How does one decide these for the game? Is there a process or test you can go through to calculate/estimate it or do you need to just test it on a lot of different machines?
You can always start with the Unity provided minimum specs, then next is to figure out what graphics features you are using and how complex your scenes are and start comparing the minimum of others games with similar grpahical goals coming out that use Unity. That should should give you a starting point for testing rigs.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t Unity’s minimum specs just what are required to use the software, rather than what could actually play anything made in it with decent frame rate?
Those minimum specs can run games that are graphically simple just fine, but should be considered that absolute minimum.
Minimum and Recommended are always the same.
So what you do is buy and test the lowest level HW and SW that will run your game or app correctly and when you publish that is your recommended specification. You needn’t and shouldn’t recommend a minimum specification that is less than your recommended specification.
Also, the Unity automatic quality settings shouldn’t play a role in those recommendations unless you are personally going to test all manner of HW to see the settings that Unity’s automatic quality settings does choose. There might be bugs for one thing in how those are chosen between different HW and SW models.
Unity has automatic quality settings?
What if min was for playing something at lower graphics, whereas recommended was for medium or high?
Yes, under Edit → Project Settings → Quality.
You don’t recommend what graphics quality level you play your game at as that’s making it too complex for customers that are likely never to read those specs before buying. They don’t need or want a degree in computer science just to buy a game.
You recommend the minimum HW revisions and SW OS versions that will run your game (implicit in those two specs is the level of graphics HW/SW support so your customer must not educate themselves on that and in addition you will include minimum amount of RAM and minimum screen resolution): so if you want Unity to choose ‘Fantastic’ automatic quality setting then you buy HW personally that can support that and test on the HW and make that your recommended minimum.
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Thanks for the advice
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I’m going to disagree with you here. Minimum represents the spec that will run your game with all of the settings turned off and only the occasional stutter. Recommended represents the spec that you can turn on all of the settings and get the full impact of the experience the devs crafted for you. Making these the same either prevents low end users from playing your game, or it means high end users don’t get the best experience possible.
You find these specs by combining performance budgeting and testing. Targeting a minimum spec device with 1 GB of ram? You can split that ram up across the various areas you will have to use it. Same for CPU cycles and so on.
Then test. Because theory never quite works.
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Best way to find out your minimum and recommended system requirements is by testing your game on the low and high end computers.
Better yet, find people to do playtesting for you with various computers and ask them to report any performance drops. Eventually you’ll get necessary system specs your game needs to run.
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It usually refers to the highest available preset. You can still override this in most games and adjust the settings how you want and sometimes you’ll have the option of pushing them even further. Typically for things like antialiasing but I’ve seen some games use lower graphical settings for their highest preset than they’re actually capable of handling.
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Thank you all for the feedback
So essentially just lots of testing on different Computers?
I’d wouldn’t publish a game to a platform with an occasional stutter because I don’t want to support troubleshooting it. Disney and others might consider differently. They got the money & manpower to so that’s fine by me.
Besides even recommended platforms become minimum after a few months of the user installing everything in site and those all those rude apps that make themselves resident and want to nag you all day with their socially empowering notifications. What’s one to do?!