OUYA development

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but as some of you may already know there was an extremely succesful kickstarter funding for an open game console called OUYA, built on android.

Link

It says on their kickstarter FAQ that Unity is already an official launch partner Any gossip? Will you be able to build for OUYA using Unity 3.x Android license? Or will you need Unity 4 with a special OUYA license

This seems like a great opportunity for a lot of indie developers!

(Mod, feel free to move the thread if this is the wrong section, but since OUYA is running it's own version of Android, i thought i might put it here)

 

there's nothing official yet, but i would guess that if you build your game with android in mind, you wont have to do much porting/changing when official ouya support comes.

 

According Wikipedia:

Nvidia Tegra 3 (T33) SoC
Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU
Nvidia ULP GeForce GPU
1 GB RAM
8 GB of internal flash storage
HDMI connection to the TV, with support for up to 1080p HD
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth LE 4.0
Ethernet port
One USB 2.0
Wireless controller sporting two analog sticks, d-pad, eight action buttons, a system button, and touchpad
Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich"

So, IMHO it is pretty much similar to any "high profile" smartphone with the exception of the wireless controller.

 

There's any news about Unity3D compatibility with Ouya?

 

See here http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/163450-Why-I-Think-The-OUYA-Will-Succeed-(And-Get-Better)/page9

The SDK for Unity is now free to download ... seems that basically you need the sdk and then a standard Android Unity license. I'm hoping it'll work with Unity 3.5 and the `free` android license that was given out earlier this year.

 

Was hoping that they would ship the production unity with the Tegra4, but it doesn't seem that will be the case. There are a number of issues with Unity and the Tegra3 (like no shadows).

 

now the only way to develop on the console is using unity 3.5?

 

no, any unity version with android can target it as it is android. and in all of them you will need to use a plugin for the controller stuff at least at the time, unless it maps to the unity integrated controller support already.

 

Unity does not support joysticks or controllers natively at all in iOS or Android according to the docs. See http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/Input.html:
EDIT: It looks like native input is supported with some hacks to their Ouya-Unity SDK but may not play well with alternative controllers people may connect.

"Note: Keyboard, joystick and gamepad input work on the desktop versions of Unity (including webplayer and Flash) but not on mobiles."

So far it's plugin-only, and the Unity SDK is still pre-alpha basically. We've been discussing it on the OUYA dev forums if anyone needs to get up to speed.

 

We just received our Ouya dev kit, and had our Unity game up and running (built on an Android device) in about 5 minutes. It was actually pretty smooth.

We've been developing an online services platform called Hydra Mobile that is supportive of Unity and Android. This platform has been used to power in-game and web-based features, such as player stats, leaderboards and Achievements for lots of popular titles like Guitar Hero, Saints Row 3, Mortal Komabt and more.

We've finally begun to make these tools available for mobile and indie developers over the last couple months, and are currently in closed beta. If anyone here want's to get into the beta, just drop me an email at mjodon@agoragames.com.

Here's a quick list of all of the supported features so far, with more being added all the time:

Currently Supported Features:
Profile - Show your players their personal gameplay stats and match history.
Login/Authorization - Users are automatically logged in upon opening the game...no need for additional usernames and passwords (or optional facebook/twitter/etc authentication).
Friends - Enable your users to build a friends list to set up matches and coordinate.
Leaderboards - Rank your users globally and among friends.
Match-Making - Simple match creation and match finding tools (supporting realtime games and async games)
Realtime Messages - Send fast realtime game messages to everyone in a match
Achievements - Reward your players with awards based on game progress, and notify your users in-game notifications.
Message of the Day - Tool to schedule the delivery of global messages or "Message of the Day"
Notifications - Custom realtime notifications and native platform dependant push notifications
Cross-Platform - Works on both Android and iPhone!
Developer Dashboards - All developers have access to our dashboard with tools for viewing data, setting up features and download docs and SDKs

 

Have you got it working on Android Basic? We are pretty confused right now. Our build is going into the OUYA dev>software location, but not the games tab. It also does not launch.

 

We do have a basic Android SDK, yes, as well as a basic iOS SDK, both of which can be used without using Unity.

Or is your questions more along the lines of "Do you have a game, not built in Unity, but just Android, working on the Ouya"?

 

What I mean is: We do not have Android Pro. Is it possible to get it working nicely without Android Pro?

We are pretty new to Android development (have always focused on iOS) and are not really sure how to go about building our apps for OUYA. When we use the plugin to build it gives us an error saying we need Unity Pro to do so. When we manually build, we get that error I described above.

 

If you are using basic, you would run into some feature limitations using our Unity Android SDK. However, this is the fault of the way Unity handles their basic vs pro products. One of the few limitations is real time messaging. Unity basic is pretty much only http requests, whereas Unity Pro accepts socket requests, which allows us to build out in-game real-time messaging, i.e. "Your friend just got an achievement" or "You've been invited to a match".

If you're using basic, you would have to fall back on android messaging, which is a bit slower than real-time. While we do have the capabilities to accept users using basic, we haven't built that out just yet. We are perfecting the Pro users first, then we'll handle the basic users. It's not a technical limitation, it's just a time-to-do-it-right limitation, thought we're shooting to have this done very very soon.

Now, on the flip side, if you are NOT using Unity to build out your game, and you're just using Android to make your game (with no Unity integration), then you can use our non-Unity Hydra Android SDK, and get the full feature set, since at that point, we wouldn't have to deal with the Unity Pro vs Basic products.

You should chat with us, your use case is something we're looking to fix (if you're using Unity Basic), and I think it'd benefit both of our teams to work together. Email me if you want mjodon@agoragames.com and we can talk if you'd like.

 

Ah ok - I was referring to the actual OUYA console, not your API - but I'll keep it in mind

 

So I see that you can do dev for Ouya with Unity using the Android basic and pro with different benefits of pro. But can you use the IOS Unity license for dev on Ouya? Or any other license or should I just assume it can only support Android? I ask because I have been reading tons of different forums and some seem to talk about using the IOS dev kit but that didnt make too much sense to me considering Ouya is android based.

 

OUYA is Android, so IOS has nothing to do with it.