Lets talk OUYA

[WILL]

Well most of my bias for Java had stemmed from (and rightfully so!) how slow and crappy the original sluggish and buggy JVM or JRTE stuff ran under Sun Microsystems' development. I'm not saying that it's worlds better than what Oracle has done with it (though it may be), but from what I can tell Google's implementation of Java RT into Android seems to perform much better than I remembered from the Java of years ago. Then again the first time I looked into Java seriously it was on a desktop computer that had a far less powerful CPU than the mobile devices I'm using now. That was a long time ago though. We have to take all this into account if we are to have a meaningful conversation about the end-result performance of the Java byte-code.

Graphics is a whole other bag of worms. You can make a poor-to-fair graphics implementation on a game for desktop and have it look alright on those systems, but take that to mobile and you see that it doesn't run so great. To get your games running great on that hardware you have to make sure that your games are optimized and tuned for that level of hardware. You can't be lazy on graphics or this is where your game will suffer most in performance. That also means using a good game library that does this for you or getting to really know your OpenGL!

Now I believe that our first conversion of Subject 33 ran graphics ALL in immediate mode. That's about as slow as it gets. Don't do this new people! It was our first rendition of the code and we are working at speeding things up. We are currently working on a much smarter way of dealing with our graphics by using VAs and/or VBOs through libGDX.

You can check out whats available on the OUYA right now on the website: http://www.ouya.tv/games/

There is quite a list so far (Esp. compared to Wii U's initial line-up!) and it's growing all the time. One that I'm excited about and hope to see more of is like the one below, Elliot Quest.



But then there are games like FF3, ChronoBlade and Flashout3D. I don't know if any use the NDK or not.

[WILL]

Wow it is so hard to get one of these consoles right now. I'm an original backer and I'm still waiting. It has been shipped and I have a tracking number, but the official launch is in 3 days (27 June) and pre-ordering on the site doesn't seem to help speed things up either. Apparently you can buy one at BestBuy in the US.

http://ouyaforum.com/showthread.php?...y-Not-Gamestop

I'm a little chuffed at the prospect that some people may have already bought one before the street date (due to some poor employees selling them early) as the promise was that ALL backers would get their OUYAs before the "official launch". Maybe I am mistaken and read that wrong somehow?

Oh well it's supposed to be coming so when it does I can say more about it. We're substituting the actual console with our Android devices and some gamepads. Thanks to libGDX it's pretty seamless to use the controllers API no matter the actual platform. Makes for less headaches this way.

This is what I'll be using to test gamepads on PC: http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/.../10051357.aspx

Eventually we'll port the game to all platforms, but our focus is all leaning towards a good OUYA version before we spread out onto mobiles and then the beastly PC markets.

[Dan]

I have just got my OUYA! Will start experimenting right away=)

[Daikrys]

hey congrats, hope you can tackle the ouya without any problems

[pstudio]

I have just got my OUYA! Will start experimenting right away=)

Are you a kickstarter or have you just bought it now? I'm asking since I'm still waiting for mine.

[WILL]

Congrats, I got both my OUYAs myself. My backer OUYA finally arrived on the 8th and the one I ordered through Amazon.com (retail version) arrived yesterday.

It's a pain to setup though. Make sure you hook it up to Ethernet instead of playing with wifi because it's a pain. Even with the firmware update.

I'm not a huge fan of the d-pad's directional detection or the responsiveness of the O-U-Y-A buttons. But so far the few games I tried seem to play ok.

Apparently you can use a PS3 or XBox controller as well if you want, but you'd need to design your game to take advantage of these.

[Dan]

I am not a kickstarter backer but I did pre-order it. so far I had absolutely no problems, wifi works fine too. form a game developer's perspective I am a bit disappointed because while OUYA takes 30% of all the sales they still make you take care of all the sales taxes etc. so it's a lot more unpleasant than say publishing a game on google play. in fact it is already possible to install games from google play on OUYA.

[Daikrys]

the Ouya team did really bad thing to backers cause they could not produce enough to ship to backers and their sales partners, so sale partners are more important to them and alot of backers still wait

also what amazon did here in germany is a pain, its only the pre-order price but its about 120€ (~156$). as we calculated with the shipping and duty it would be around 92€ at max

[Dan]

after a few tries to connect to the ouya device I am giving up, at least for a while. it is very frustrating. first of all they do not supply a micro usb cable which is essential for development, so I had to use my android phone cable. then the thing just doesn't show up in the list of devices no matter what I try. I have read their very scarce documentation, followed the steps and no luck. all the other android devices that I have connect without any problems. if anyone else has any luck connecting to ouya let me know.