Virtuos details how they handled the ‘tricky’ port of NieR:Automata to Switch
Shi Qiang, Studio Technical Director from Virtuos: Indeed, it was quite tricky in some places. That was why we were very thorough in our preparations.
The team started by quickly delineating where all the hot spots were and then developed an omnidirectional feature tracking tool for optimisation. For the engine and the code, we did overall optimisation on the CPU, GPU and shaders. We also carried out comprehensive optimisation on the art as well, including all of the models, lighting, special effects, stamps and assets.
Once the general optimisation process was complete, we carried out functionality spot checks on the complex scenes. For example, in the boss fight scenes, we did further optimisation on the detail level of the boss models, textures and lighting, including the large-scale rebuilding of the VFX to fit with the Switch’s technical capabilities.
