Monday, 5 November 2012

How to program for Ouya

Ouya ODK
Developing for Ouya
Guide to programming for OUYA
In December the Ouya SDK ,known as the Ouya Development Kit or Ouya SDK will be released. We've gathered the latest facts, information and guidance that potential Ouya programmers will need to make their venture into the soon to be released Android powered console successful.

Overview of the Ouya capabilities
The console is based on Android Jellybean with the developer boards running JellyBean 4.1

Ouya Controller-what a developer needs to know
The controller will be similar to a generic gamepad with a standard number and configuration of action buttons, all games will need to use the controller buttons for  input. When the ODK documentation is released it will have the Ouya key mapping info.
The controller also uses a touchpad that has single touch support- no multi touch in this version.

Disregard using buttons such as menu or volume as they won't be present but there will be a system button that brings up the pause menu from where the game specific settings menu can be accessed.
For typing purposes a soft keyboard will be used.

Is the Ouya Display HD?
All screen resolutions and aspects are supported with full use of the screen geography

How to earn money as an Ouya Programmer?
The policy is that all games will be free to download on the console. This can take the form of a free demo or level and then monetisation of your Ouya game can happen with freemium models and in app purchases allowed

In-App Purchasing API. In-app purchases can either be “entitlements” that are purchased once (e.g., full game unlock or premium item purchase ) or “consumables” which can be purchased repeatedly (e.g., coins or tokens). The ODK will have payment APIs to sell in-app items.

Settings and Software:
Game settings. After a gamer presses the OUYA system button, the game will pause and bring up an OUYA-standard menu that gives a gamer an option to exit the game or enter game settings.
You, the developer, will have an API to insert your own custom game settings.
Permissions. General permissions that will apply to all apps instead of each app having to have its own permissions.
Ouya with Tegra T33
Ouya Dev Kits
System resources.
 OUYA is not a smartphone so is not designed for multitasking with more than one app running at the same time. Game developers can tune performance confident that full system resources, barring a few basic system services, will be available to them.
No notifications.
OUYA games will have no push notifications at this time this means that they  will not be developing or offering the services that are required to support push notifications for v1.

Store Listing, Metadata, Game Art:
When  the Alpha ODK to the OUYA developer portal is released  in December, specifics as to icon sizes, listing requirements and OUYA store policies will be published at this time. The interfaces have been  designed  with developers and  common assets in mind '

Ouya  hardware:
OUYA’s board is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor.
Which Tegra 3 processor is used in Ouya? The Nvidia Tegra 3 processor the T33. That means that a developer can build and test on any Tegra 3 Android tablet. For now, OUYA will be using OpenGL ES2 like all other Tegra 3 devices.
ODK devkit controller
Ouya Keymapping

Specific Developer Questions
Will any Unity Store extensions to provide easy access to things like your IAP, any Lobby system and possibly controller be provided?

A Unity extension for OUYA is being worked on , this should be released soon after the ODK
Is multi-touch something that is being considered in the future? Also a game pad with an lcd display?

An official pack of high resolution button and controller images for use in development will eventually be provided.

Current Developments important to Game Studios

Dev kits will be shipped in December with the company now in advanced engineering testing

"Last week was a huge milestone for us we received our first development run of PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) for the console," the company announced on its website.

"The first boards came to life without any hitches, and we're now fine tuning software and hardware performance for graphics, wireless, and user experience!"

1 comment:

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