Highly optimized mobile shadows

Very early on in the planning process it was determined that Buddies should join the avatar on the map. This isn’t a new concept in the world of Pokemon, but for PGO it presented some unique challenges. The map view is probably the most iconic part of the game, but it can also be visually overwhelming. We needed a way for players to be able to easily differentiate their buddy from encounter Pokemon without adding too much new optical clutter.

I prototyped a ton of different concepts; putting icons above the head, around the feet, fx trails, etc. Everything added too much noise. Finally I landed on a more subtle concept - the live map shadow. The map shaders don’t support real time shadow rendering for performance, and encounter Pokemon are represented by “blob shadows” - generic scaled sprites. Using vertex shaders we were able to create a graceful yet clear delineation between Pokemon.

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Making asset serialization easy

There are very few exposed parameters to work with on an individual Pokemon at the client level. In order to create personalized interaction I had to lead a massive cross-team serialization effort. We went through the entire library to place what we call “Sockets” for the mouth, head pivot, and Best Buddy Badge asset on every individual Pokemon. In order to ease this process I created some simple tooling for rapid placement iteration - shortening the average time spent per Pokemon to just under a minute.

See a crowd sourced photo library of players’ Best Buddies here.

Creating tools for IP partners

One of the most challenging aspects of the spec was the Buddy encounter assist. Once players have gained a certain level of rapport with their Buddy, there is a chance it will help with Pokeball tosses. Because this needed to be compatible with both AR and non-AR mode I determined that it would be safer to do the fx in screen space to avoid confusion.

The challenge was to create code that would procedurally generate a Pokemon Company-approved cameo for every possible Buddy. The approval process took months of iteration, and it was vital to have a simple tool for viewing.

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