My game Monster RPG 2 is now available in the OUYA store. Right now you can find it in the Sandbox at the very bottom of the list. If you have an OUYA, check it out, like all other games it's free to try. And if you like it, give it a "like"! The game is made with Allegro 5 (the Android port.)

Congratulations! Always nice to know that at least one person on allegro.cc gets stuff done

Grats!

Thanks. I popped a little (= a lot) of champaign last night.

Any development tips and advice to share on getting an Allegro5 app working on OUYA?

It's basically an Android app with a few minor differences.

• In-app purchase is necessary if your game is not free. http://devs.ouya.tv has a primer that has all the code you need, although it has a few minor bugs you'll have to fix (ie, it won't compile, there's no serious logic bugs in it.)

• At the same site, check out the "Setup" page. It will tell you a lot of things you need to know such as the special OUYA icons, minor changes you need to make to your AndroidManifest.xml etc.

• Right now with Allegro if you have the keyboard driver installed (al_install_keyboard) it will pick up keyboard events from the joystick, so if you also have the joystick driver installed, you'll get two sets of events. I simply don't install the keyboard driver when running on OUYA.

• From memory, the OUYA buttons are:

0 - O
1 - U
2 - Y
3 - A
4 - Left front trigger
5 - Right front trigger
6 - Left thumbstick button
7 - Right thumbstick button
8 - Dpad up
9 - Dpad down
10 - Dpad left
11 - Dpad right
12 - Left back trigger
13 - Right back trigger
And 14 - the "OUYA" button or whatever it's called. You can't really use 14 but during joystick configuration while playing around, I got it to set one of my buttons to it - so you should put in some code to not let the user set that as a button.

• Keep in mind when submitting to the store that they have a thing called "O Factor" (or something) that determines if your game will make it out of the "Sandbox". The Sandbox is where every game starts until it gets a high enough O Factor/Fun Factor. The algorithm isn't exactly known but it uses things like amount of time users play, number of likes etc. So probably not a good idea to make a very tiny demo since it won't get much play time and therefore much fun factor to get out of Sandbox.

• adb logcat is your friend. So is GDB if you can get it set up right. GDB was tricky to get set right but I managed after trying lots of things I found with DuckDuckGo.

• Use Allegro git!

• Can't think of anything else right now, but if you have specific questions I'll answer the best I can.

Are you charging for this, or is it totally free? I'd think that getting people to make a purchase would be a huge boost to the score. Yes, it would bias it toward non-free games, but that's to Ouya's advantage.

What kind of usage / download / rating reporting do they offer you?

I'm charging 2.99 to unlock it. The give you daily downloads, daily purchases, purchases by country and crash reports (though they said they're working on more, right now they're simple csv files.) They're updated continuously which is nice. For ratings, all you have is the rating on the console, ie the number of "Likes". And yeah I do think purchases help a lot.

So far the game has moved up in rank since it first appeared, so going good so far. If you have an OUYA go play the game, help me get it out of the Sandbox!

EDIT: BTW, if anyone's interested I posted my thoughts on OUYA after a week with it: http://www.nooskewl.com/content/thoughts-ouya

Congrats Trent.

Have you run into any performance limitations with the OUYA?

Thanks!

So far no. The game was already optimized for Android phones and tablets so it runs great on OUYA. Even with the 1920x1080 screen.

EDIT: The game's one sale for 99 cents for another hour and 20 minutes. There's someone out there with an OUYA besides me right???

I would get one but I'm in China. I'm thinking about asking my mom to bring one when she flies back.

I'm hearing an awful lot of complaints about this system, but what else is new? The best is the price of games. I think the most expensive game is $15. And it's exceptionally good quality. I don't see what people are complaining about. Too used to phone game prices.

I would guess that people buying it don't know what to expect, maybe thinking it's a wannabe xbox or ps2. I think the idea of OUYA is awesome; as hardware becomes less and less expensive, companies like this can exist to fit niche market.

Maybe we'll one day we'll have our own allegro.cc console.

I don't understand the complainers. I think it is mainly that people are "offended" by the idea that they don't need to drop $500 on a console to have some fun.

Would get an Ouya, but with my situation I can't justify $99 to get it.

I tried a handful of games last night on my OUYA, some are ok but overall nothing is worth buying IMO. Most games are mediocre, either in terms of gameplay, graphics, or both. If you put an NES/SNES/Sega emulator on there (of which there are a few in the OUYA store) you get access to dozens/hundreds of games that pretty much outclass most of the stuff on the OUYA store.

I think theres loads of room for quality indie games and I hope they show up one day. No offense to Trent, M2 looks like a nice game I just don't have the patience to play RPG's anymore.

The games I've tried have been more than worth it. I tried the most expensive game on the system last night, Towerfall. It's $15. It outclasses anything on any SNES/Genesis/old system you can find, and it's legal to buy and play.

Ok I'll try that one.

Well others that you said weren't worth it, I think are. Like Cannabalt. It's only $3. But imagine how much work went into that. It's a full 3D stylish environment. It's a simple game, but $3 is really nothing.

EDIT: Remember, all those SNES/Genesis games you're talking about cost $40-$60 when they were purchasable.

EDIT2: Woohoo! It's #5 in the Sandbox now! Just need one last push!

I bought the Ouya for video games at the office... specifically for emulators. Whether or not there are any good games for it is irrelevant to me, as that's not why I bought it. The only game I've bought is Towerfall, which to me is the perfect Ouya type of game.

Anyway, I downloaded and +1'd Monster RPG 2 today. I thought it was in the 4th spot, but maybe it was 5th.

According to some stats I saw, people are seeing around 1% to 5% conversion from demos to paid games. To me, that's not bad, but if you are only charging $1, then you need about 5M downloads to pay for the development of a small game (assuming it wasn't thrown together in a month).

It was in 6th actually. I miscounted. Then some games got taken out of the Sandbox so it moved up to #4 where it is now. I've been trying to market all day to get it pushed out of Sandbox.

I'll be having a "flash sale" in about half an hour.

Towerfall is great, would be even better if I had friends.

EDIT: Made it out of Sandbox Thanks everyone who supported us and the game!

Once they see that I like something, it goes right out of the sandbox and into the VIP list.

You should write them an email and request your own list on the device!

EDIT: The game now supports Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers, Matthew

Though the PS3 controller I got today seems to shut off after a while and won't turn back on until I plug it in :/. Not sure if it's defective.

I much prefer using PS3 or XBox 360 controllers on the Ouya. I haven't had any issue with them failing to work once successfully paired, but it can take a song and dance to get them to start working.

What annoys me more is how terribly slow the JavaScript is on their website. How can they make a list of 300 games be so unresponsive.

I bought a couple of games, so I'll request that they have a LEVERTON "play list."

• "Hidden in Plain Sight", $1. It's a game that I could make in a day. And that's okay, if it didn't suffer from some poorly thought out rules. e.g., On thief mode, one player tries to steal coins while the other (sniper) tries to figure out who he is and kill him in three shots. But if you just fire off three shots, the game ends immediately, the thief collects 0 coins, and you can proclaim yourself the winner.

  But that said, it's still a decent multiplayer game if you make up your own house rules for winning.

  
  

• "Retro Racing", $5. A cross between NES' Micro Machines & Off Road that somehow comes across as a boring, uninspired racing game. It's solid for short periods of multiplayer, but lacks something extra to make it really fun to play. Perhaps it's just the dreary announcing of power ups that ruins it.

Have you tried 'get on top' yet? I can't tell if I'm completely missing something or that game is a boat load of fail.

I like them in the order PS3 > OUYA > Xbox 360. Anyway, I left it charging overnight so hopefully that fixes it.

I like Super Crate Box and Canabalt. Retro Racing is fun, I bought it. I haven't played a ton of them though. Towerfall was fun but I deleted it when I noticed it does online checks before you can play . Haven't not tried Get on Top.

First and foremost congratulations for getting your game out and porting it to another platform. I've got a question, what's the fuss about OUYA? I've heard pretty mixed reactions and I have read pretty mixed reviews of the system as a whole. The bottom line was something along: "OUYA - oh no".

I think its mostly just polarizing. Either you hate it, or you love it.

The hardware could be better. The next version will likely be a lot better.

I tried it by myself and it looked really stupid.

Android games on a TV. It is what it is. The haters just gonna hate.

Things will get interesting when some big players get involved in this market. Nintendo will need to watch its back.

Well, yeah, but when that will be? From what I've heard it is mostly for 2D games. In one review they've named some 3D title that wasn't running exactly smooth. Nevertheless, with the "success" of WiiU Nintedo should watch their back.

Amongst the most criticized points were things like the initial bragging of the authors and their exaltic statements about this being a killer of the traditional consoles etc. while this is certainly not the case; the build quality of the gamepad; and the lack of available games.

The author of the review I've read has compared it to a time many years ago when he got hands on some cheap SNES copy from China with 1000+1 games cartridge. He was like Forest Gump never knowing what he will taste.

Considering the current ouya was designed over a year ago, its not entirely surprising that it doesn't have the performance for some more modern games.

It's an Android device, if it was designed today it wouldn't be up to snuff with any PC or Sony/Nintendo/MS console. And it doesn't need to be. It's more powerful than a PS2, and look at all the great games that and all the less powerful systems had. If you just want a piece of hardware, go spend a bunch more money on a PS3/4. If you want to have fun, I highly recommend the OUYA.

Of course it doesn't need to be, yet it in the beginning there were claims that this is a competition for the current and next generation of consoles. It isn't, and it won't be. Though, as you say, there's a potential in it.

Well, there's NVIDIA Tegra 3 in it and that's not exactly just a pencil sharpener. It serves well for tablets. I think that the expectations and initial claims were just unrealistic.

Nonetheless, there's a potential for this console. However, it needs more games. OUYA is actually the first console I have even considered to buy. It's cheap and could be used for experimentation. Though I'm not sure how easy or complicate will it be to get it. On the other hand, right now it's just a gadget for me just as the first EEE PC from Asus was few years ago.

I followed the Kickstarter from day 1 and they never claimed it would compete performance-wise with the "big" consoles. If the article said that then I have to say that's just wrong.

The article refered to twitter accounts of the authors or something. Frankly, I don't care what they said or didn't. For me, right now, it's just a gadget I might buy if I'll have enough money. I was just interested in the fuss about it and the very polarised views on the thing.

Right now the Ouya is mostly about retro gaming and "party" games.

Anybody who thinks the Ouya is there to compete with the PS3 and its big budget games is just ignorant. Its 8GB of storage isn't even enough to hold the content of such a game.

The Tegra was actually kind of lack luster at the time, most of the other high end SoCs at the time spanked it (for instance, devices with a dual core SoC would perform better than the tegra which has 4+). And now, the current high end ones more than spank it.

My Tablet has a Tegra 3. It does ok, but it's nothing compared to the new snapdragons and exynos SoCs.

I would have ordered a Ouya, but wife officially said "hell no" to paying $100 to get it.

Man, you listen to your wife? That's... well ok, that's actually smart.

By all means, don't listen to your wife. After that, go find somewhere else to get sex, dinner, and a clean house.

And sorry, I don't have an OUYA, nor do I have $100 spare bucks lying around. Otherwise I would probably help you out.

I don't think he gets any of that from his wife

Then he bought a defective model.

I'm not amused.

You are making fun of me at the expense of my disabled wife. Now I remember why I chose to have no friends. I don't give a fuck what you think of me, but you have no fucking right to make jokes about my wife. To think I actually considered you a friend Thomas, you can go to hell for all I care now.

FWIW, I remember you saying you had a disabled son, but not a disabled wife.

Besides, those were bland and smart jokes about you Specter, not your wife.

I'd say take it a bit easier SP, I think most people here understand you have you difficulties in life and that was meant as a cheer up, not the other way round.

I apologize. I had completely forgotten that your wife was disabled. My intention was to solely poke fun at you.

I ported another of my games, Bobby, to OUYA this weekend. Don't know when it'll be live on the store but they usually review in 1 day from my experience so far, so maybe tomorrow.

@Specter - sorry man. I didn't know anything about your wife being disabled. I shouldn't have made jokes. Sorry.

@Trent
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