Game-Agnostic Asset Loading Order Using Static Code Analysis

Abstract: Background. User retention is important in the online sphere, especially within gaming. Utilising browser gaming websites to host games helps smaller studios and solo developers reach out to a larger audience. However, displaying games on the website does not guarantee the user will try the game out and if the load time is long, the player could potentially move on. Using game agnostic, static code analysis, a potential load order can be created, prioritising assets required to start the game to be downloaded first, resulting in shorter wait times for the player to start playing. Objectives. The thesis aim is to develop a game agnostic parser, able to a list all the assets within a given Godot engine based game and sort them according to importance. The order of importance is the assets required for the game to be playable is placed first, followed by each sequential set of assets for each sequential scene. Methods. Static code analysis is in this project done by parsing through all the files and code of a given game. By then using numerous regular expressions one can extract relevant data such as references to assets and scene changes. The assets are then associated with different scenes that are ordered and distinguished by scene changes. Results. The results vary from making no difference to potentially taking 31% of the original loading time. With graphs being generated for every game showing the scenes and their ordering through the parsing process giving information into the process of the game as well as the reasons for the potential speedup or the lack of it. Conclusions. The project shows promising results for games that can be successfully parsed and have the scene structure to gain from it. Further work and development is required for a more comprehensive solution with suggested methods. With these results being largely theoretical a more practical study would be needed to apply the results to a realistic setting.