Hello! My name is Dieg, and I’m creating a game about space exploration. Here’s how it’s going so far: https://gyazo.com/2b84457cd1e6d3ad56a920d009f82271
(Feedback about the game is as welcome as answers!)
Controls are WASD, click, E, moving the mouse and probably a few more for menus and such since I do not want them to clutter the screen and the mouse is locked.
My main idea was to release this game for PC, but I’ve gotten plenty of suggestions to also make a mobile version, and apparently a big part of the Roblox fanbase uses mobile. I’m planning this to be a huge game, with a huge map and a lot of controls.
My questions are; would a game like this attract mobile players? How should I go about implementing the controls for mobile users? I do not want a control pad that covers half the screen, but I also want to make it so it’s fair for mobile users. Would it be worth it to port the game to mobile or would I be wasting my time?
To be honest, I believe you shouldn’t port the game to mobile, specially since you’re planning on this being a huge game as you’ve mentioned.
Mobile support is a tricky thing to achieve. You either make a mobile only version, or have both PC and mobile support in one single game.
If you choose to make a mobile only version, you have to keep track of both different versions separately but make sure that game updates to one are also added to the other, meaning you’d need strong organization. Then comes another issue: the game would have to be much smaller. Mobile performance requires a lot of optimization on the game. Anything as simple as 10k parts starts to lag on mobile if not completely crash lower end devices such as iPhone 4 or Samsung Galaxy S3.
If you choose to make a version with both mobile and PC support, you’d have to lose out on PC game quality because of having the game compatible for mobile, lowering the overall quality of the game.
Besides, if you market your game properly, not having a mobile audience is not a bad thing. In fact, if you build, market and hype your game right for PC gameplay, and it turns out to be a really good game, it can be just as popular.
Take Phantom Forces as an example; it does not have official mobile support, yet it has constantly been popular since release.
Good luck with the game, it looks really good so far.
You are not wasting your time porting to mobile or even console, given PC uses only take up 40-50% of the playerbase (I know there is debate over this figure but 40-50% is generally accepted.) Therefor by not making the game compatible you are losing half your potential playerbase.
Having the game compatible on mobile would not be worth it though.
Because of mobile device limitations, the game would run very poorly on mobile, and even crash for a lot of the devices. OP says the game is meant to be really big, with a really big map and a lot of things going on all at once. Even with streaming enabled, this would be too much for the mobile devices to handle.
It’s better to market the game properly for pc gameplay than to include mobile support, and have a much higher dislike ratio because of the amount of people unable to play the game decently.
I would say focus on PC and Console and get those fully working, ready, and where you want them to be, and then go back and do a mobile version. (If you also still feel like doing a mobile version.)
