Does Game Salad publish to Nexus Player (Android TV) and support the ASUS Gamepad?
Hymloe
Member Posts: 1,653
Hi GS,
I was at Unite Melbourne and GCAP (Australia's GDC) this last weekend (absolutely amazing), and I scored myself a Nexus Player and the ASUS Gamepad.
This looks like an awesome device - which basically runs Android games and supports gamepads.
So... this would be perfect for my top down action game, and even some of my past games. I'd love to get them onto the platform ASAP. I assume it's quite similar to the Amazon Fire TV?
My questions are:
Q: Can I publish to it from Game Salad?
Q: Is Game Salad partially or fully ready to publish to the platform? Are there any limitations or gotchas?
Q: Does it support multiple game pads (ie: two players on the one screen)?
Q: Has anyone published a game to the platform yet?
Thanks!
Comments
How do I get a Game Salad game build onto it?
Can I use the GS Viewer on the Nexus Player?
Or could I go via the Google Play store?
GameSalad will not work on the Nexus Player since our Android binaries are only compiled for arm not intel. The gamepads would work fine if GameSalad ran on the Nexus Player.
Are there any plans to support it coming up?
I guess I'll make something in Unity instead, for now.
It would be a fantastic platform for some of my released, and in development GS games.
Perhaps I could somehow wrap your current HTML5 output in a way that I could submit to them?
We don't have any plans to support it. It has a very small market share and our users have not express much interest in it.
That is a possibility you could try wrapping our HTML5 engine.
Obviously, it's a new platform... and I love that you guys are focussing on stability, and bug fixes, and adding in the top ranked Feature Requests, etc. That's awesome!
But this does seem like low hanging fruit. So I'd certainly be keen to hear if the platform will be supported soon. It's a fresh new platform that's reviewing really well, backed 100% by Google, and looks set to be massive.
It would let us publish to a cheap home console, set up in front of the TV in the lounge, so our games could be played with full gamepad support, right here from Game Salad.
I'd love to see it happen.
Ciao.
Have you published to FireTV, Android Phone or Mac desktop? They all have full gamepad support, for multiple controllers (up to 8) and a good market share.
No, I haven't.
The FireTV seems like a good option, although I don't have one currently. I might look into getting one of those, as they seem like a similarly positioned product for sure.
Android phone and Mac desktop for players WITH a gamepad seems like a fringe market (but one I should still check out). I could ship my top down game to both platforms with gamepad support along with touch / mouse/keyboard support, so yeah, I should try the gamepad support anyway.
The Nexus Player seems like one that could really take off as a cheap family console at home, with the Gamepad being more of a common peripheral for it. So I got excited about that, and kind of assumed you guys would already support it, or be ready to support it ASAP, seeing it's very much in the realm of the other things that you already support (FireTV, gamepad, etc).
Anyway, thanks!
@BlackCloakGS I am right now running my game on Nexus Player Android TV.
I just installed the Game Salad Android Viewer on it (I'm using version 0.13.34).
I then sent the build across to the Nexus Player just fine!
The gamepad is working.
The sound is working.
Is there any chance you could prepare it as a platform that we could publish to, some time?
Thanks.
I looked into this more, and apparently Android on Intel has a translator that on the fly turns arm assembly into Intel assembly, it's called houdini. So that means or standard android publishing target should work on the device. There may be a performance hit from houdini so make sure you test your game.
@BlackCloakGS Cheers, sounds good.
I think the added support that would be needed is the "Leanback" interface support.
I haven't published to Android before. Is there the option to support "Android TV" within the current publishing system?
I figure an app couldn't get featured for Nexus Player unless it had Leanback support.
I guess at the least, I can still publish to Android, and work on the system. Cheers.