Part 2 — Answer key

Compare your answers after you have finished Part 1.

1. In a performance-focused video game quiz, you see a question asking what "FPS" usually means when discussing how smoothly a game runs. What does "FPS" stand for in this context?
   Frames per second
2. You are troubleshooting a PC where a 3D game runs slowly, even at low graphics settings. Which hardware component is primarily responsible for rendering the game's 3D graphics?
   Solid-state drive
3. A game running at 120 frames per second generally feels more responsive to player input than the same game running at 30 frames per second, assuming all other factors are equal.
   True
4. You are using a game engine that supports a "prefab" system. What is the main technical advantage of building levels with prefabs?
   You no longer need to bake lighting
5. You are designing an online co-op game where one machine simulates the authoritative game state and other machines connect to it as clients. Which networking model best describes this setup?
   Offline simulation
6. In a fast-paced action game, players need clear feedback when an ability is on cooldown. Which UI approach typically communicates this state most effectively?
   Dim the ability icon and show a countdown overlay
7. In a standard 24-bit RGB color buffer used in many games, each color channel (red, green, blue) is stored using 16 bits per channel.
   False
8. A designer notices that character movement speed changes when the frame rate drops in a platformer. What is the most likely cause of this issue?
   The texture resolution is too high
9. In a racing game, cars occasionally pass straight through thin barriers when moving very fast. Which engine setting is most likely to reduce this tunneling problem?
   Enable continuous collision detection on fast objects
10. You profile a game and see the CPU at 30% usage while the GPU is consistently at 99%. Lowering the resolution significantly increases the frame rate. What is the primary bottleneck?
    CPU simulation workload
11. You are building a competitive online shooter and want to make player movement feel smooth despite network latency. Which techniques can help hide latency effects? Select all that apply.
    Client-side prediction of local movement; Server-side rewind for hit detection; Interpolation of remote player positions
12. In a game HUD, placing related information such as health, armor, and shields in the same screen region generally improves the player's ability to read the UI quickly during combat.
    True
13. A mobile online game is using too much bandwidth. Profiling shows a large share of data is uncompressed voice chat. Which optimization will most directly reduce network usage?
    Apply stronger compression to voice chat data
14. Players of a fighting game report that combos feel impossible unless they press buttons very late in an animation. The designer adds an input buffer that stores commands for a few frames before they are needed. What gameplay effect does this primarily create?
    Lower GPU load during animations
15. Arrange the following stages of a typical real-time 3D game frame in the order they usually occur from input to final display.
    Correct order: Process player input → Update game logic and AI → Simulate physics → Issue rendering commands → Present the frame on screen
16. You are revising a tutorial for a complex strategy game because new players feel overwhelmed. Which changes are likely to reduce cognitive load without removing depth? Select all that apply.
    Unlock mechanics gradually over early stages; Show context-sensitive prompts only when needed; Group related HUD elements together
17. In an online game, some players occasionally appear to teleport short distances, while others move smoothly. Which technical issue is the most likely cause?
    High packet loss on the network
18. Your level loads slowly because it must read many assets from disk. Which strategies can help reduce load times without lowering in-game quality? Select all that apply.
    Avoid loading unused assets for the current level; Stream assets asynchronously from background threads; Compress and batch related assets together
19. You are evaluating an entity-component-system (ECS) architecture for a large open-world game with thousands of similar entities. What is a primary performance advantage of ECS in this context?
    It improves cache friendliness for large numbers of similar entities
20. A large open-world game is CPU-bound when many NPCs are active. Which optimizations are most appropriate to reduce CPU usage without visibly harming gameplay? Select all that apply.
    Run expensive AI logic at a lower frequency; Use spatial partitioning to update only nearby entities; Pool frequently spawned objects instead of creating and destroying them
21. Using UDP for real-time game networking guarantees that all packets arrive in order and without loss.
    False