Llamasoft does TxK for Sony Vita

[PVB]

So, level 100 is in place :-)

Something else in life I'll never see in person...

Hey, if even I can do it on T2K, you can to it on TxK. Have faith.

[Dave]

Level 64 memories revived, arg...

[matt303]

Quite looking forward to this, which along with the games of a couple of other YY's is going to make the Vita the first console I've bought since the original chunky silver DS.

[oddbob0]

No chance of Gridrunner on Ouya then:)

Problem #1 : it already works except that the Ouya screen does not support rotation and the game is vertical not horizontal, you can play the C64 and Vic20 version.

Problem #2 : my Mac with all the stuff in gone bananas, now yes I do have all the sources and such but my Mac was the only one with all the Android SDK
and Eclipse installed on

Problem #3 : gridrunner is a vertical game "by nature", at least the version done for iOS/Android as designed for phones/tablets and/or things where you can
rotate the screen, the only solution would be "letterboxing" but I take the res of the Ouya is not "super big".

Problem #4 : in this very moment even if suppose I'd like to I don't have the means of touching that thing, let alone I don't have an Ouya nor the time to understand
how it works and put an SDK anywhere.

Problem #5 : is all the day I am swearing at Trophies and things like that and making some stuff for them shouting things like "FACCIA DA BRONZO" (*) while I code.

Argh, I'm dreading getting round to doing the trophy stuff myself. HANG IN THERE, GILES.

Anyway, Ouya things. I'm currently porting one of my games across to it. I've got it running at 1280x720 native so that's pretty OK but also, it is locked to horizontal so I don't know how it'll fare trying to cram something into vertical. If you wanted to lay your hands on an Ouya, mail 'em. devsupport at ouya dot tv and they'll get one out to you I'm sure. They're getting better with that and they'd be mental to not just pack one up and have it in your hands by the end of the week.

But yeah, you're totally right that it'd be a "for the love" project. Games don't really sell in any sort of number on there (there's a lovely pair of tributes to Laser Zone on there, one is free, the other sold 6 in a fortnight :S), not the kind that buys food anyway. I can't see that changing in a hurry either but right now, it's a nice break whilst I'm waiting for my partner in crime to get all the Vita stuff ready for me to go in and build levels and make pretty things and as a bonus, I get a more mobile friendly version out at the end of it.

[gilesgoat]

@oddb0b : I finished all the trophies stuff a while ago, UI speaking I think "I am done and I don't want to add anything else", however now I am starting to go into the phase where I am starting to check if things are TCR compliant.

Speaking of UIs despite trying to make them 'as simple as possible' and 'in style with the things' I think "I still hate them"
as "one of the most tedious parts of all the game making and time consuming to test this & that and time consuming for
don't like this or that".

Ideally you'd like no UI at all, but there's always some very minimal you cannot avoid to put in and in this case/game
using the system 'default' was looking to me quite a bit of an eyesore ( i.e. does not fit with the graphic style of the rest ).

Likewise all this stories of trophies, score tables, savedata, etc. found them quite a bit "confusing" and a bit of a plava to
implement.

I still have to deal/test with the case of "mysterions errors" and make the appropiate things happen and check that it really happens.

Anyway I have not been nor the first and nor the last swearing over all this.

Ah beware of the "hidden" flag

About Ouya I don't want to speak ( too much bad ) of stuff I truly don't fully know yet but I continue to hear
"strange stories" from people that actually are developing for Ouya, they tell me that Ouya people "push quite hard"
developers for making "all stuff free".

To which I asked "OK but HOW are you supposed to make any money then ?"

It's not clear, if it should be all done to IAP or stuff like that, all it seems is that Ouya is so desperate to make a catalog
of games on that they just would like to see people downloading lot of stuff "for free" that's my guess and they want
"lot" of it.

If that's the case, here we already have "the mega recipe for mega disaster" should be on the book of "100 mistakes
you should never make" ( which nobody or very few would ever read ).

But if/as is the case now, I am afraid I can truly said no doubt "I am sorry, I am not rich enough to afford Ouya"
( development ), it's a trap, it's not the console that costs only 100 and that's cheap .. it's not about what you pay
is what about what you DO NOT GET back !

[oddbob0]

Ah good to hear.

Yeah, the Ouya store is well off. It requires all games to be free to download and play and with any conversions/costs to be done with IAP. Which might not be quite so bad except there is absolutely no up front info on costs and no real guidelines on how to sell.

So you could be downloading an actually really genuinely free game, a game with horrible IAP, a reasonable game, a timed demo, a limited demo, donation ware or any old combination and you won't know until after you've downloaded and ran it.

Between that and six people and a rabbit buying things on it, I think the answer is "you just don't make money on it". The top couple of sellers are somewhere in the 2 to 3k range so the numbers aren't good. The only consolation there is one is $14.99 so you can charge a premium if you're that one game that gets away with charging a premium

I haven't got the brain space to write something new right now so tootling along at a leisurely pace with an Ouya port whilst I wait for Andy to have the vita stuff ready is alright for me. I'm just going to throw the game up for free with a donation request and see if someone gives me 50p at the end and charge for the mobile/desktop versions instead.

[gilesgoat]

In ALL truth 0ddb0d I was really hoping that when Ouya was coming out maybe because "it was a console" and they saw
already what happened "elsewhere" they would have made things a bit different and that Ouya could have been
"an interesting place" to make Android stuff and sell it decently.

In the very beginning, if I am NOT visionary, they were even talking that "games would have had a minimal price" of 3 pounds or so.

They fucked up ... ...

So what now ?

[Dave]

I've got it running at 1280x720 native so that's pretty OK but also, it is locked to horizontal so I don't know how it'll fare trying to cram something into vertical.

One quick-and-dirty why to get vertical games working would be to side-letterbox the game. A lot of vertical arcade games which were ported to consoles did this:

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

The old DevBlog's been a bit quiet of late chaps...?

Everything on track I hope..

[gilesgoat]

The old DevBlog's been a bit quiet of late chaps...?

Everything on track I hope..

All is on track.

Lot and lot of work.

[Yak]

100 levels now in, I'm now adding bonus round stuff and will do some background variations after that, then a final audio design session before calling it beta. Plus continuous playability/difficulty tweaking in parallel with that of course.

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

Cushdy.

[melkig1967]

Does this all mean Llamasoft will be too busy to attend Play Expo this year?

No Tempest 3000...

No Txk Demo..!!!

(Although I suspect that hitting Beta at around the same time might not be good timing )

[gilesgoat]

Does this all mean Llamasoft will be too busy to attend Play Expo this year?

No Tempest 3000...

No Txk Demo..!!!

(Although I suspect that hitting Beta at around the same time might not be good timing )

I don't think so, I mean just today I told Yak "hey remember that at 13 oct and such".

I will remember him again, unless 'weird thing' we definitely SHOULD be there !

[melkig1967]

Very cool. Could mean lots of valuable 3rd Party play testing for TxK....?

Let the public try to break it!