Terrible graphics card, am I stuck making mobile games?

Greetings,

I have an i5 8GB and 2GB Nvidia card – sounds ok, right, except that I was foolish to get a GT 610, which is pretty low-end. At least it’s better than the Intel HD graphics on my laptop, which always overheats and shuts itself down when running 3D games for more than 10 minutes!

I’m running UE4 smoothly at a smaller resolution, it’s still nice and smooth to develop a game as long as I don’t put too many assets.

Would it be possible for me to develop a high visual fidelity PC game at my specs without any way of being able to test at a higher res? I selected Unreal Engine 4 not because it’s a AAA engine, but because of its Blueprints… I had C++ classes in college but I’m rusty so my only experience was with the great 2D engine Construct 2. Also, the Unreal level editing and material tools are super easy and fun.

I’d be happy making Nintendo 3DS E-shop sized games… you know, with N64 textures, tiny 400x240 resolution, and games from the glory years. But a recent survey showed that the platforms that will continue to dominate in the future are PC and Mobile.

So what I’m doing now is just going through all the asset store models which I have, selecting the ones which are mobile-friendly and just building a game out of them. I’m also testing some toon shading and paper effects which were linked in this forum and in the documents/tutorial pages. In general, lowpoly games have this cartoony handpainted texture which give them charm… in my case, I’m just encountering lowpoly textures, period.

I suppose when my project is more complete I’d have to make a test export and find a more powerful machine to test it on – what looks fine for me might not end up looking that good on a bigger screen.

The general advice I see is to start a new project at max settings since you’ll always be able to downscale and downres for mobile devices later. But in my case I just don’t see it so might as well start with a mobile target. The problem is that I also want to implement Apex cloth and from what I read it isn’t supported on mobile at the moment. Any comment or insight from anyone is appreciated. If not, I just want to say thank you to Epic Games for this opportunity, I can finally become a developer making the kinds of games I enjoyed on PC and Console.

No, you are not stuck making mobile games. :slight_smile:

You just need to realise that you may not be able to test things like Apex cloth in your games, if you want to release them to the outside world. My advice (i.e. feel free to dismiss it) is to start small, carry on learning Unreal, and see how you get on. As you get better, you can upgrade your PC, piece by piece. As long as your PSU can take it, a GPU will be your first upgrade! :slight_smile:

Also, don’t forget that limitations can also work in your favour. I have an i7-4770k with a GTX Titan. I’m stuck in the must-be-photo-realistic mindset, because my machine is capable of it, and it’s slowing me down massively. Good luck!

Is that you trying to re-create a digital version of me again Jez?

Learn parts of UE you are looking to create first, try and see how you get on with the PC you have, if it doesn’t work or doesn’t run to your liking. As Jez says upgrade piece by piece.

It’s just so beautiful…

:slight_smile: