Anyone developing for OUYA?

So, I managed to buy a brand new unopened kickstarter OUYA from eBay. It's on it's way from the US as I type. I plan to port all my games to OUYA.

Anyone else developing for OUYA?

 

..tell us how it goes)

 

We're planning a couch co-op shooter type thing. It's in its very early stages right now, so nothing really to show.

Not sure how the OUYA's going to be on the monetization side, but the idea of developing a console game that's meant to be played on the TV is just very appealing .

 

idk

 

TV Screen seems very appealing to me too. Since it's still early days the console seems like a less obvious choice for making easy money fast. This could be a good thing in relation to the type of games published for it.

 

Well the way I see it, since I'm already porting to Android, it's not too much work to support OUYA

 

I'm not really sure all I woudl have to do to make my game ouya compatible. I read a bit about it though.

 

The hardest part of Unity ports seems to be the IAPs and the various plugins - (ex iOS, Android, Nook, Ouya, ...). This holds my release platforms back - for instance, I have yet to find a straight forward way to integrate an analytics solution into my web deployment.

Good luck,
Gigi.

 

Good chance for anyone or a group to get experience with ouya and offer a porting service where they are paid to port peoples games over to ouya.

 

I kind of was but then got distracted and then dropped it. Mainly the kind of game I wanted to make can't really work well enough on the Ouya hardware, it's not powerful enough yet. When it gets to Tegra4/Ouya 2 it has much more potential.

 

Yeah, i've not considered making anything OUYA exclusive yet. My primary platform is iOS then Android. I think in order to have people who own the Android version already purchase the OUYA version, I'll need to add some extra content of some sort.

 

I'm working on a lip-syncing tool at the moment. But I was planning on using that tool to construct some basic adventure games. It would be really interesting to create a more minimalist console-centric adventure game. (like Phoenix Wright) I was one of the OUYA backers, so I should be getting a unit in the next month or so.

 

I am still waiting for my ouya console which I was supposed to get in april and they still havent got an email saying its been shipped and because I am not a kickstarter backer they havent sent us any email explaining the delay. Is the ouya as powerful as the ipad4?

 

I'm waiting on news of shipment too, supposedly possibly by end of May, but I bet more likely June. All this waiting has greatly deflated my interest but once it's here I will probably get more excited. I had two projects started for it but both need much much more shader performance.

Ouya is nowhere near as capable as iPad 4. It's not even as capable as iPad 2. Somewhere between 2 and 1, if I recall. iPad2 has e.g. ~950 million pixels/sec fill rate and iPad 4 is at around 2 billion/sec. Ouya is somewhere in the 4-500 million/sec range. Another way to put it, is it's about 1/4 the speed of my old entry-level iMac released in 2006 - 7 years ago... so it's not exactly `fast` and if you want to run at 1920x1080 that's going to put more burden on it. But for some types of games I'm sure it's adequate.

 

Definitely not looking at the Ouya as a dev platform atm.

Reasons: Power, don't believe in the sales model, don't think it will catch on with the public.

I have more faith in the fabled SteamBox than I do Ouya.

 

This is the nature of console development. You have a fixed specification that you need to develop for, one that is usually much more limited than PC hardware. This is especially true for a lower-spec machine built to be sold for a profit at an affordable price.

Less money = less power.

If you want to develop a game for the OUYA, you have to think about tailoring it for that specific hardware. And that means you can't just be throwing around thousands of meshes and advanced shaders all willy-nilly. Anyone working on an OUYA title would be well-served to dial back their expectations to somewhere between the 16 and 32 bit eras in terms of graphics. There is still plenty of development possibilites there, just don't go into this thinking you're going to be making GTA 3 on the OUYA.

 

Isn't the OUYA the same spec as the Nexus 7?

 

Roughly, yes. On the other hand, the OUYA is designed to be played on a television via HDMI. And a 1080p display has a higher resolution than the Nexus 7's screen. So a portion of the OUYA's performance will be dedicated to pushing extra pixels. On the plus side, there is less of an expectation of multi-tasking on a dedicated gaming machine, so you won't have to worry as much about background apps with the OUYA.

Performance will still be an isuse, but not as much as some of the other posters have implied. For most developers who are used to dealing with the limitations of mobile development, the OUYA will be more than adequate for their performance needs. It's those developers who commonly lean on the power available in desktop PCs who will feel hamstrung by the OUYA's performance limitations.

 

Since there seems to be other people doing it game-stick etc, maybe there will be another console thats open and actually has the power. I dont think people cared about the price, they just wanted a console they could screw around on that actually had the power to not require AAA to make it look good.

 

It's one of my targets for The Hero's Journey. When the core gameplay is finished, Unity will see my Android Indie license purchase, and from there, I'll see how OUYA goes.

I'm not expecting OUYA to be lucrative at all, I really just like the idea of my game appearing on a TV and console. That's been my dream from day one.

 

The italian team STUDIO EVIL is porting SYDER ARCADE on OUYA - and they say it's not so powerfull, btw.

My opinion: even I'm really not sure if OUYA will work, I like it but I will wait a bit more to see how people react to it.
The power is, for me, not the main reason to step away from OUYA, also because if tegra3 can run Sonic4 and Hamilton's Great adv it's enough FOR ME.
Of course is not next gen but, ehi, I don't have the resources to do NEXT GEN GFX ^_^
And also I think it could find a place in the console world because it also doesn't want to be the super tech console - just "cheap" entertain.
And the news of the new 15 Million in Funding gives me hope that they have some plan.

Steambox is Uber cool but it's different and, btw, there isn't a steambox now and even a precise idea of how it will exactly work.

 

Really, all these open platforms have quite a bit of risk involved, but I would say no more or less than being a mobile dev in general. These platforms I feel at least to be worth a try; worst that could happen is that nothing could happen, which isn't that bad, because it can be learned from - the customer has many ways of communicating, and they will tell me at least one thing beyond 'we didn't like your game' if they don't buy it. People tend to be very verbose with negative information, I've noticed.

Just speaking personally here, I honestly care little for the hardware limitations as a dev, because I'm not writing games for hardware; I'm writing it for humans. In its way, the hardware makes it more fun for me, since I have to carefully dance around those same limitations to deliver a quality product. It won't be easy, and it's not a reliable way to earn a buck, but I have my day job for easy mode.

 

What I've been thinking about is:
Ouya = $100
Wii-U = $300

In three years will the Ouya be more powerful than the Wii-U?

 

eheh maybe. But the point is: no zelda, no metroid, no mario, no super smash, no luigi's mansion, no starfox (???), no donkey kong, no kid ikarus...
OUYA needs EFFING GOOD games, that's the point -_^

 

There is no reason that there can't be good games, maybe with yearly sequels to co inside with new Ouya hardware.

 

One thing that does concern me a bit is what Ouya games is the Ouya platform going to be known for, that give it a reputation. At the moment I haven't really seen a whole lot of really awesome games lined up.

 

The OUYA has only been in developers hands for a few short weeks. And the OUYA development team themselves are primarily hardware and infrastructure designers, not game developers. You won't start hearing announcements for OUYA games until developers actually get the units in hand and can start working on and testing their titles. I intend to work on OUYA games, but I don't have the hardware yet. A little patience would be appropriate.

Also, there hasn't yet been any financial investment on your part. In fact, the commercial launch of the OUYA isn't going to be until late June, so it hasn't even been possible for you to acquire one. That kind of makes your concern a moot point for the time being.

 

The way I see it from a consumer point of view there's good games on mobile, indeed there's some great games on mobile those games I'd love to play on my TV. I have a PS3, Xbox360, Vita, PSP I've pre-ordered my PS4 so I don't want an OUYA for playing next gen games, I want it to play weird, funky mobile titles on my TV.

From a dev point of view, I want to play my games on TV and allow others to do the same.

I think the biggest hurdle will be games needing to be ported to OUYA rather than any game from Google Play working.

 

mm actually you're making some pretty big assumptions here, I bought mine back in November/December. Some devs have received units and even without units it's possible to make most of a game without having a console to test it on. But even so most of what's lined up so far doesn't really show any signs of a `standing out above the crowd` kind of game that other platforms could be envious of.

I was kind of okay with waiting until `end of march` which was the original promise, but now it's going to be more like 6 months of waiting, for which I don't think there is grounds for much patience.

 

That's right, I believe you mentioned that you purchased yours off of eBay. That's a rather extreme fringe case. Most of the kickstarter backers aren't going to go to that degree of trouble, when they are waiting for the units they were already expecting. And if you seriously thought that there would be solid games available at launch, you were deluding yourself. Even with major hardware launches with tons of development support years in advance, there are usually little to no good titles at launch. (and a hefty lull immediately after launch)

If you are an early OUYA adopter, it is almost certainly because you are a developer, or you can't afford a more expensive console. Since you already have an OUYA, YOU should be working on those "standing out above the crowd" games. You ARE the potential early developer...so get to it! If there aren't any solid games out for the OUYA within six months of launch, it's not the OUYA's fault, it's yours. The company behind the OUYA doesn't develop games, they develop the OUYA console. The burden is on you and other developers to provide the actual software.

The real development strength of the OUYA isn't going to be in polished AAA development, but in unencumbered experiemental development. Without the same restictions that shackle AAA console development, OUYA developers can get really wild and crazy with the games they put out.

 

Ouya is better as a cheap Linux computer for nerds than a gaming console. Definitely would develop for the UI complexity of a Galaxy Tab 2 or Nexus 7 over an Ouya.

Besides x-box 360, PlayStation, WII, and haven't even looked at Apple TV's gaming compatibilities but maybe AngryBirds and a few other popular games get published to Ouya because it's so easy with Unity which gives it a slight chance beyond the techno-nerd crowd. As of now the 'numbers' are all inflated hype and the manufacturing 'lack of capacity' is an attempt to obtain old style Furby, Elmo, Beanie Baby, iPod, iPhone type 'wait-in-line because it's so popular' press.

 

Did you get the email about Ouya going to E3, no wait the parking lot beside E3!
http://kotaku.com/ouya-will-be-at-e3-in-the-parking-lot-508553239

 

Well, IMO that is better than the public can play and come and view the stuff. IMO they could have easily got into E3 if they wanted.

 

Known for retro gaming possibly? Then again I wouldn't know.

I agree here to some extent. The software is what makes a console desirable in the first place. Especially exclusive titles. If OUYA had that kind of support somewhere down the line, or even at launch; something good might come of it. If anything, I can see an OUYA 2 being a more serious contender in the next-gen era of consoles in the future as someone stated earlier. Honestly I was like that when I grew up on the Sega Genesis, Nintendo PlayStation products. As soon as the XBOX came out, I shunned it like it never existed. Soon as it started getting big a couple years down the line I had took it serious. Then the next thing you know "BOOM", XBOX 360. That's when I took it as something of interest. So possibly this could happen with the OUYA. Just my thoughts. So I would give OUYA a try, depending on the software it brings in the future.

 

why necro a 3 month old post?
___

On Topic:

Yea I'm currently attempting to develop a racing a game for Ouya. Surprisingly I'm getting quite far with it and I'm very impressed with the way its' going. Heres the stupid thing... I don't even have a Ouya yet. This upcoming monday ill try to get a ouya. The game i'm working on was originally meant for the pc. I'm just getting the PC version going first then ill do a port over. Shouldn't be too difficult. I just gotta optimize the heck out of my game to work with the tiny tegra 3.

 

Adding to that 3 month old post. .. Ouya question. .. does Ouya support DX11? Seems to me tegra3 has opengles2 which is supposedly equivalent to dx11, so could it handle tesselation, and does unity allow android builds with dx11?

 

What? I was under the impression that even opengl es3.0 was still incapable.

 

I did not read much from this post but i think this would help you : http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-learn/how-to-learn-ouya-gamedev/

 

*EDIT*

Deleted rant. Wasn't helpful to anyone but me as it allowed me to blow off some steam.

 

And there's also this to consider If you're thinking of adding Ouya to the list of platforms you're targeting: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/197084/

Don't get me wrong, I'm already working on a couple more titles that will go on Ouya (and GameStick) but they'll be on Facebook, iOS, traditional Android, Windows Store, etc. too. I still don't think I've wasted my time on Ouya but I feel like I've aged one month for every day I've been working on my first Ouya title due to pure frustration and disgust at the developer "resources" they offer.

I'll add this caveat - I'm especially flustered at the moment, as I've been for most of my time developing for Ouya, so take what I'm saying in that context. As with every other hiccup along the way once I get past the current bump in the road I'll know how to deal with it right out of the gate next time and it won't be such a source of frustration. That's the way it generally goes with anything new, but there have been far more bumps in the road with Ouya and than I typically encounter.

 

Complaining about something without trying to lessen the problems with it is bad form, so here are a couple of things I've found along the way that have helped me, hopefully they will lessen your stress if you decide to target the Ouya platform.

First off getting set up can be difficult. I found that the following were very helpful. NOTE: things change right regular in Ouya dev land, so these may be out of date. But what was on the Ouya dev site, at least a few weeks ago, was outright wrong and wasted my time. These come from Steve Tack in the "Who-has-an-Ouya" thread in this forum:

http://www.stevetack.com/ouya_unity_tutorial_01.html
http://www.stevetack.com/ouya_unity_tutorial_01.html


Second, controller input support is probably the worst thing out of the box with the ODK. I was too far along when I looked into this to use it but I've been following it and while there are bugs being reported it seems to be pretty good: http://forums.ouya.tv/discussion/1678/new-ouyainput-controller-framework-simple-fast-with-documantation/p1 What I wound up doing was modifying the OuyaExampleCommon file, but there's been a Ouya/Unity plugin update since then and I'm not sure what all has changed. I'm too close to being done to update my plugin and have to start tweaking all over again.

If anyone else has helpful hints please post 'em. Maybe we can get a sticky or something.

 

Hey, I feel ya. I like Ouya's openness, in terms of the platform itself and the `we're listening and reacting` kind of stance of the company, but I think in a way this set it off on a releasing-too-soon or a `lets let the community figure it out for us` kind of footing. Basically it's been like a free-fall of haphazard information trying to get a project set up to work with it. I was quite amazed that my app actually built and ran on Ouya the first time, given all the technical hurdles that had to be dealt with to set it up. All this stuff about editing bizarre files, not to mention having to dip into the OSX Terminal program and figure out how the F that works and to use a totally archaic command-line editor to edit the files, which I had to google just to figure out how to use. And then all these various files and SDK's and stuff you have to go find and download hoping you get the right version and all that s*#t. I think I went through 3 or 4 tutorials before I managed to get things working, and for the most part it was kind of like accidentally reading something that led to making things take steps closer to a functioning system. I now have one game project that is all set up for Ouya but I'm afraid to try to set up any other project from scratch because I think there's going to be more command-line crap (I mean, really, delete the Terminal forever, it's usability is about 0% friendly).

I ended up using the `input` package that you suggested above, and have been fairly pleased with it once I got my head around the API and examples. I prefer the polled input rather than an event-driven nightmare. It's performed fine so far although there are still occasional controller connection failures and sometimes controller lag (which seems to me like the thumb sticks flood with too many inputs or something). I haven't dared to set up a new project and instead have been bringing in other experiments to the same project just to get it send to the Ouya for testing. I think I sort of accidentally got the whole thing to work, I'm not very confident about it. I think Ouya should have ONE totally official set of documentation and tutorials/sample projects and totally working input system and completely automated installation/setup to get the whole thing up and running and to get the o/s talking to the device etc. The kind of steps you have to go through are not at all easy or straightforward. It's one of those things where I kind of don't want to touch it in case it breaks now, lol

That said, like you, I have managed to get something to work on the Ouya and now that all the headache crap is for the most part `done` and I don't have to touch it again for a while I'm glad to have that experience behind me. For me though I am a little disappointed with the Ouya's hardware performance. I mean, I knew it was going to be slower than even my 7-years old iMac desktop but it seems like it's somewhere between iPad1 and iPad2. After some performance tests this pretty much destroyed all chance that several of my project ideas had of ever being able to run decent on it. But maybe once they get to Tegra4 (which maybe they should've started with, at a higher price point), I think it will be a much more interesting piece of hardware to target. You really have to be careful with the performance and making the kind of games that are best suited to the hardware/controller rather than hoping that any kind of game will do well. And yes, sales are quite poor even for the most popular of all games.. partly because there aren't enough people owning units or spending. But also in part many vendors do a really bad job of pitching the paid parts of the game at the right time and in the right way.. maybe give too short of a demo, or too much without incentive, or too high a price, or not enough time spent making me want to buy, etc... lots of failure in that department but I think it's going to take time and experience to get that nailed and for people to be able to google Ouya success stories and follow some kind of `how to do it right` template. I guess mobile devs had to go through the same teething.

All these gripes aside though I generally still feel a fondness for this little cube and I like how you can try out new games on a frequent ongoing basis. I just wish there was more higher quality titles out there and not so much garbage. So many of the games are way too simple like without any menus or proper title screens etc... like people are just trying to get something out the door as soon as possible without the polish. But I think with time things will improve.

I've actually kind of shelved my one main Ouya project because after a quick performance test I realized there was no way it's going to run smooth and do what I want... so I'm now working on something much simpler.

 

Do PM me or whatever if you find that those become out of date. If I do any more tinkering with the Ouya, I'll post my experiences.

 

I think that's a side effect of them taking a bunch of free off-the-shelf bits of software and squishing them together. Setting up the Ouya for Unity development feels especially clunky compared to the tightly integrated (though proprietary) XNA setup. Setting up XNA to push to Xbox is SO easy.

 

Making stuff easy is just a matter of automation and usability, which could be wrapped around any number of separate underlying pieces.

 

Most of the hassle setting up is to do with the android sdk side of things not specifically Ouya, the device driver for the Ouya is the worst bit, after that I've found downloading/updating the ouya-unity-plugin from repository and then exporting the packages/building and running from unity pretty straight forward and without any problems.

The controllers seem a bit hit and miss at times, the ouya controller connects and works fine on pc but is not supported on the mac so you have to use a different controller to test in unity.

I think the secret to keeping the performance up as it is with mobile devices is to keep the draw calls down.

Nice little device, I'm having fun but I think Ouya's problem at the moment is that a fair percentage of the devices so far have been purchased by devs and not by the consumers who are actually going to buy games.

 

It's also about matching expectation, which includes minimising change and putting relevant information where people will look for it.

To me, the documentation is Ouya's single biggest pain point. I assume that now that 1.0 has been reached the API will stop changing so much, which should make it far easier to get and keep the docs up to date. When I did preliminary integration for my game the main issue was that no single set of instructions was complete, and often instructions didn't specify which version of the SDK they were for so I was literally shooting in the dark to see what was actually relevant.

There's also that many instructions referred to downloading a bunch of UnityPackages that didn't actually exist any more. They'd been replaced with a project which I downloaded and manually copied the assets over. Unfortunately, it took me ages to figure out that what was actually required was to open the project and export some packages from it, then import those packages, as not everything I needed was in the Assets folder. That was probably documented somewhere, but it wasn't in any of the obvious places I looked.

Once everything was integrated it was pretty sweet to work with. It's got Android's super easy deployment pipeline which makes development a snap. Performance seems pretty solid (though my game is made for iPad 2+, so that's easy for me to say) and Unity makes everything else pretty easy. It's a shame that there's not better integration with the native Input classes (or is there?), but since I need different code paths for input on different platforms anyway and we already handle that quite nicely it really wasn't a big deal to add another.

Yep, but they won't come until there are plenty of solid games to play.

 

Happiness is....

...Finally getting your OUYA after Amazon messes up the order
...Getting home and doing all the unpackaging
...Realising you have a spare adapter that will allow you to convert a US plug to a NZ plug

Dissapointment is...

...discovering that the new 23" monitor you bought in place of the old 27" monitor you sold doesn't have an HDMI port..

ff...fff...fffffff.... facepalm

 

kogan.com

 

It seems HDMI -> DVI cables do exist.. will get one tomorrow..