As many have noticed, Gamestop has opened a preorder page for the Ouya Game Console, and has provided a release date for the system. (You can see the page for yourself here - gamestop.com/android/consoles/ouya-game-console/107853 )

For many people, myself included, we're looking at Construct 2's (now native?) Android Export functionality, looking at the new system, and wondering... bottom line... "Will Construct 2 be an option for creating games on the Ouya?"

In a previous thread I had posed the question on wether or not Construct 2 can hit 1080p resolutions without sacrificing much in the way of performance... well, it IS a subjective question. Obviously one based around optimization of assets as well as just how complex the behaviors and overall game design itself you plan on creating will be.

But for now, let's assume you want to make 1080p Tetris. "What roadblocks, if any, do you see getting a game from Construct 2 to run on the Ouya?"

I believe at this time, the only real "roadblocks" are:

1) Construct 2 produces games in HTML 5. The implication is, to get the game running on Ouya, Ouya will have to open a web browser and THEN load the game. That's some unknown overhead that will likely bring "what worked on your PC" down to a crawl on the new system despite its capable hardware.

2) Ouya Gamepad Support. There's a touch pad on it (not a touch screen, single point gestures allowed), there's a D-Pad, there are buttons, and it's wireless. That's all well and good, but has anyone successfully mapped their controls to the Ouya Gamepad? I've read that a few people attempted to enter a recent Ouya Game Jam Challenge but produced results that were unplayable due to no plug-in or other workaround to map out the Ouya Game Pad.

3) I have read on the forum (could be hearsay, don't take this for scripture) that Ashley owns a Ouya. Any feedback from Ashley regarding Construct 2's performance, playability on the system?

4) Is there any official interest at all in supporting the new console?

Again, consider that Ouya is "brand new". This means that the market is wide open for several clone titles like Tetris... Super Mario Brothers and the like. There is immediately no demand to create the most technologically advanced titles for the system... with full 3D graphics and shader effects, although that -is- supported by the system.

But let's keep the scope/scale of our ambitions in check here...

"What's it going to take to get a Construct 2-built Mega Man game on the Ouya?"

Remember... most children woke up that fateful Christmas morning in the 1980s with a free copy of Super Mario Brothers, and it changed their lives forever. Here in 2013, I'm certain the same can happen again... we're entering the new Atari-age of game development, where tools like Construct 2 are available to enable small teams of 2-3 people to create games in 2-3 months. These small garage-based teams, working on small budgets are at last given a hardware platform that they can carve their own legacy in, rubbing shoulders with big developers re-releasing their "same old s---" (Although a great game, Final Fantasy III's 3D remake/Android Release comes to mind.)

Right now, information on Construct 2/Ouya is widely scattered throughout the forum, but now that we're about five months away from the release of this thing, there is a great opportunity -today- to get all our ducks in a row and start some community-driven efforts to supply Ouya with some great 2D-inspired launch titles.

The floor is open for discussion.

We developed Mortar Melon with a target resolution of 1600x1000. It's a bit less than 1080p but we're using the same resolution on mobile, tablet and desktop devices, with no loss of performance.

Very nice. Would you care to specify what mobile and tablet devices you are testing with? I'm not finding it on Google Play w/ my phone.

Sid Meier's "Civilization" meets Tower Defense. Everyone begins with primitive (say, stone throwing) towers and as they advance through the game, decide to spend the points they accumulate during gameplay on various Civilization improvements. (Irrigation = More Food, essential for People-Producing towers. Mysticism = Magic-based towers. Imperialism = Phalanx-Producing units that can outright stop the flow of enemies while they fight to the death, etc).

This system allows you to incorporate dozens (perhaps a hundred?) tower variants, so each playthrough of the same set of levels can feel different.

Ashley - Excellent contribution! Good note on the node-webkit as well. I will spend some time reading up on that today as well. I'm very glad that there are so many helpful and knowledgable people here in your forums... don't suppose there's a discount code for personal licenses per someone's birthday? Mine's is next Friday, heh.

Yeah, didn't think so. Don't get all awkward and silent on me, had to try.

Rich food for thought today people. I'm actively going to link my team/peoples to this thread as it goes on... I'm going to keep fooling around with the free edition but I can already feel the walls closing in on me, so to speak. It's not your fault, I'm just hesitant to spend "more money" on "programs like this" to discover their limits halfway through a project and have to abandon everything while I read up on alternatives.

Surely you know of "The Game Creators"? No good rat b-------... they put some of their game creation software on sale with a selection of model packs, and once I swipe the card and get it all downloaded, installed and updated, I discover that over half of the content bundled "is no longer compatible with the program" as of 8 updates ago. So, the tradeoff there was, "You can use the buggier, unstable older version of the program to fully utilize your purchase or update to the latest version and suffer through it's headaches while you gamble on buying model packs that may/may not work... ever."

Gamemaker Studio feels obtuse. It's very "small" considering, but what made it worth trying was the fact that it HAS been used in a handful of commercially-released, money-making games. It's a proven platform, even if it too has its limits.

Gamesalad... they want $300 a year or so, and if you're developing in Windows there seems to be a distinct disadvantage compared to developing on a MAC. Right there that's asking me to pick up a $2000 machine (I never buy entry level, that's my own fault there) just to experiment with something that ultimately releases heavily unoptimized gameplay experiences on it's target devices. It IS very easy to use however, and for web game experiences? Pretty straight forward. A lot of people will probably get a lot of enjoyment from it, but it doesn't do what I'd like it to do.

Construct 2 is where I've settled, I'm in love with the son of a bitch, but I want to "do right" by it. We've got the guts, creativity and (hopefully soon) the know-how to do something head-turning for Construct 2, but you look up at the history of horror stories we've had, you will see that "we spent a lot of cash and time producing titles and learning environments and have zero to show for it". It's put up or shut up time, and Construct 2 looks like it'll hold up its end of the bargain the more we talk about it.

I have no problem starting off with "retro" games as a test bed/experiment... but such a thing doesn't really flex the muscle here. Such a thing can get lost in the sea of similar "retro" games that are springing up all over the internet. Who knows? If our big game idea proves unfeasible, these may very well be the kinds of games we work on, but 1080p is still the target.

At this point I'm even leaning towards 720p to be honest... just how does Construct 2 upscale the image for full screen display? Can you just blow it up pixel-perfect, akin to playing the NES on a 65" widescreen display, or does it try to somehow "soften" or "smooth" the picture? That stuff drives me nuts. I'd much rather retain my pixels.

For now, my thoughts will go towards creating a web game I suppose. If we can stand out in the arcade, I know we can stand out in the real world as well. Does the free edition allow export for stand-alone PC titles? Or is this one of the features we're gonna have to buy upfront to test? (Raises eyebrow)

Please define "high end". Also, you might be surprised how many people out there use computers that are not cutting edge. I'm guessing C2 users would like to target more than hardcore gamers.

Well, there's no shortage of "8-bit" games out there either in development or uploaded to the arcade, and each one of them appears to have issues with framerates on a Windows 7, 2GB Memory Celeron-D (I think it's called) system. By comparison, the same machine is good to go for casual games like Zuma, Diner Dash, and thing of that sort.

I'm speaking of my mother's computer... she likes those games, and on lesser specs, even those simple titles can get bogged down in the framerate department.

Me personally, I have a PC at home that's powered by a Quad Core Phenom Black Edition processor, 4GB of RAM, and an Nvidia graphics card considered high end four years ago. It's suitable for editing/rendering high definition video with Adobe Premiere, including post-processing coloring and effects on the timeline with Magic Bullet/Colorista plug-ins. If you weren't aware, video editing is some of THE hardest things for a computer to do, often times maxing out all four cores while encoding particularly.

Now, I don't have any framerate issues when playing the Scirra arcade games, but I use Firefox. I refuse Internet Explorer, I refuse Google Chrome (Google can't take over my WHOLE life, though I do use Gmail and Android mobile phone, as well as own a Tegra 3-powered Nexus 7 tablet). See, the thing is, "That's a lot of hardware for what's basically going to be Donkey Kong Country running in 1080p... and not everyone's going to have it."

The trick is to make a game that'd be as widely accessible as possible, while simultaneously fulfilling the "graphics whore" demands that modern gamers desire.

"Skullgirls" was nice because it was all hand-drawn sprites, backgrounds and the like. "Street Fighter II HD Remix" was nice because of the same reasons. Now go and download the "Mark of the Wolves" demo and see what a game made in "less than" 480p graphics looks like scaled up to your 1080p display. Blurry, that's for sure. The crispness of running a 1080p native game on a 1080p game is undisputedly better than mastering a game on a smaller resolution and upscaling... and that was the original point of me starting this thread.

Best I could tell, nobody has even set out to try and do a 1080p-native title in Construct. Sure it's "theoretically possible", but not by linking to any web-hosted 720x480 game and asking me to "Enable full screen mode". It's simply "Not the same", and if I'm looking at spending $120 for a license of Construct, $2900 for a license of software to EXPORT to a stand-alone .exe (as I was reading about in older forum threads... remember, this is would in fact be a game for profit), in addition to spending a budget of perhaps $10,000 to acquire/create unique game assets (which I would need SOME way of hiding as to prevent other people from outright stealing our sprites, background, music and the like), you begin to realize that "Theoretically" isn't as comforting as "Officially supported".

It's easy to ridicule this as "nit-picking, be happy with what's already in the engine", but if it's not enough then it's not enough... there's no hard feelings, but my mission is NOT to create the world's most expensive HTML 5 experiment... it's to make a game that makes some money. I would have artists to pay, developers to pay, and so on. If Construct 2's mission is to create an easy-to-create platform, then they've already done it... but for people with thousands of dollars ready to invest, they're going to put that money down on what works -best- for -THEIR- needs.

It may end up that I just use Construct 2 to create a standard definition 480P-native demonstration with all the proposed bells and whistles for the purpose of attracting developers and so on for a larger project, and that's ALSO okay. But that's rather limiting, it doesn't achieve the scale of what I'm looking to create, and therefore it may be in my best interest to look at a more capable (even if more complicated) development environment such as Unity 4. That's a bucket of cash alone for a pro license, but it's proven to thrive in an Android environment, proven to export native to Ouya, to PC, and yes, even to web. But the cost goes up dramatically, and it's something that I couldn't personally tackle without taking years and years of time.

The middle ground, I'm hoping, is Construct 2. Construct 2 needs native .exe exporting, native android exporting, native Ouya/whatever else support. I can appreciate that HTML 5 -should- be supported by everyone, but the more wrappers, money, and crap you have to tack onto the HTML 5 groundwork just to get it to work... then tweak it to get it all running as desired raises so many questions for so many support sites on the web, that at times, if you're "dreaming big" with Construct 2, you're "spending big" to get there... if "there" is even possible in reality. Remember, so much of this is "in theory".

Who wants to be the guy holding the bag on that pricetag with a game that runs well in one browser on one website for 18% of PCs in the world?

Also important feedback. PC is actually the "Target" for this, as generally PC gamers have very capable hardware under the hood (though wildly varied). Being able to take it multi-platform would be preferred just because 1) Exposure 2) Expanded demographic.

I'm reading that you can play games offline, but does that mean Construct 2 will export .exe's and so on for a "PC Game", not just something you load in a browser? The expectation there would be to create an installer, upload it to a site, put a price tag on it, have someone pay + download, install, and then click an icon on the desktop.

Off-topic, but important nonetheless. I will continue reading up on it, but there's nothing saying "Create stand-alone PC titles"... Apart from "Create Windows 8 app"... I don't have Windows 8 and it certainly doesn't seem to be a popular OS for games.

Being able to sell the game via Steam, GOG.com would be nice bonuses... but I know of several "do it yourself" options that work along the same lines. They securely host the data you want to sell, and once its paid for, special links/codes are generated for that user to access and obtain the data.

Thank you everyone, I appreciate the detailed feedback. I am in love with the concept of Construct 2, and as I mentioned, it has begun to make sense to me... but I'm not doing all of this to make a game for the web, is what it boils down to. I have some wild ambition, and I just wanted to make sure the path to take my HD game to the Ouya, to the Tegra 4 powered Nvidia "Project Shield" and to stand-alone PC was "all green" before buying into the technology.

I have invested in other programs similar to this in the past, even thought about paying the premium subscription for Gamesalad, but in one way or another there has been one bottleneck (or seven) that stood in the way of doing what -I- want to do with it. Construct 2 deserves to have some showcase titles developed for it, and with the group of artists I have attracted to the concept of the project, I'd like to imagine myself bringing that "high end" look to what is being seen as a "for beginners" program.

Polish, polish, polish... it may turn out that we try to develop the game at a 720P resolution and simply "upconvert" the game to a 1080p resolution for Ouya, for PC... if Construct in fact can't handle moving around the size/definition of the assets we're hoping to use.

Would such a thing be possible? It wouldn't have the clarity that something natively made in 1080p would have, but it may be a reasonable tradeoff if it's the best Construct 2 can do. I've searched Google, Youtube and various forums looking for an example of a game running at 1080p, and have turned up -nothing-. Many games are developed for mobile platforms and resolutions at or below standard definition... and regrettibly, many of those games run with framerates in the single digits on a modern Celeron-powered PC (I'm using my mother's computer as a low-end test machine). At home, I have a video card that by today's standards would be considered medium-low end... it can run Skyrim at around those details and pull 35-45 fps outdoors, hugs 50-60fps indoors with that game. Apples and oranges comparison, but I'm just saying... we're also NOT making Skyrim, although we are talking some high-end 2D work.

The first step will be the proof of concept. This will be a game that has the video introduction, a handful of video death sequences, and a video conclusion. We will use basic digitized actor animation for our lead character and likely end up creating "puppets" for a small selection of enemies in addition to "real" high quality photographed sets and scanned, handpainted landscapes for the background.

Total gameplay time might equal 10 minutes with say, 4 minutes of video around that. If it all holds together, and impresses people both here in the forum and out in the world, then we'll go the kickstarter route to supplement our bigger scale project.

I haven't tested anything yet. The game would have a project area of 1920x1080. Actor size may be something like 64x128 (tall) or some such. Individual layer elements will range but will have to appear whole in screen dimensions. Enemies and props of different sizes of course, you don't need me to explain how that all works.

Still no answer on video playback capabilities of construct?

Don't know what Cocoonjs is. As I said, I'm learning in the free demo version, I'd hate to buy the license to discover Construct 2 doesn't do what I require of it. There seems to be exactly zero examples of games made with Construct running at 1080p WITH high definition assets. The most complete games I've ran on the nexus 7 tablet either crash at startup or run in single-digit framerates... That can't be the standard...

Ouya and stand alone PC game project in mind. Interested in filming live action HD sequences for story cut scenes similar to the Wing Commander series of games. Also looking at creating scale model levels and background layers for an all-hd digitized look.

I've been reading reports that construct 2 may be too weak for 1080p, and android support is no-native with unpredictable results.

I may need to look at alternatives, which is sad because I was really beginning to develop an understanding of construct. We are a team of award nominated filmmakers and effects artists, hoping to turn heads with a proof of concept game and eventual commercial release.