OUYA - First Impressions

My OUYA arrived yesterday!
It's cool, really small.

The hardware:
Not as powerful as you might expect for an Android TV console. Seems to be comparable to the processing power of a decent Android tablet and I guess that makes sense - it's $99 (and comes with a controller), whereas a GOOD Android tablet (more powerful than an OUYA) costs upward of $400.

What does that mean?
Final Fantasy 3 is on the high end of what OUYA can handle, and for me, sound effects and fanfares were cutting out - I think bc of low memory. Maybe the port could have been better too.

The Ball is another graphically intensive game - so process intensive that I experienced serious controller input lag in highly detailed rooms. The controller is fine, but OUYA could use a performance upgrade - or The Ball could have been optimized better for OUYA.

Conclusion #1:
If a game (like The Ball) is available on Steam at a comparable price, buy it on Steam. Your computer is going to run the game better than your OUYA.

The purchasing:
I was surprised to see that no in-app purchases were listed on any store pages. Maybe OUYA would benefit from a unified system: list + icons to show what's consumable (single-use), what's a permanent unlock - and what's available for sale to begin with.

On the other hand, I actually think it's really cool that OUYA seems to approve all apps, polished and unpolished, and it puts "purchasing" on the developers' shoulders. Want to make a profitable game? Polish it enough, and present your in-app purchases well enough that people want to spend money within your game. All in-app purchases (even full-game unlocks) happen in-app.

Another thing: OUYA has quite a few emulators approved / available for download for free in their actual app store (which is called 'Discover'). One is EMUya which is a Nintendo emulator. They also have SNES and Nintendo 64 emulators. Download one of those directly from OUYA, connect a wire from your OUYA to your computer to copy ROM's to internal storage. I transferred Super Mario 64. It was a little choppy for my taste (low processing power) but playable.

The common theme here: everything is downloaded the same way. Game with in-app purchases, completely free game, thing that runs external files - that's all up to the developer. You just download the "app" from Discover.

Conclusion #2:
I don't usually download demo's, but on OUYA everything is downloaded the same way. You might as well play before you buy bc you effectively download the demo first every time - and so I feel like OUYA will save me money. I'll actually play some demo's for a change (unlike Steam where you'd have to install the demo, then uninstall it, then buy / install the full game). It's fun to browse and play games, decide when and what to buy, rather than impulse buy everything like I might on Steam.

The indie games:
I played quite a few OUYA games and here are the ones that stood out:

• No Brakes Valet
• A Bit of Fist of Awesome
• The Vestibule

No Brakes Valet makes me laugh every time I play it. It's completely free. Cars fly in from either the top or bottom, and you can brake... with most of the cars lol. One car says "it's the Prime Minister!" and you get extra points if you park that one in the one space labeled VIP. Good luck with that!

A Bit of Fist of Awesome is another completely free game, a two level demo of the upcoming: Fist of Awesome. Great sound effects (entirely cheesy voice sound effects). It's like Double Dragon where deer are the normal thugs and bears are the burly thugs. I thought it was cool that the developer used OUYA (which approves basically everything) as a platform to preview a game they have in development.

And finally: The Vestibule is completely free, an interactive novel. It's simple, very short, and the store description explains that it was a stepping stone project, highlighting parts of a story engine they have in development for a different project. But I thought it was fun and thought provoking. Basically, you talk to two people on a train. It's revealed that you're taking a 24-hr ride to see your long distance girlfriend, and you feel stressed: I should get married, I'm supposed to, people need to act at some point / make decisions. And in order to finish the game, you absolutely have to (spoiler alert) pull the emergency brake and walk off into the snow lol (that's your decision bc the train is feeling like limbo). I might have just waited out the 24 hours and then had the chat: maybe we should live together first, marriage doesn't seem like a decision you "should" make bc you're supposed to. And you don't have to storm off into the snow to avoid it - or to get to your girlfriend faster when the train is taking too long for your taste lol (but I did like the game, made me think about decisions, and time, and all that).

Conclusion #3:
OUYA seems like a great platform for indie developers, free games, and game previews.

Is any game going to get my money?

I loved the games I just mentioned, but only one game seemed like one I might pay for:
Deep Dungeons of Doom.



It's basically a timing / fighting game. You watch the characters and time when to attack or block. But it has nice animations, treasure, secret rooms with thought provoking choices (like a priest says do you want A or B, health or power, I choose "power" and he punishes me for asking for power). Looks like for a few bucks, you can get more dungeons / more content which sounds good to me!

Runner up:
Organ Trail. But I'll probably buy that one on Steam!

Micro-updates

I should make this post long, just to be ironic :)

Last week I released two micro-updates for Bottle Opener Android, fixing minor graphical glitches. While I was at it, I made it impossible to trigger the bottle opening sound on the sticker select screen!

Pros:
- No review queue on Google Play! You just hit "publish" and it goes live.

- Game Maker does so much heavy lifting for me now, I was able to fix a transparency issue just by switching from 16 to 24-bit color. I pressed a radio button and fixed a bug. Imagine doing that in Xcode?

I got good at Xcode over the years, but it absolutely has a steeper learning curve over Game Maker. You also end up with more bugs due to writing the "heavy lifting" code yourself: memory management, and other low level code you just don't have to worry about in a game engine like Game Maker.

Cons:
- None. Game Maker is awesome :)

My OUYA is coming!

OUYA is an Android TV console that I backed on Kickstarter last year.

It's nice to hear that mine is on its way! They've been trickling out. A lot of Kickstarter backers (including me) don't have theirs yet, and the public OUYA release date (June) is rapidly approaching.

This is all interesting to me, namely it makes me think about Kickstarter:

Kickstarter reward tiers remind me of old video game pre-order bonuses (from retailers): you get a t-shirt at no extra cost. Other rewards could be: you get a backer discount, or you get "the product" before it's released publicly...

...the problem is, OUYA is (for a lot of backers) getting close to the wire of delivering before its public release (June). At $99, it also costs the same as it would had I bought from Amazon with Amazon Prime / free shipping. So why did I pay for this last July / almost a year in advance?

Maybe the "reward" is that this product wouldn't have been made unless there were enough pre-orders. The main pre-order bonus is: you ensure that the product you're interested in actually gets made.

Maybe that's fair... but it's not how I would run a Kickstarter. I would want to thank and reward my backers, and to be honest it's been annoying to "anticipate" delivery for well over a month now, and to get my OUYA-fix reading reviews of the device by game journalists - not backers - who were given an OUYA (before me) for free.

I want OUYA to succeed, so I'm mostly just venting. I think if I were in charge at OUYA, I would have just pushed the delivery date back - I wouldn't have promised "we start delivering in March" if 50% of backers would hear nothing all through April. I would say: we redesigned our controllers based on your feedback (which is true), so OUYA's are going into production now, and they'll start shipping in May.

As is, expectations were betrayed, people are upset. So now if I were at OUYA, I would give backers an OUYA credit of let's say $10 to $15 in free OUYA DLC to make everybody feel good. But that's just me!

Maybe I'll feel ecstatic when I have my OUYA in my hands - which sounds like one to two more weeks! I don't doubt that it's going to be very cool when I have it!

Bottle Opener iOS

Game Maker fixed my bug, and now Bottle Opener is updated on iOS!

Enjoy the iPhone 5 support, and opening and closing pocket knife action.

Apple's review team brought a very important concern to my attention:

We found that the advertised feature, bottle opening is a not a true version of a bottle opener. Therefore, you must add the following disclaimer at the beginning of your Application Description in iTunes Connect:

"This app is intended for entertainment purposes only and does not provide true bottle opening functionality."

Done. Remember folks, don't attempt to open a bottle with your screen!

Game Maker: 100% Good

Last week, I posted about a bug I found in Game Maker...

They fixed it!

It was a niche problem. Because "Kenny's Apps" has an apostrophe in it, I couldn't compile distribution IPA's (apps) for iOS. Game Maker had trouble reading in my "Kenny's Apps" distribution certificate. But how many companies have an apostrophe in their name? How many people does this bug affect?

I was very happy to see that Game Maker's team addressed my bug quickly, even though it was a niche problem. They shipped the update this morning, and I was able to compile and submit Bottle Opener for distribution on iOS!

It can be very difficult to be an app developer, as is. The market is rough. In my position, I create entire apps by myself - that's enough, without added problems or added pressure, expectations, or stress. In an ideal world, my life doesn't need to be any more stressful than it already is.

On the plus side, sometimes things do work out!

A good example from last year was:
First Niagara bought up a lot of HSBC branches, and I had to change banks. I chose to close my HSBC accounts and open new accounts with Bank of America. It was a hassle... but I was able to create my Bank of America accounts online from my bedroom, wearing my pajamas. Which goes to show: not all problems are insurmountable! There's a lot we can all take in stride.

Game Maker: The Good and The Bad

Game Maker makes me really happy!
Besides being good at it - I can deploy / test over wifi!

Game Maker uses "runner" apps to deploy / test your games. You install a runner app on your iOS or Android device, and then when you press the green "play" button in Game Maker, your game deploys over to the runner app and runs.

The cool thing though is: once the runner is installed, you don't need your device connected by a cable to deploy apps! I could hit the green "play" button, pick up any device I want (my phone, my iPod, my iPad), open the runner - and there's my app!

Previously, in Xcode, I would have to connect one device at a time with a USB cable, Xcode recognizes it, compile / run, and then the app deploys on my device. Main drawback: I need to connect with a cable.

That's a small hassle, but it's also bad practice to leave a device plugged in all the time - and I'm pretty neurotic about overcharging batteries. I hadn't thought about this, but in Xcode: it was always in my best interest to "test" only when I needed to charge my iPod, I would code a lot and only test when I had to, and that's bad news bc it should be in your best interest as a developer to deploy / test often! Speed up your deploy / run / test cycles!

Deploying over wifi is amazing, because you can even take screenshots and upload your screenshots using Dropbox's camera upload feature (automatic over wifi). You never need to plug in your device.

But on the other hand... Game Maker has some issues too. It's a game engine that somebody else created. And as a person relying on Game Maker to do everything right, I feel powerless when it doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

The latest news is:
I can't compile distribution IPA's (apps) specifically for iOS, and it seems that it's because my distribution name has an apostrophe in it (Kenny's Apps, LLC).

Fun programming fact:
The apostrophe character (in code) often designates the beginning or end of a text string, so if you were going to pass into some code a text string that "has" an apostrophe in it, the code would have to identify that character and "escape it" usually with a / character or something (ex. 'Kenny/'s Apps, LLC'). It's not a difficult fix if I'm right about what the issue is, basic string handling, but it's still something I'm relying on Game Maker dev's to fix - or else I can't release apps on iOS.

I'm sure this will work out, I only reported the bug yesterday but... fingers crossed!

My First Android App

Bottle Opener is now on Android!
Download it here!

...Happy April Fools Day!
Seriously though, Bottle Opener is now on Google Play:
Download it here!

The April Fools part is, you can fool your friends into believing you can open a bottle with this app. Turn away, play the sound on your Android phone...

For added effect: open a bottle first!
Perfect the smug look on your face when you flick the cap away!

Happy April Fools Day!