General Discussion - OUYA Developer Forums

Cannot play games, cannot enter credit info

juicybeast — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:19:57 +0000

When I'm trying to enter my credit info, it tells me that "There was an error sending your credit card info: Problem sending to server" It's been a week and it does not seem to be some kind of server down problem or there is a foresaken server somewhere, the location is Québec, Canada.

Main Screen

Trist — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 22:31:22 +0000

I've seen a few videos and pics of the ouya UI. All seem to have that "my own opinion" dreadful red screen. are there any plan to change this? or is this official.

Purchases in Analytics Not Showing Up

HeinousGames — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:22:10 +0000

I've been checking out the analytics and I don't seem to have anything appearing for purchases. Am I just not getting any purchases or is there a bug? I'm able to get information when I look at the downloads one and it seems like our games are doing well. But purchases doesn't even have the purchasable titles, it's all blank. Anyone else notice this?

Content Patch Ouya

Aiursrage2k — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 23:28:02 +0000

Hey guys did you see TBs latest content patch where he was talking about the ouya if you skip to 8:04 to 15:36. He was saying that its missing a "killer app", and the target demographic was going to be low income families.

Analytics corrupted

stolk — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:45:12 +0000

Hi,

It looks like the analytics files got corrupted.

Yesterday, all three of them were fine.

Today, Purchases.csv is garbage containing binary values, and is no longer a text file.

In another thread, another user reported a binary Crash Reports.csv

Bram

now its out - where do we file game and usability bugs ?

XTL — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:56:50 +0000

Seems like the forum isn't the best place to submit bugs, nor direct email. Probably a flood of feedback coming when the console hits the shelves...
Where ?

E.g.

When playing "Syder arcade" I can't exit the game. No way back to the OUYA screens. Have to power off. Syder arcade crashed once while playing.
When exiting "EVAC" I can only exit the game and get back to the OUYA screens if I do a very very short button press - else it seems the OUYA screen gets my button press and immediately relaunches the game.
In game "Pinball Arcade" the trigger buttons on controller have severe lag making game unplayable (using dev hardware).
Should the "TV safe" area be mandated as part of game submission for where txt goes on the screen?
When downloading a game - can take up to 6 hours (yes I have high speed connection - not sure why OUYA server is so slow). My controller never powers down while downloading... should it ? I'm worried about battery life in my controller.
OUYA servers seem very slow to download (20 mins for 10MB to New Zealand) - this seems like a very big problem...
If I have wireless connection and cable for network - when I visit Network menu item - it indicates it can see my wireless network but not connected. Prompts me for password each time.
In Discover menu the descriptions for each game force me to slide over to right to read them. Seems like it should all fit on the one screen without sliding...

Cheers...

Things I would like to see from OUYA - Pre / Post Launch

HeadClot — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 03:05:31 +0000

Hey all!

I am just throwing my 2 cents to OUYA on what I would like to see pre-and post launch. Everyone else feel free to chime in as well. I am limiting my self to 3 per category so that the load wont be too much on OUYA.

Pre-Launch

1. Allot more optimization/Fixes to the OS.(better controller pairing, system performance, etc.)

2. Easier game installation

3. Better Storefront for both Devs and OUYA - (More Metrics, More Payment options, No Sandbox, etc.)

Post Launch

1. Contoller support for Video Players

2. External Hard drive support

3. Oculus Rift Support for the OUYA

Wizorb OUYA Contest

Tribute — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:38:40 +0000

Hey guys,

Thought we'd share a little contest we'll be running for the next few weeks.

We're giving away free copies of Wizorb on OUYA every day and 3 lucky winners will also get Mercenary Kings on steam when it launches.

You can read the details here.

http://tributegames.com/blog/?p=155

Updating Games

Ayrik — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 18:38:25 +0000

So, I just found out that a new version of my favorite OUYA game is available. Naturally, I went to the Play section and selected the game's icon. I didn't notice anything special, so I pressed U to get more details and the description says the game was last updated on March 29. OK...so, I went to the store and found the game. Its description correctly displays April 4, but there is no button to update...I pressed "Play" and it launched my current version of the game! This is, obviously, a big problem because now I have to delete the game and lose all my progress in order to update.

So here's my feedback:

There should be an update symbol on the icon of a game needing an update in the Play section, and when you press it, there should be a popup asking if you want to update or just play.
If you press U to get more details on the game in the Play section and it needs an update, the description and everything should state the new version info, and not the old one. The play button should also be replaced with an update button that will do the update popup mentioned above.
The store should have a section where it lists all your games and you can update all your games with one button, or each individually.

Obviously the UI and store is not complete, but there's my feedback.

In the meantime, what should I do to update this game and not lose my save data!?

Incentives for Sandbox Digging?

goodhustle — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 04:53:23 +0000

I've been noodling on how to get gamers to try out games in the sandbox or a "new games" list so that games don't just sit there untried. One thing that hasn't been tried before is some kind of incentive system for spending time with sandbox games that would encourage people to give new games an honest shot.

After some thinking, I think a system like voluntary jury duty with light compensation might work out reasonably well! Here's how I would structure it to get a random set of users to try every newly-released game:

1) When a user registers on the service, they may opt-in to "Sandbox Testers", and a flag on their account is set.

2) Every time a game is added to the sandbox, it is added to a pool of games that is eligible for testing by this group of users.

3) Users in the Sandbox Testers group may be randomly called for sandbox testing duty when there are games in the testing queue. These users get a random list of say, 2-4 game downloads from the testing pool, and must spend at least 5-10 minutes "active" (normal usage patterns, joystick input, etc) in each game to clear it from their list.

4) When a tester returns to the launcher from playing a demo, he/she is given the opportunity to rate the game with an optional thumbs-up.

5) If the tester completes their queue of games, they can be granted a token amount of free credits or special discounts (much more about this below!)- say, $0.20 for the 20 minutes of their time.

6) Once a tester has completed a sandbox test, they will not be eligible for testing again for N days. This would be somewhat of an anti-abuse measure, and also help prevent users from feeling like they spend too much time testing compared to playing their owned games. It may also make being selected for sandbox testing a special event (as opposed to Greenlight where you're asked to evaluate an endless list of games based on videos and screenshots).

7) Once a game has been tested the desired amount of times, the sandbox tester score could be a strong signal determining whether that game is placed on the curated lists, or stays in the sandbox for the developer to improve and/or market further.

Here's why I find this concept compelling:

1) Gamers wouldn't select the games they get - it would be determined randomly.

2) It would give games without high production-value screenshots a chance to be tried by a diverse set of gamers.

3) Asking gamers to spend actual time with each game is actual work, and compensating their time even with a token amount goes a long way.

4) It would really help games get an initial user base to test it; and that sandbox tester user base is likely to be very vocal participants in the OUYA community - so when they see good games, it's likely they'll help promote them!

The compensation and usage is also pretty interesting. Imagine that the sandbox tester credits are valid only towards the purchase of the games that were tested; in that case, perhaps developers would be willing to help foot the bill by basically offering the credit amount as a discount (up to the 70% dev share) if testers like and purchase the game after offering optional feedback (I know I would offer a 25% discount without even thinking about it if I could potentially get out of the sandbox quicker with a new game). It would discourage people from trying to sandbox test just to accumulate credits to get other games for free, and the test-to-purchase ratio would be a REALLY valuable signal of whether a sandbox game has a good chance on the market.

And, perhaps it's all optional for devs - if you want sandbox testers, you set the discount yourself as an incentive for spending time with your demo - that way, the incentives are potentially even higher, and if anyone doesn't feel the need to offer discounts or have an initial user base help boost it out of the sandbox, it's completely optional.

Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about. Hope that stimulates some interesting discussions. :)

UI Performance Issues

Shiels — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 13:56:36 +0000

Up until recently we were running at 60fps constantly - what happened to slow it down?

It is a small fix that results in a lot of different PR - the whole "OUYA is laggy" myth is only made further evident by a system menu running a 15fps.

You guys should definitely look into curing this problem before the official launch.

Idea: Merge "play" and "discover" interfaces

Jack_Mcslay — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 01:35:44 +0000

I was thinking about it, what if we had just "play" as the current "discovery" and above featured there was "installed" for the games there are already in the system?

The current play interface seems glitchy anyway, and it could encourage people to try more games.

Amateur 3d modeller who wants an amateur game developer to give him a creative outlet

AlveKatt — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:51:42 +0000

I use Blender 3d, and I am desperate for a creative outlet.
SF-themes preferred.

Edit: I think I made the thread title backwards. Making it seem I was game developer needing a 3d-modeller, and not the other way around...

Analytics' "Downloads". What does it mean?

Oriku — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 18:25:11 +0000

I'm trying to make sense of the downloads analytics csv. My current theory is that it really means "installs", as in how many machines currently have your game installed.

Otherwise, we have an extraordinary amount of people who seem to download our game but never play it once. Also, we get the vast majority of our downloads in the morning and not throughout the day.

Those two peculiarities makes me believe that it's just a count of active installations.

Is there something I'm missing or is everyone else coming to the same conclusion?

How to Register a Credit Card

MightyRabbit — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:21:12 +0000

Hey,

So there seems to be a lot of fuss right now about people being required to register a credit card to download on OUYA. That wasn't the case for us - we've been downloading games since launch with no credit card on file. Now I want to buy things in some of the games and all I get is a message - "No credit card on file". How can I fix that? Right now there is nowhere on the current UI to register a credit card as far as I can tell. Is there a way I can do that?

This could potentially be the reason we aren't seeing many sales of our game. If it is happening to us, its probably happening to others out there.

Discoverability

SpoonThumb — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 21:44:57 +0000

Warning! Incoming wall of text

Since there seem to be all sorts of threads about problems with the new store, thought I'd make a thread about ideas for improving discoverability

It's great that the games will be listed/ordered by how 'engaging' they are, but users will also want to actively browse or shop for games. So my main idea is that users should have as many different tools as possible to help them whilst shopping for games:

1. Featured Section
This should not merely be "app of the day" or "editors pick" or a list of games. It should be like the special exhibit of a museum or art gallery. Highlighting under-appreciated works along with classics, and tying the whole thing together into a theme that gives it value beyond the sum of the individual works

2. User Lists
As users start to download more and more games, they are probably going to want to organise them in some way. Especially if space on the console is at a premium, being able to browse your own download history as a gamer will help you remember what that awesome game was that you were going to recommend to your friend.

Ultimately, users should be able to publicly share these lists (if they chose), but in the meantime, the OUYA store can use those user-made lists to start dynamically grouping games together. This helps with the store doing user-recommendations

3. Store Suggestions / Recommendations
Using algorithms based on user's browsing history, play history, and the patterns of others to suggest games. Obviously requires user data to be built up over time

4. Two Tag Clouds
Game devs can already add tags to their games. It'd be interesting to have 2 separate tag clouds. One set tagged by gamers, and the other by game-devs, and let gamers search by either.

5. Custom Stores
Stealing an idea from Gabe Newell at Valve in allowing certain people to create their own sub-stores or sections in the main store. These curators can then organise their store as they see fit and regular users can browse stores, favourite stores or subscribe to a store's news feed, so they can see when that store has a sale or has a new game available.

6. Shop Attendants
People who gamers/shoppers can chat to live to get game recommendations or help as to what to buy. Same as live customer service, but why restrict yourself just to after-sales support, when you can do pre-sales and sales as well?

7. Web/Mobile store
The store should be accessible from the web (just like Google Play) and from mobile, so gamers can do their game shopping on their lunch break at work or on the train home, then be able to play the games that they selected when they arrive back home (which have downloaded in the background in the meantime, Amazon Whispernet style)

8. Ignore vote
Someone else mentioned it on these forums a while back. The idea you can label games as "come back to" or "bookmark" or "favourite", whilst others can be flagged to "ignore" so that they don't come back in the list of games the store suggests / recommends for you.

(Note: although come back to, bookmark and favourite all do materially the same thing, the meaning behind each is very different, so giving users the option of 3 ways to label something as worth remembering is very useful).

9. I'm Feeling Lucky
Random / pot luck list for people who are bored and just want to spin the globe and pick something random or see what comes up

10. Spider graph
View games by the connections they have to other games. Each game is a node with lines linking them using various filters like players who played game x also played game y. Just lays the store out geographically, rather than as lists and sets.

11. Advanced Search
Search by release date, developer, country of origin / country developer comes from, file/download size as well as name, tag, category

12. Developer Details
This was mentioned before by OUYA but not heard of since. Anyway, be great if developers can really customise their details page, communicate with gamers directly, curate their own content (comes back to the custom stores idea).

13. Alpha/Beta Build Sharing
Game developers can invite people to download their un-approved games (the ones that appear in Make -> Builds atm), allowing them an easy way to manage closed/open alpha and beta testing. Since gamers would have to accept an invite or actively apply to be in a beta, they should not be confised about this being an incomplete game

14. Store Web API
A web API (or some other API) that lets enterprising individuals or owners of fan and community sites query the store and get whole sets of data about games back. Give others a chance to implement their own methods for discovery on their own sites (and then take the best ideas and make them part of the official OUYA store)

___

You can also think of it as a big data problem. Users have to navigate a big data set with lots of variables and uncertainties, so all those tools you might use for boring database stuff could be beautified and given to users

Of course all these take time to build, but maybe OUYA can start with the best ideas and work through them one at a time

I'm sure I'll think of more, and hopefully others will also think of loads more to add to this list (or maybe come at the problem from a completely different direction!)

Advertisements in your application. Ouya Admob works?

Orphus — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 02:27:43 +0000

Ouya Admob works like an android phone?

Beware...

arcticdog — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 23:13:24 +0000

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/app-developers-lodsys-back

Their patent expires soon, but OUYA devs could be potential targets for these trolls. (Or perhaps OUYA itself since they've implemented the IAP apis)

Ouya promoting the Games?

kanki — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:01:01 +0000

Hi!

Two questions:

1) It was stated that for the games that are available in Ouya store in time for the launch there will be some special promotion. Can anyone elaborate what this means or covers?

2) For the developers that supported Ouya initially with the Developer Special package through Kickstarter, it was promised that there is a one year marketing support program (etc.). Any insight on this?

bests,

Markus

Screen Glitches

Mogg — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 07:55:57 +0000

Heya folks!

The last day or so I've been having a weird screen glitch on my Ouya and I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this happen after using the Ouya for extended periods of time...

What's happening is a bit hard to explain but its a mix between the screen tearing and a stutter in the frame rate -- where maybe half of the screen will glitch/shift over about 25% of the screen width for a frame and then go back to normal. It's kind of random, but appears to be getting more common.

My first suspicion was that it is something to do with Garbage Collection... but I'm not entirely sure that's the problem after seeing it happen for the last few hours. Also, it doesn't seem to be happening in one of my other prototype games but there did seem to be some hints of the issue when playing Final Fantasy III.

I'm thinking this is likely a memory leak or something? Maybe causing all kinds of weird issues with this game and potentially others? Does anyone have any ideas?

I've been messing with the Ouya since the beginning of January; testing games from others on these forums and eventually my own stuff as I'm moving along learning Java/LibGDX. Also, since they opened up the Store for testing and recently for real, I've been checking out quite a few games and up until today, I don't think I ever saw anything like this happen.

I feel like I'm rambling...it's getting late but tomorrow I might be able to post a video of the problem. I'm not sure how well that would come across, though.

Thanks!

Intro - Hi!

crunchyoverseas — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 05:58:44 +0000

Hello,

I'm an amateur programmer going back to the TRS-80 color computer (or coco). I've had a few small projects, the latest was a robo-rally-esque for xbox 360 using XNA and C#.

I've always wanted to do a multiplayer god-sim dubbed "Divine and Conquer" I have lot's of info, 5 distinct gods with 5 distinct creature trees. The idea being that as God you could do as little or as much micro meddling as you want but you are only indirectly in control of the creatures. They have their own little lives and choose to do what they want. You simply give them "tools" to use.

Siege combat and castle building. Starts at creation and ends with all out combat called the apocalypse. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE TRUE GOD!

2 evil, 2 good and a neutral deity which also handles most trade connections.

Here is a synapses:

Divine & Conquer is a fantasy, real-time tactical strategy game depicting warfare between Gods. Gameplay involves players constructing settlements to attract free-willed minions; managing minion characteristics, skills and powers; and directly impacting interactions through miracles. These minions will gather resources, conduct wars with diplomacy and weapons, and perform catastrophic errors at just the wrong time that will drive their masters insane. Players will be immersed in a rich universe of comedic tragedy and kingdom construction.

The unique gameplay of Divine & Conquer allows players to choose every aspect of their minion skill set and settlements or simply sit back and let nature take its course. Players interested only in conquest can invest in producing powerful weapons and combat skills. Those more interested in research and economic development can also find a home within the Divine & Conquer world by developing a defensive empire geared toward trade and diplomacy. Using a variety of gameplay strategies, random map generation, five unique Gods, a unique hero, and fourteen distinct minions, players are guaranteed an enjoyable gaming experience every time.

Forum search: please improve functionality?

dionw — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:17:50 +0000

Would it be possible to enhance the forum search functionality? At the moment, the search function seems to search matching complete phrases only. However, to locate relevant discussions one is looking for I think it would be more useful to try matching complete phrases followed by combinations of sub phrases.

For instance, "discover right now" returns results but "discover now" or "right discover" does not.

Problem on upload the game and screenshots

fernandocolombo — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:24:59 +0000

Hi everyone,

I'm uploading my game and screenshots in the Ouya site but I'm having a very serious problem, when I click in "upload apk" or "add screenshot" it doesn't give me the opption to upload anything. When I click in any of this buttons it just go back to My Games page and appears a message "Successfully saved game version."

I'm in a hurry to submit the game, so anyone can help me?

who will attend the ouya launch party?

FelineArts — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:43:36 +0000

who will be atending tomorrow's party?

Analytics Stopped

Liens — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 04:10:43 +0000

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone knows what's up with the analytics? The .csv files haven't changed in days.
Are they updated automatically?

Using the Tegra 3 processor for parallel programming

Linedwell — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 05:27:58 +0000

Is it possible use CUDA to parallel programming with the tegra 3 processor?

Duplicate Screenshots

stolk — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 02:59:28 +0000

Just a heads up:

In my game description I have setup three screenshots.

All screenshots show up twice in the store.

Bram

Clearing up development cost

AlchemicTempest — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:19:24 +0000

I'm a little confused. The devkits were $800.

However the ODK is free to download and the faq states: "ALL OUYAs come developer-ready" and "there is no up-front cost to release a game for OUYA".

Meaning the $800 were just for those limited OUYA dev consoles, right ? Just clearing that one up.

Critique And Feedback On The OUYA Store And Games

NexusGameStudio — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:26:08 +0000

This is more of a personal rant than anything and everything I say is just opinion from our perspective on how to improve the current OUYA interface and other general feedback. Gladly welcome others input to help constructively improve OUYA.

Finally we were able to access the OUYA store on our dev kits and download some of your awesome games you guys worked hard on. Kudos for doing the crunch to launch!

First and foremost, the biggest issue to address is indeed the storefront itself. Now, this has been a hot topic this past week on the forums, especially the sandbox, but there is more to it than just that (you guys seemed vocal enough about the sandbox). I'll try to break it down into sections for the sake of organized conversation and try to provide examples when possible.

Prepare for a wall of text.

EDIT: Due to some silly issues we were having with the hardware, some of what I said is now void since we were able to finally get the new firmware.

==========

Store Front Page

I understand the approach of the clean, minimalist look to the store, however, I feel there are some major design flaws when it comes down to accessibility. From a design aspect, there is quite a bit of wasted, underutilized space, but design nerd in me aside, the accessibility problem comes down to the "boxes" used to present games.

The layout is presented in a horizontal aspect, needing to scroll right in order to see more content. The first problem is progressing to the right is done by moving one content box at a time, which would not be bad if for the fact that the store is rather slow and laggy to the point where you can see it stuttering along. Once you reach the right-most side of the "page", if you wish to go back to the genres page lets say, you have to scroll all the way back to the left. Pressing "A" would be a key choice to head back to the previous selection you were at, instead, it closes the store.

If performance is an issue, instead of a scroll system, perhaps a tab system. Present 6-8 "boxes" per page, if the user wishes to see more content, a simple press of the shoulder buttons (not triggers) would then switch to page 2 of content, presenting the next "page" of games. This would result in faster presentation of content and could possibly hide any performance issues.

Here is a super rough example I photoshopped in 2 seconds:

This is just one of many ways space can be better optimized while retaining that OUYA look (though breaks continuity of the system main menu) and presents the content to the user in a more center justified fashion. If I put more effort into it, I could have made a nicer looking example!

==========

Game Pages

The game pages themselves are not too bad, description on the left, nice large screenshots in a slideshow. The problem I find here is that once you are on a game page and you want to go back to the store front, the only option is to press "A", once you do however, it kicks you all the way back to the system menu. It should take you back to the last menu selection you were in.

I believe it should also be mandatory for every game to have screenshots with it. Unless this is a bug? Going to a game page and not seeing any screens of what the game is about is very discouraging and I'll want nothing to do with that game.

==========

Games

While your games are great, had a blast playing a few today. My concern is continuity between games in terms of menu access.

I finished playing a game and I wanted to return the to main menu. The game used different buttons to exit such as the OUYA home button after double tap or used the "A" button at a menu only. The "A" button issue may actually be a bug.

This is more of an aesthetic complaint, but seems out of place to have title screens say "Tap to start", Canabalt HD for example, even though you could technically "tap", just gives the impression of it being a simple mobile port.

==========

This is my rant for now, feel free to yell and tell me how wrong I am haha. This is just how I see some issues that I think should be addressed or to help give ideas to improve OUYA in the future.

Share your thoughts, love to hear what you guys think!

Growing discontent

Bolgard — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:08:23 +0000

Now more articles are starting to pop up bashing the OUYA. Granted this one isn't from a tech blog, but jeez, I hate seeing this kind of stuff. Are people really not taking to it? I hope this doesn't become a new thing.

http://whatculture.com/gaming/ouya-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-everyone.php