What kind of game to create for OUYA?

So I ordered a OUYA console, due in March/April.. I'm looking now at what kind of game to make for it. I'd like to make a game that is well suited to the platform and its strengths. So the question is, what kind of games are well suited to a) playing in the living room, b) big-screen tv, c) one or two handheld controllers (e.g. two-player), d) OUYA hardware capabilities/performance, e) the kind of audience that will likely buy these consoles.

Your thoughts/suggestions are appreciated, not just for me but to encourage others to explore this topic... I'm currently thinking along the lines of a 2D sidescrolling 2-player something-or-other.

Here is a timely blog post by the OUYA staff about what kinds of games they hope to see: http://www.ouya.tv/the-kind-of-games-we-want-on-ouya/

Some additional questions might be... what games will work well on the controller and which won't? what is the hardware capable of in terms of fill rate/polygons/lighting/shadows etc.. how much memory can the game use?

And this is a list from some survey results of 45000 people, what games they want to see on Ouya, if this is any help at all:

Assassin's Creed
Bastion
Battlefield
Battletoads
Call of Duty
Dungeon Defenders
Fez
FIFA
Final Fantasy
Grand Theft Auto
League of Legends
Limbo
Mass Effect
Minecraft
Need for Speed
Skyrim
Super Meat Boy
Terraria
Timesplitters
Torchlight

Also what platform do you think Ouya will be most like... low-mid-range PC perhaps?

 

How many controllers can the OUYA support I am thinking back to N64 with the 4 player split screen - goldeneye, mario kart.

 

Browse this for ideas lol https://twitter.com/PeterMolydeux

 

Go retro try a side scrolling shootem up but with great graphics and special effects but only after you have made fun gameplay, Always remember that if its not fun to play whats the point?

Anyone who buys Ouya is not looking for the next generation of computer games there looking for fun games in a cheap package.

Go replay some old games and with the ones you find fun figure out why they still are and use that for inspiration. After you get a good basic fun game work on shining it up because who does not like shiny

 

Obviously from the list above this is not true. A number of triple-A blockbusters are mentioned above.

 

Perhaps a slight rephrase of the question is needed... what games could an indie developer make that would be highly suited to OUYA? - keeping the desires for AAA-in mind, but also keeping within the scope of something indies can pull off.

 

On the other hand, I don't see the Ouya running Skyrim or COD anytime soon...

I think some fun and new type of multi/cooperative game would work well on the platform, but really it's up to you.
Just keep in mind that the game will be free to play.

 

What is the time frame? What are your abilities/resources?

 

lol, how does this change the above expectations? scaling an experience to fit the hardware is common-place in video games

 

You can have up to 4 controllers. So yeah local multiplayer sounds like a lot of fun with the family/friends. But that can be adapted to many types of games.

I guess I have to go sit on the couch, pretend I'm holding a controller, and look rather silly while I meditate and imagine the possibilities.

 

Seems hard to find any hard numbers on the performance of the actual OUYA. It's handy to know what it can handle smoothly .. but looking around at spec comparisons with devices that use the same Tegra3 model (Tegra3 T33), such as this one http://www.anandtech.com/show/6036/asus-transformer-pad-infinity-tf700t-review/3, and maybe giving OUYA a little more credit due to its overclocking bump (20-30%?), I think maybe we can say that Ouya performance will be approx:

CPU faster than iPad2 maybe by 20-50%, quad-core
GPU pixels/second fill rate ~600 to 750 million/sec?... maybe a little less than iPad2 (around 950m)... keep in mind we're running at 1920x1080 instead of 1024x768 also
Textured/lit triangle/second almost as much as iPad2

So it sounds like there's a little more horsepower than iPad2 CPU and a little less on the GPU/fill rate side.
1920x1080 is about 2 million pixels, so you can maybe do 5-6 full-screens of pixel fill at 60hz, which is quite useful

I'd like some idea of how much memory is available to a single game... it has 1gb but the o/s has to run, so can we expect 750megs, or 500?

 

It is unrealistic to expect ports of these games to the Ouya or if they did it would be some half assed game like the COD Wii games... clearly people are not looking for PS2 graphics but Xbox 360 or PS3 unfortunately this will likely be the death of Ouya(like people buy it and whine that it can't support these high quality graphics)


Anyway.. I dislike that the controller has no sensors so that sucks IMO.

How about a game were you play as this four armed super hero (Like in Ben 10) one person controls a set of arms, another for the other set, a person controls the head(ether screen view in third person or shoots attacks in side scrolling.) and the final person controls the legs... in comedic fashion. Now this you actually control a player each, but when you combine you get 2x as powerful (well 4x as strong as a single player) so the benefits make it worth combining to fight, now when you combine you get a random roll and it is up to you to see were your character "landed" and to quickly take on the roll of that body part... co operation is important as there are multi player combos etc that could be executed... IMO it should be a side scroller.

 

If it has a Tegra3 then it can run quite good graphics, there are a few games on the tablet I have which also has a Tegra3 in it that are very good so what the Ouya can do should be equally as good.

Don't worry to much about what people say they want rather focus on what they actually want and what your capable of doing. Despite all the AAA games asked for on the list given a game like angry birds has out played and outsold each of them

People want fun and old games are still fun to play. I'm not saying make games like old games with 16 bit graphics and midi sounds lol but its game play, how they play that's important.

If it has up to four controllers make a 4 player game, think golden axe but with more players heh nostalgia

It does not have to be a platformer or a side scroller these are just ideas on types of games people have made which where popular and are fondly remembered.


I think the main thing to focus on now is what kind of people would buy the Ouya i.e. young, middle age, older. Gamers, causal gamers, retro fans? and what type of games would they expect or want to play. Figure that out and see if you have the capability to make the games that would sell well on Ouya and focus on that.

Do you know what the most played video game in the world is? Its solitaire lol yea a single player card game, why? Because its available to anyone with a computer and fun to play. When the Ouya is released if you get a game ready and one that is fun to play when it is launched people will play it simply because its there, remember for a game to be included on Ouya it must have some free elements people must be able to play it from start up, if the game is there and looks interesting people will try it out.

BTW this is important for a lot of people here, think about giving your first game away for free but make sure they know who made the game, the reason to do this is to get your name known to the players so your next game which has paid for elements has a market presence rather than going in cold. Also think about releasing an update with real new features for your old game when you second one comes out, include an advertisement for your new game with the update, this is to get your new game into the attention of your old players. Those who like your old game and are interested in the new update would get introduced to your new game by that attention.

I know I wrote quite a bit but I am almost finished, I want anyone that is interested to do something, go and google and play a game called burrito bison. Yes its a flash game but don't knock them, more people play flash games than AAA titles, this is the market that indis should focus on. The reason I selected that game is its very professionally made and is very fun and shows the kind of game that would do well on Ouya but also because after you have played it for a while long enough for you to know the game google its sequel burrito bison revenge and compare the two. This is how you make a sequel and see if you can notice how they monetized the sequel but the not the first game this is what you should try and do as well with your games.

Hope some of this has helped.

 

Make a Kart Racer.

when's the last time we saw a decent kart racer besides Mario Kart? With four players and some toony graphics it could be really fun.

 

Kart racer. They are fun and can keep people coming back when racing against friends. I play PAM alot and use to play mario kart. Good clean fun for the whole family lol.

 

So you think the problem with COD games on the wii is the graphics? Yep, ok we can end this here.

 

Well I remember zero gear was made by an inide (a mario kart clone) even got on steam so it should be doable

 

Seems there's a lot of favor for multiplayer... is there room/appeal for single player, and in what types of games?

 

I feel like you might be going about this the wrong way. The real indie gems aren't by the numbers projects aimed at what the market thinks it wants, they're from the heart projects that people really really wanted to make. That's important not just because of the feel good aspect, but because as an indie you're going to have to put in a ridiculous amount of effort to finish. By the time you get to the last 30% of the game, you'd better love the damned thing, or you'll thrown in the towel.

Dig deep and think of that time you were playing that game and having a blast and thought, "hey, wouldn't it be cool if X", and follow that thread. Somewhere in there will be an idea that isn't about being the prettiest or the biggest or the moviest game in the land, and that's your winner: a clever trick to delight your players, that doesn't cost an arm and a leg in art or programming resources. Once you have that, the rest is just figuring out how to present it effectively.

Either way you get there though, good luck!

 

Lots of appeal for single player games you don't always have friends around all the time. Any type of games really you know people enjoys lots of types hard to select one type.

Heres an idea for anyone who wants to try it, Think a multiplayer game like mario party for the Ouya and except with out mario lol or other copyrighted content.

Its basically a multiplayer collection of mini games set in a board game like environment for up to 4 players. Other than mario party what other multiplayer mini game type games are out there?

 

I think something that can show that can push what ouya can do graphically, compare the comments from beast boxing to roasty roaster (you dont find any trollish posters in beast boxing). So I would think something that doesnt use vector art and probably not 2d (although hard to say)

 

Well me and my team are making this cool puzzle type game

https://www.facebook.com/BrotherTheGame

 

I'm taking a look at some of the games from yesteryear. For some reason Ouya brings back memories of Amiga games, maybe because I played a lot of them on a TV back in the day. There were some good hits there that are worth a revival.

 

Does Ouya support all of unitys shaders or only the mobile ones?

 

Never ever base anything you develop on the comments section of youtube.

 

Isn't the comments section of youtube one if the lower circles of hell? The third I think.

 

Just remake Covert Action and give it a different name since SID MEIER NEVER WILL

 

Does anyone know if Ouya has like a unified memory system like iOs devices... ie the 1gb acts like `video ram` so you can have lots of textures?

And any idea what the maximum texture size will be, probably 2048?

 

I believe that's how all Tegra devices function, so yes.

 

Jury is still out on how much ram will be free for use by a given game... should we assume only half of the 1gig, about 500 megs? Or is there real data on this yet?

 

I'm not really able to answer that since I won't be getting mine until March. Somebody on their official forums might be able to help with that though. http://forums.ouya.tv/

 

Found this on a forum somewhere:

Here is one test using the latest version of Quadrant Standard Edition:

Total Score: 5,184
CPU: 15,268
Mem: 3,622
IO: 4,604
2D: 667
3D: 1,757

Other info:

OS: 4.1.2
CPU: ARMv7 rev 9 (v7l)
Freq: 1600MHz
Max Freq: 1,700 MHz
Cores: 4
BogoMIPS: 1987.37
Total Mem: 986132Kb
OpenGL: ES 2.0
Max Texture Units: 2
Max Texture Size: 2048
Max Lights: 8

Not really sure how the performance numbers translate, but a little disappointed at the 2 texture units? I wonder if that 986mb is free ram available to the app that's running?

And you're right, there is some useful performance info on the official forum e.g. http://forums.ouya.tv/discussion/comment/3751/

 

I really doubt its 2 texture units. If that were the case, most Android games on the Tegra3 platform wouldn't exist.

 

mmm yah and iOs 3gs+ devices all have 8 units since the last few years, coupled with 2048 texture size, so I'd assume probably 8 at least?

 

here is some useful tech data about opengles2.0 capabilities on tegra3, by nvidia https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/mobile/files/tegra_gles2_development.pdf

aha: GL_MAX_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS 16
Looks like it also supports render textures, even 16-bit float format
Max texture size is 2048

 

I just finally got an email response from the Ouya team... basically their `system processes` take up approx 450-500mb of the 1gb system ram. They're working on reducing the memory resources required to support such processes, but they're presently recommending to devs to use no more than 512mb. Seems quite hefty that they use half the memory already, but 512 is quite useful still.

With a system like Ouya or iOs where the memory is shared as graphics memory, does anyone know what happens internally within Unity when you do stuff which normally would be done over the `graphics bus`... usually it's between main ram and graphics ram, but in a unified memory system there really is `no bus`? But it probably still does some kind of memory transfer from outside the memory that the gpu sees to inside, even though that's really a memory copy within the same ram chips and not across peripherals?

 

I believe the Tegra architecture has supported rendertexture since the T2, but I can't say that with certainty.