

Powney detailed how Jagex translated the MMO to mobile touch controls. On a desktop this is relatively straightforward, as players can line up their menus and actions anywhere they want on their screen. The moment-to-moment action of RuneScape is governed by a player's ability to navigate a sea of different menus and associated actions. Thanks to a five-year development period, RuneScape's mobile port seems to be on a better track. The Switch port for The Outer Worlds was notorious and showcased the dangers of not carefully optimizing a game for a platform. A prime example of this was The Outer Worlds. Even with more powerful hardware like the Switch, ports of big games can often go wrong. Unsurprisingly, it took a lot of work to condense such a sprawling MMO onto a tiny mobile display, and as such players might well see all that work reused for a handheld console release in the future, especially with a console that has touch screen controls.įitting a large game onto a handheld device like a phone is not easy. RELATED: Every Proposed Name for the Upgraded Nintendo Switchīoth Powney and Casey remarked on the mobile development process, and what it might have in store for the game.
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After previous releases onto Mac and Steam, the upcoming mobile version is the first proper foray onto other platforms. In an interview with Game Rant, RuneScape Product Director Matt Casey and Senior Product Manager Liam Powney talked about how the new mobile control scheme could lend itself well to a Switch port. As such, the mobile version of the game relies heavily on gesture controls.Īccording to developers, the creation of these gesture inputs makes ports for platforms like the Nintendo Switch possible. The game is well known for its menu customization, so fitting this array of menus onto a tiny screen was no easy feat, and involved a radical engine overhaul for the MMO. According to Jagex, the mobile port is at least five years in the making, so marks a huge milestone for the 20-year-old MMO. While less modern iterations of the game like Old School RuneScape already exist on mobile, this is the first time the main title will be portable. RuneScapewill release on mobile in June 2021, which is a big experiment for Jagex.
