LEGO Minifigures Online*

LEGO® MINIFIGURES* ONLINE BRINGS CROSS-PLATFORM PLAY TO GAMING When Norwegian gaming giant Funcom began work on their new hit game LEGO® Minifigures Online* (LMO), they knew playability across Intel® architecture would be key. They also wanted fast load times, snappy graphics, and better battery life, but it was crucial that they achieved an exceptional playing experience no matter which platform gamers logged in from. The Funcom team engaged the help of Intel Software and Services group (SSG) to gain insights for key optimizations, and the result, to quote The LEGO® Movie, “Everything is awesome.” 1 Funcom managing director and chief LEGO® aficionados especially. LMO is an technology officer, Rui Casais, was online game for LEGO fans of all ages a key executive on the production that includes fun Minifigures and plenty team, working with every part of of exciting worlds to maneuver through. the technology, including all the With success battling pirates and other tools that allowed the developers, enemies, players can collect Minifigures artists, and designers to create their and improve their powers. compelling content. He said that early involvement with Intel was Funcom already had plenty of experience “While playing the instrumental in getting in the MMO arena with mainstream titles game, you don’t the technology right. such as Anarchy Online*, Age of Conan*, care which device “We have been working and The Secret World*. There were some with Intel for many years, bumps along the way, but Funcom is a the other person is cooperating at different recognized expert in online gaming and using. They just see levels, but with this game previously worked with children’s titles, that they are there, we saw the opportunity including for the Danish company, LEGO, they can play with to optimize even further,” in the past. But LMO was truly different, he said. “We wanted to Casais said, as it completely took over you, and that’s all reach a broader audience the office. that matters.” with tablets, laptops, and 2-in-1’s, using both A 10-year veteran at Funcom, Casais — Rui Casais, Funcom Windows* and Android*. said his Oslo-based team has truly managing director and ® chief technology officer The Intel architecture enjoyed the project. “LEGO Minifigures has a lot of multi-core, are everywhere. We all have them on multi-threading power, but in terms of top of our computers. We swap their programming, you need to think of it heads, hats, and bodies, and put swords differently. We needed to use a different into the hands of the skiers. We have set of tools.” a big LEGO Death Star with LEGO Star Destroyers around it, and people are The result paid off, with favorable definitely engaged. All of us played with feedback among young gamers and LEGO as kids, and some of us play with 2 LEGO now, with our kids. And some of was originally developed by Filip us just play with LEGO as adults, too . Strugar at Intel for use in GRID2* by without the kids.” Codemasters. CMAA offers a high- performance alternative to traditional Start With Good Graphics multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) while Casais understands that a colorful, addressing artistic concerns common attractive playing environment is a key in existing post-processing anti-aliasing component even for children’s games, techniques. CMAA runs efficiently on and that was the first example he pointed low-to-medium range GPU hardware, to in showing how much of an advantage such as integrated GPUs, while providing his team gained by working with Intel. a quality anti-aliasing solution. It also He believes the integrated graphics that works in a wide range of applications, Intel has been building over the last few including worst-case scenarios such years are to the point now where players as text, repeating patterns, certain don’t need a discrete GPU to experience geometries (power lines, mesh fences, good graphics. He said that systems foliage), and moving images. such as a child-targeted tablet will work fine with LMO. “The Intel integrated “For LMO, gamers will see surprisingly graphic solutions are actually performing high quality on a budget device,” Casais quite well,” he explained. “Through said. “They will see that the quality this partnership we made sure that the scales and gets even better as they performance was good on all integrated play on a better device.” Going from graphics chips, which is important for our an Android Intel tablet to a top-end target audience.” desktop Intel® Core i7™ system will convince players that they keep the Casais said LMO is more advanced and performance while the game keeps more complex than regular tablet games looking better. that children typically play. “Visually, we do a lot more, and we push the Players will also notice that LMO capabilities of the hardware to provide has interesting shadow effects on a PC-like experience on a tablet,” he all architectures. Casais pointed to said. “Even on a low-end budget device, a shadow-mapping feature of Intel we are fully using the processor’s 3D architecture called Adaptive Volumetric capabilities. With Intel CPUs and GPUs, Shadow Mapping (AVSM), which greatly the integrated graphics can actually run improves visual quality. “For example,” he 3D games in these devices.” said, “when you see smoke or clouds, in rendering terms, that’s a particle system.” Funcom used a technique called The particles can now cast realistic “Conservative Morphological Anti- shadows on each other so players Aliasing (CMAA),” which is an algorithm experience a much better sense of for anti-aliasing that removes “jaggies” volume. There are typically brighter and from the onscreen image. The technique darker areas of shadowing in a cloud or 3 in billowing smoke, and handling those using a desktop PC. They’re connected intricacies correctly resulted in LMO to the same server so they see each players seeing soft, realistic effects from other, communicate with each other, and particle systems. they’re part of a team. “While playing the game, you don’t care which device the This type of shadowing is rarely seen other person is using,” he said. “They just in children’s games, and Funcom was see that they are there, they can play with pleased that they got such an advanced you, and that’s all that matters.” effect running on systems with a fairly low power/performance budget. Casais To accomplish that universal playability, and his team especially called out the Intel engineers helped Funcom focus quality they saw on Android devices, on their engine, updating it with “Players should be especially pleased Intel insights on the multi-threading with our implementation of AVSM on functionality to make sure LMO utilized Android.” all the CPU’s parallel processing power. That was one of the biggest things the The Sleepover Example teams worked out together, especially to Besides great graphics across devices, cut down on loading times. They made Funcom also worked hard on consistent sure that when levels are loading—or cross-platform playability. They saw specific assets are pulled in—the game the title as an opportunity to expand doesn’t load one thing at a time. “We load the technology uniformly across as using all the available hardware threads many platforms as possible. Casais sees the system has,” Casais said, “and that LMO as a game that everyone can play, enables us to really speed things up.” everywhere, which Funcom established early on as a key success factor. “Kids Funcom was careful to avoid bottlenecks don’t want to care about where they based on I/O from the hard drive, are playing,” he said. “They queuing up different jobs based on just want to play the game whether they’re CPU heavy or I/O heavy. on whichever device is in “The ability to take full advantage of front of them, whether on parallel processing was key there,” Casais the bus, at home, or at a said, “ensuring that the Android release is neighbor’s house.” not just a port to a different system—it’s the same game, using the same assets Casais called it the and the same code.” “sleepover example.” He imagines a scenario LMO is now online, available for the PC, where a young gamer and in beta on the Apple Mac*. Next up is spending the are the tablet releases. There have been night at a neighbor’s QA challenges working across so many house, playing on an platforms, as the team has to confirm Android-based tablet, every change across all of them. They while another child is have verified the game internally on 4 Android, but they haven’t released it yet. Save the Battery The goal is to make sure that when they With the recent gaming changes to release LMO for Android, the experience mobile platforms from traditional is at least as good—or better—than desktops, the relationship between when playing on a PC. power and performance is tighter than ever. Providing the best user Touch control on 2-in-1’s and tablets experience in the mobile gaming world was also important to the Funcom means high performance and longer team. “We made it so that the game battery life, a tricky combination to detects when you change to a mode balance. Fortunately, there are practical where touch is the main input scheme,” methods to improve user experience by Casais said. The heads-up display of managing power issues while boosting the game changes when it detects a the end user experience, regardless of touch-enabled platform, automatically the platform’s power constraints.

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