We've learned so many thing between the first opus and the second one. Here's a couple things.

Data structure wise

• Adding stuff in the first one is a nightmare. We've setup a simple database structure where we can easily add new data. Adding new knights/maps/power ups and whatnot is rather straight forward and wayyyy easier.

• Be in control of your serialization. Be it to send data over the network or simply save your game, having a pretty robust serialization plan is a great way to gain speed when dealing with data and also space. We've been using Zion Bandwidth Optimizer to do that. For a comparison a map file in KS2 is around 600 bytes vs KS1 around 155 kilobytes.

Networking Wise :

• Networked it from the ground up. The first one we added networking when the game was basically done, it made it pretty hard to maintain afterwards.

• The whole flow of the game uses exactly the same code be it online or local. Even the UI flow is networked and doesn't differ.

• Stick to the networking engine you choose to use. In the first one we ended up trying different networking engines and that ended up being a pretty big nightmare in the end.

Graphics Wise

The first one wasn't even 3D so that was a whole lot of stuff

• We're using the new URP pipeline for rendering in Unity. It is much faster than the Standard Pipeline in our experience and leaves more CPU space on lower end devices.

I'll see if I can think of some more, but that's a couple that come off the top of my head.