Lets talk OUYA

[Daikrys]

have to agree that true native code will run alot faster, for example my games made with zengl run really good on my superpad 2 (which is a cheap chinese made pad) and the java games run very poor even if simple made

Dan's game also runs smooth enough to play, which is true native code?

[WILL]

I would tend to agree with you guys on the principle, however that's just the way the OS was designed.

On the note of Java being slow, I should point out that originally I was dead against it for making games having experienced it long ago in my own attempts to learn it's language. Times since then have certainly changed however and taking full advantage of OpenGL/OpenGL ES has seemed to help it a lot. All apps on all your Android phones are a testament to how improved performance has been in Java bytecode. Minecraft is another example of efficient and fast Java. (considering all the data and chunks of network data it has to deal with)

I think that the idea that Java is too slow for games is an old idea and if the VM that runs it is fast, so too will be the game/app that it runs on. Case in point Another World is written in interpreted code and it ran extremely well on old DOS and Amiga computers.

A lot of technology that we used to think just stunk has seemed to have gotten a lot better over that last 10 years.

[Darkhog]

Yeah, but still native code will be faster than bytecode.

Also Java's slow. It is faster than it was earlier, but still is slow.

Case in point: Blockscape, which is minecraft-inspired game with MUCH higher level of detail and written in C# is much faster than Minecraft for most players (Minecraft's FPS:17-25 at max, Blockscape's: 60-120). Both are bytecode, and yet C# is faster there.

Anyway, I believe native version would be even faster than that. I think we should lobby Ouya makers to allow native apps (if it doesn't already).

[SilverWarior]

Case in point: Blockscape, which is minecraft-inspired game with MUCH higher level of detail and written in C# is much faster than Minecraft for most players (Minecraft's FPS:17-25 at max, Blockscape's: 60-120). Both are bytecode, and yet C# is faster there.

You do know that Minecraft graphical engine is not the best one. Yes it has improved quite a bit in past years but still not enough. But there was a HD graphics mod for Minecraft which actually raised Minecraft FPS way abouve 60 and this on almost every computer with decent graphics card.

Another problem in Minecraft is that its core is quite porly written and can lead to lower FPS. You can clearly see this by the fact that you are getting way higher FPS and much lower CPU utilization when playing Multiplayr in comparison of playing Singleplayer game. And yes Minecraft performance went down again quite a bit in newer versions.
Now several mod packs like Technic Pack and such actually change part of default Minecraft code to make it much faster. Notch doesn't put much on optimization.

So using comparison of Minecraft with Blockscape to determine wheter JAVA is so much slower than native code is not best idea.
Best idea would be to write some benchmarking tests for true comparison.

[WILL]

So using comparison of Minecraft with Blockscape to determine wheter JAVA is so much slower than native code is not best idea.
Best idea would be to write some benchmarking tests for true comparison.

Ok maybe not the best example, but considering how much the guy made off of that game sold at a reduced price with a free and/or demo version to try first, it does prove that Java isn't so unusable for games.

Anyway, I believe native version would be even faster than that. I think we should lobby Ouya makers to allow native apps (if it doesn't already).

I've seen some OUYA games so far and they play beautifully. So I seriously doubt that "the slowness of java" is such an issue as you guys make it out to be. It's not like the console is running a super low-end CPU either.

I believe that your slow issues will be in your graphics implementation and processing.

[Dan]

the "slowness" of java comes from its native interface intermediate layer. basically speaking even if the java code itself is fairly fast (especially if it uses multiple threads) the bottle neck will be the interactions with the native libraries. for example every call from java to opengl library has to go through this native interface layer which slows down every individual call. it's not noticeable if you make 5-10 calls, however, 100-1000 calls already make a significant slowdown. now if you are making a game, how many opengl function calls are you going to make to do your rendering?

I agree that for OUYA this may not be a major problem especially if you are making a small game, because the hardware is fairly powerful and is in fact designed specifically for games. however, for the mobile devices and performance intensive games this is a very important issue. many android games are now made using the NDK instead of java.

[Daikrys]

as Dan stated its not like Java is totally unusefull for games but its still has its performance issues if you build something bigger
indeed the ouya is far more powerful then any tablet so this might not be a problem for any well optimized game, but if you plan to publish your game on some other android plattforms native code would provide you a bigger, or better more satisfied, audience

im very interested in what we will see in the ouya store after the offical release, as for now i heared there are alot of quick ports from smaller android games. some gameloft style HD games would be awesome and a it would be way cooler if they come from indies and not from the big developers (like gameloft)