My game running on OUYA: The Secret of Universe Alpha

Dreamwriter · January 2013

Here ya go, I'm just "announcing" my game today. The Secret of Universe Alpha is an OUYA-exclusive game set to be a launch title (assuming I can swing it). It's a top-down space shooter with Zelda-style exploration. I'm going to release it as a demo, that you have to pay to unlock shortly into the game to get the rest of the game (basically after you finish the second level/dungeon).

hypercanestudios · January 2013

Hey, love your zelda-inspired shops :) Can't wait to try it out!

hypercanestudios · January 2013

Also, how did you record your video? Capture card?

SpoonThumb · January 2013

Apparently there are a number of boxes you can get that you plug between the console and TV and plug into the computer and record everything that goes between:

http://ouyaforum.com/showthread.php?838-What-do-you-guys-use-for-video-capture

I just ordered one myself.

Hicsy · January 2013

looks great! i think it's running a bit too fast but i guess i will have to wait for your demo before i can say anymore about that

Volcanic-Penguin · January 2013

Sweet. :3

Suese · January 2013

Make it multi-player!

Dreamwriter · January 2013

I wanted to add local co-op multiplayer, but there's no way I could do that and come close to making launch. The fact that I'm the only one working on my game at all means my resources are rather limited :)

JSIDD · January 2013

@Dreamwriter - It is freaking rad! Love the references to and spins on Zelda. It is dangerous to go alone, take this shot :)

GodlyPerfection · January 2013

I saw this the other day and totally forgot to comment on it. It looks awesome Dream. :) High five for those of us that are solo-developing!

Love the concept bro and can't wait til you offer it up for playtesting.

mjoyner · January 2013

Looks interesting, but, the view angle gives me a headache for some reason. (I am more of an overhead wanting point of view person).

doubleyou · January 2013

Looking good! Love the dungeon/space mashup concept.

Leonardoas26 · January 2013

Hmm... The UI looks powerpoint-ish. Perhaps you could add some kind of border?

Loved the concept though!

Ayrik · February 2013

I just downloaded your game from the store and played it. The concept is awesome and I enjoyed playing it for the most part, but I have some feedback!

- Slow down the gameplay by about 50%. The ship moves way too fast which not only makes too easy to dodge, it makes it almost impossible to aim correctly.

- Which makes combat virtually unusable (aka, not fun) until you get the "lock-on target" ability

- If you don't want to slow down the gameplay, make it control like a twin-stick to give me the accuracy I need.

- I really enjoyed the block movement puzzles, but I'd rather just press the button to collect the block and lock it until I press the button again.

- The first boss was extremely easy I just locked onto him and shot while circling him. He should have different states to change it up.

- Shooting locked doors did not feel intuitive to me. I think just running into them would be better.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents, take it or leave it. I'm really looking forward to some improvements because the game shows a lot of potential.

Dreamwriter · February 2013

Thanks for the feedback, much of it matches other feedback I've gotten. And as a hint to the future: that 999 Crystal "Sphereship" in the store is going to give you twin-stick shooting, once I get around to implementing it.

JSIDD · February 2013

Ahaha. I actually disagree with @Ayrik on the difficulty level part. Dodging turret missiles is actually not that easy, actually I am stuck in the area with all the turrets where you have to push the cubes. Maybe you should tone down the turrets at least initially because it was night and day once I got there :)

EmpireGaming · February 2013

I dug it, but yeah there were some issues I had with it. The second boss is almost too fast. He'll always catch up to you so there's nothing you can do but spam attack and hope you can kill him in time.

Other than that, my other issues were aleady touched on in this thread.

Dreamwriter · April 2013

The Secret of Universe Alpha 1.0 is live! Crazy watching this video and seeing how far the game's come in the last 4 months (and also fun to think it's exactly 4 months to the day since I posted my crappy "trailer" - I didn't plan that). We now have a complete game, with an overworld, a whole buncha levels, buncha bosses and items and whatnot. And even end-credits!

So now that 1.0 of Universe Alpha is available for everyone to download and play, I have a request: bugs! If anyone plays my game and sees a bug, post it here. I have a list of 45 bugs and improvements I'm starting to fix for version 1.1, but I'd be happy if people found me more to fix - I want version 1.1 to be the final update so I can start working on my second game full time, and I have no QA testers, just me.

Oh, and I'll tell you the biggest bug I know about so you can ignore that one :) The framerate can get pretty bad at times, especially towards the end of the game, and a bad framerate = bad collisions (ie, flying through walls).

Ayrik · April 2013

Hey great job on the update! I purchased it and am enjoying it more than any other game on the OUYA store right now.

Here are my bugs

Some of the zones don't have asteroid belts, allowing you to venture off into the darkness. This also allows you to see the store set ups in the zone.
Sometimes, due to the huge deadzone of the OUYA controller probably, your ship will not go as fast as it should. Rather than using 1.0 magnitude of the joystick to reach max speed, you should make it 0.8 or so.
Xbox controllers do not suffer from this, but suffer from many other problems like controls mapped wrong. No button works for Y, and Y maps to some shoulder button.

This is a really great game, but in order for it to sell to consumers, the graphics will need to be upgraded or simplified. The camera could also use a lot of work and should drift behind your ship so you can see where you're going when you move down, toward the camera.

That said, you actually released something, while I've been sitting on mine forever, and that counts for something!

P.S. I still think the ship should move slower and maybe have an afterburner to boost you forward at least to dodge.

Ayrik · April 2013

So, a few weeks ago I reached a cave and the enemies are on a different Y than me, so it's really hard to hit them. Any pro tips to get past them? I feel like your bullets should ignore height altogether since it's mostly a 2D game, but any tips would be really helpful because I'd love to keep playing the game!

Dreamwriter · April 2013

You have to lock onto the tanks when they are down or uphill from you, locking on can point your ship down or up if the enemy is at a different height. I guess I'll have to figure out a different way to do that for the 1.2 build of the game, which will let the player use dual-stick shooting instead of the lock-on.

Ayrik · April 2013

Yeah but when I get that close they hit me three times and I die, and there are four more of them down the hall. I tried to just fly past them too. It's just not a very fun thing to work around the controls like that. I feel like the tanks should be nerfed or the targetting range increased or something.

Dreamwriter · April 2013

Yeah, the tanks are one of the hardest enemies in the game right now, especially in those corridors. One tip I can give: the explosions do less damage than getting hit directly. And if you manage to destroy all the tanks in one part of the map, they won't come back.

Dreamwriter · April 2013

Actually, looking at my bug list, I did make the cave tanks easier in version 1.1, which I'm planning to submit today. A direct hit only hurts you two, not three, their shots explode if they hit a wall or the floor, and they only fire in groups of two rather than three.

Ayrik · April 2013

Sweet. I'm looking forward to it.

Dreamwriter · April 2013

Version 1.1 of The Secret of Universe Alpha is now up on the store. I made a list of bugs and things that could be improved (and a couple things that just weren't quite finished), and implemented 34 of them, plus little things I noticed here and there while fixing/testing them. And I added support for PS3 controllers (it was actually the first thing I did in 1.1).

Note that there isn't yet a way to upgrade a game to a new version even in the new OUYA firmware, so the only way to do an update would be to download the APK from an external source (such as this: http://www.totalouya.com/apps-and-games/25-the-secret-of-universe-alpha/) and side-load it. An easy way to side load it if you have a dev kit is to just download the APK onto PC and then do an adb install -r from a command prompt.

Ayrik · April 2013

You can also just download it from that site right on your OUYA and it will reinstall fine :)

Thanks for the update! I will play it when I get home tonight! Anything of note for this release besides the tank nerf?

Dreamwriter · April 2013

Aside from support for PS3 controllers, it's mainly a whole bunch of little things. Things like saving/loading the item bound to the Y button, fixed the icons in the save/load menus and the order of icons in the Equip menu, added an Exit Game button in the Settings menu (not really any different from double-tapping the Home button), added a sound effect whenever something changes due to your actions, fixed the state-saving of a puzzle in the cave, raised the camera a little bit in some of the dungeons (including the cave), tanks can be hurt by bombs, the yellow enemy UFO's no longer slip through walls, and a whole buncha things in later levels.

Dreamwriter · April 2013

Update 1.2 of The Secret of Universe Alpha is now live! This is a big one: the ship flies smoothly in all directions on both OUYA and PS3 controllers, dual-stick shooting is now enabled for those that prefer it (note that some bosses are harder to kill with dual-stick than regular lock-on), and the normal shooting is now designed for hold-button-to-shoot rather than pressing the button for every shot. Have at it!

Dreamwriter · May 2013

Hey, anyone who'se tried this game on a shipping OUYA controller (not a dev controller), how are the controls? I've had a report that on the shipping controllers it's hard to move/shoot in any direction, that the controller is strongly favoring the 4 cardinal directions. You should be able to fly/shoot in any direction, a full 360 degrees. I'll be getting a shipping controller in a few days so I can work with it, but until then, is anyone else seeing this?

efroemling · May 2013

Dreamwriter said:

Hey, anyone who'se tried this game on a shipping OUYA controller (not a dev controller), how are the controls? I've had a report that on the shipping controllers it's hard to move/shoot in any direction, that the controller is strongly favoring the 4 cardinal directions. You should be able to fly/shoot in any direction, a full 360 degrees. I'll be getting a shipping controller in a few days so I can work with it, but until then, is anyone else seeing this?

I can confirm this, at least on my controller (a shipping one; not a dev one). The hardware is returning zero for any values between -0.3 and 0.3 on both the X and Y axis, so you won't get any diagonal readings until you're *way* off the cardinal axes. Here's a post going into more detail: Analog Stick State-of-the-World. I really hope this has been or will be fixed as it's my one significant complaint with the console right now.

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My game running on OUYA: The Secret of Universe Alpha

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