Live Aware Labs: Revolutionizing Game Analytics

Client

Live Aware Labs, Inc.

Services

Software development and optimization

Industry

AI powered Audience Feedback and Analytics

Tech

C++, C#, Unity, Unreal Engine, GStreamer, FFmpeg, React, Electron, TypeScript

Challenge

Live Aware Labs, an innovative Seattle-based startup thriving in the game analytics domain, offers a web portal that enables testers and developers to collaborate on game testing and improvement. Users can stream and record games, make clip slices, save and upload video files, and cooperate with developers on bug detection and fixing. Their existing suite of tools, consisting of desktop screen capture applications for Windows and Mac OS and mobile capture apps for Android and iOS, had several issues: ● Decline in performance ● Code debt accumulation ● Lack of application robustness ● The need to implement new features Live Aware Labs partnered with ITRex software development company to optimize their novel game feedback analysis platform, Live Aware, focusing on key enhancements to their Windows desktop recorder application.

Our team had the following responsibilities

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Improving video streaming and recording performance

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Finding and fixing bugs

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Implementing new features

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Automating some of the game testing workflow

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Maintaining and updating the desktop recorder application

Results

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In less than a month, our developers resolved the critical performance issues. We switched both the screen capture mechanism and the streaming functionality from FFmpeg to GStreamer and fixed the existing bugs, significantly improving stream quality and reducing CPU utilization.

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Our QA engineer conducted thorough manual testing of the solution and identified some bugs that our team fixed. We addressed video upload issues, enabled a non-functional "Restart" button, and resolved the issue with the "Record" button, which was disabled if the recorded video’s name contained spaces.

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We enhanced the Windows desktop application with the following functionality: ● Implemented ultra low latency stream mode. The feature reduced delay between the streamer’s screen and the viewers from 15-30 seconds to just a couple of seconds. ● Added the possibility of customizing game recording quality. Now users can select the resolution of the recorded video and its bitrate. ● Built group chat functionality from scratch, allowing testers and developers to collaborate ● Implemented video slicing capabilities for streamed and stored content

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Our team developed an SDK plugin for Unity and Unreal Engine, streamlining manual activities associated with game testing. With the plugin, testers simply select the desired testing parameters within the SDK’s interface, and the plugin handles everything automatically. For instance, users can specify their preferred resolution, decide whether to display the cursor on the screen or overlay the camera video on top of the game stream, and more. Additionally, testers can apply their preferred SDK settings to execute automatically each time the game is opened. Another remarkable feature of this SDK plugin is its ability to retrieve and store slices of streams that were running in the background without prior saving. For example, if a game being streamed suddenly crashes, users can request the SDK to retrieve and store up to ten minutes of the stream before the crash occurred. Our collaboration with Live Aware Labs is ongoing as we continuously enhance the SDK plugin and introduce new features.

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We automated the process of updating the Windows recorder software to the latest version

Impact

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Thanks to our automation efforts, the client could save time on game testing and minimize human error

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With the improvements that we made, the Windows desktop recorder became more user-friendly and game streaming quality and speed improved significantly

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Live Aware Labs showcased the improved Windows desktop recorder at the Game Developer Conference 2024 in San Francisco, a prestigious gaming conference. The audience responded with enthusiasm, and several potential investors and customers got in touch to explore future collaboration options.

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The unique SDK plugin was positioned as a premium offering for higher-tier customers, resulting in an additional revenue stream

Live Aware Labs continues to work with ITRex to further enhance Live Aware’s capture tools and explore new innovative features.

The team at ITRex is a solution oriented, efficient, and trusted partner delivering robust technical solutions without needing a lot of support. Their work gave us the ability to scale our development capacity to greatly improve Live Aware’s user experience and customer value.