damage!

15. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!
QUESTIONS ?
MAREK-MARTIN MATYSKA
GAMAJUN GAMES