UK co-development house CodeDev, also known as The Unreal Guys, has launched a specialist optimisation division called The Performance Guys, built explicitly to tackle project-critical optimisation work. It contains exclusively engineers and technical artists and is actively seeking senior engineers.
The division formally launched last month, having previously worked on Hangar 13’s Mafia: The Old Country as well as projects for Epic Games, Otherside Entertainment and an unannounced AAA title. The firm claimed in a press statement that its specialised optimisation can deliver huge savings on memory usage, citing “a massive cross-console overhaul that slashed memory usage by up to 50%, to bring it within strict platform targets.”
“Unreal Engine is incredibly powerful, but unlocking its full potential and getting a game to run flawlessly takes a really specific type of technical expertise, and is often something that gets left until too late in the development cycle,” said CEO Myke Parrott. “It’s something our partners were repeatedly asking for help with, so we decided to officially do something to help.”
The company has developed an internal “Performance Intelligence” tool which was created to convey increased amounts of data compared to that offered by Unreal Insights, without overwhelming its users. Among other things, it highlights whether usage spikes are caused by deep local work or waiting on other work, and where work runs with a view to pointing out wrong-thread execution. CodeDev said the tool “shortens triage” for developers, enabling them to “identify owner lane, confirm dependency chain, then pick the first high-cost controllable node.”
The firm is currently focused on performance optimisation for Unreal, Unity and proprietary tech “across indie, AA, and AAA video games, as well as virtual productions and high end visualisations.”