As programmers, you need to be aware of the limitations of any particular platform you wish to work on. This involves understanding the hardware that is being used and how far you can push them to get the best performance possible. Other factors that need to be considered are FPS, resolution, active elements, file and application size, along with a lot more. In this blog I will be going over the limitations of developing a game on the 3DS and how its hardware and other features could affect that game’s development and performance.
Firstly I will only be covering the New 3DS, not the Original, XL or 2DS. Even though they have similar setups, there are other factors you need to consider like increased resolution, lack of 3D capability and different hardware. So lets cover some hardware,
- Processor – 804 MHz ARM11 MPCore quad-core
- GPU – 266 MHz DMP PICA200
- RAM – 256 MB
- Resolutions – Top Screen: 800×240, Bottom Screen 320x 240
So what do these mean for game development, well the 3DS isn’t all that powerful of a machine. It’s processor is a quad core so it present a decent opportunity for multi-threading but overall is fairly weak when it comes to performance. Its GPU is a PICA200 which is a Japaneses specific GPU design that’s embedded into the system and was designed for high-performance arcade systems. Has 256 mb of memory which is tiny in comparison to today’s standards. So overall not to great, however this system is not meant for high end AAA gaming but instead portable arcade games and apps.
In terms of its core limitations, its lack of RAM is a major concern as you need to be careful with what and how much data your game will cashe into the system for quicker processing. This would suggest reducing as much data information into the bits possible for cashing, data like player and enemy position are simple enough as they are an X,Y,Z coordinate (3 bits), player stats can be saved as string of numbers that can be called a processed quickly. Optimisation methods like these would need to be thought off to counter the lack of RAM in this system.
Another major limitation is its resolution but this can also be a good thing. Since the resolution is quite small it will take less processing time to render sprites, animations and other data. This means more time and effort can go into making more detailed assets and system as they would run smoother and have less of a performance hit. However caution is needed as the processor, as mentioned before, is quite weak with the smaller resolutions being a way of countering it. Have many active elements on screen at once in comparison to higher detailed assets would cause much higher processing to be needed and therefore lower the entire performance of the machine.
Its duel screens is another factor that needs to be taken into consideration, When designing a game for the 3DS you will probably think of interesting game play features that the second touch screen could be used for, however touch screens dont tend to be the fastest, processing wise, and performance needs to be considered if the feature works better on the main screen and just using a button. The 3D functionality of the system can also take a massive amount of power and processing to maintain and determining how that affects your overall performance is needed.
Another limitation is the file and application size of your game, you cannot have a massive 3oo hour long RPG on the 3DS without a better SD card used. As the base system on has four gigs of storage memory, its quite low and that can easily be taken up by a couple or semi-large arcade games and apps. Optimizing and compressing files would be suggesting for the 3Ds to lower the entire file size as small as possible for easier installation and usage.
That goes over a number of limitations that the 3Ds has.
Thanks for Reading 🙂
Luke Wilmot 