[background=rgb(254,254,254)]Error: 'WriteAllBytes' is not a member of 'System.IO.File'[/background]

[background=rgb(254,254,254)]Error: type `System.Xml.XmlDocument` doesn't exist in target framework.[/background]

1. In Unity, go to File => Build Settings => Player Settings. In your Inspector window, expand Other Settings, and change your API Compatibility Level to .NET 2.0. [color=#ff0000](Note: I had already fixed System.IO and my MD5CryptoServiceProvider compatibility issues before trying this, but I think it should work)[/color]
   
2. Find an existing implementation that you can copy into your project.
   
3. Write your own code to replace the functions provided by those frameworks.
   

[color=#a52a2a]A "Successful" Build?[/color]



After fixing all that, I managed to get Hamster Chase to deploy to an emulator. I noticed the splash screen was of Unity and not from the game; nor was there a setting to change the splash screen in the Player settings. I hope to deal with that from the Visual Studio project itself later. I was happy...

...and then my happiness was shattered once I got it deployed onto my new Nokia Lumia 521. I was barely getting 15 FPS on the device! The game was choppy, overlays that should have faded in instead went straight to fully visible, and popup menu animations were even choppier than the game.

After attaching the Unity profiler to my phone via IP address (it takes like 45 seconds to connect), I pinned the main problem to a GameObject.FindObjectsOfType being called in every frame. After fixing that, the game was slightly faster. It was still far from the silky smoothness I see in most mobile games. The main culprit is now transparent rendering which is taking up over half the workload each frame. In the main menu alone it takes 18ms per frame. I had the same problem with Hyperspace Pinball; and it took months to optimize it just enough to even be releasable. I am not going through that again.

Thinking the problem was that the VertexLit shader was slow on mobile, I decided to try my hand at writing two transparent mobile shaders:

Unlit shader:Shader "Mobile/Transparent/Unlit" { Properties { _MainTex ("Base (RGB) Transparency (A)", 2D) = "" {} } SubShader { Pass { // Only render pixels with an alpha larger than 50% AlphaTest Greater 0.5 SetTexture [_MainTex] { combine texture } } }}
Simple lit shader:Shader "Mobile/Transparent/Simple" { Properties { _MainTex ("Base (RGB) Transparency (A)", 2D) = "" {} _IlluminCol ("Self-Illumination color (RGB)", Color) = (1,1,1,1) } SubShader { Pass { // Only render pixels with an alpha larger than 50% AlphaTest Greater 0.5 SetTexture [_MainTex] { constantColor [_IlluminCol] combine texture * constant } } }}
After using

these on the most prominent main menu objects, I didn't get a visible performance gain.

[color=#a52a2a]What's next?[/color]

It occurs to me that Hamster Chase was developed before Unity had Sprites and Sprite Renderers. In Hamster Chase, the existing "Sprites" are rendered using regular MeshRenderers and VertexLit shaders on simple four-corner squares. I think if I changed my "Sprites" to be actual Unity Sprites, things would render faster. I'll have to ponder if and how I would accomplish that because it could easily be a ton of work.

I still have trouble wrapping my head around the fact the game is this slow as is using out of the box shaders on such a sophisticated piece of equipment. It's notably faster on both iOS and Android; what am I missing here? I hope to find a solution and publish a follow-up journal entry on it.