Getting Started with OUYA (2014)

Chapter 6. The OUYA Marketplace

This chapter shows us all the steps to set up an account and allow users to buy video games and other in-game inventory items, such as extra levels, weapons, and power-ups.

Update your user profile

It is possible that you might have left some fields incomplete when you created your user account. It is time to complete them so that the store can work correctly.

Navigate to the OUYA portal to edit your details. Enter the address as https://devs.ouya.tv/developers/edit in the browser, after which the following screenshot will appear:

The developer's profile information

In order to upload your video game to the OUYA store, you must complete the following sections:

· Developer Profile

· Marketplace Agreement

In order to sell your products, you must complete the following sections:

· Payment Info

· Tax Documents

Navigate to https://devs.ouya.tv/developers/company_profile/edit to update the information, as shown in the following screenshot:

User profile form

In the payment information section, you should include all the details of your bank account, including the full name of the bank, SWIFT code, and IBAN or account number.

The tax information is supported by a form that you must fill according to your country.

If you are a resident of the U.S.A, you must fill the IRS Form W-9 form. If you live in a different country, you must complete the IRS Form W-8BEN form.

After filling the form, you must scan it, convert it to the PDF format, and upload it to the page. The PDF file has a maximum size of 2 MB, as shown in the following screenshot:

The payment and tax information

Configuring the items of purchase

The second step is to create all the in-game purchase items that we wish to sell within our games.

In order to do this, we must visit the developer portal and click on Products. This link will take you to another page where you will use the New Products link to create all the items that are to be sold in our various games.

The link to the developer portal is https://devs.ouya.tv/developers.

Tip

Make sure that you create a code snippet and description for each product, which allows the product to be identified and associated with the specific game that it belongs to.

Each product has a unique identification code, a description or name of the product, price, and product type. The code can be composed of letters, numbers, and underscores.

The product description provides further details on what the product does. It is suggested that you indicate the product name and the game to which it belongs as part of the product description, in order to prevent future errors when your inventory of products is very large.

The price starts at $0.99 and you can select the desired value.

The Type field has the following two options:

· Entitlement: This type of product is used to give a user the right to buy a video game or unlock levels. It is used only once, after which the game or level is permanently unlocked.

· Consumable: This type of product is used for items such as coins and powers. These can be purchased multiple times.

The form used to create a product

The preceding operation is repeated for each item that is to be sold, in order to finish creating all the inventory items that are on sale.

The portal will display all the products; this can be edited as required.

All fields except the product identifier are editable.

Note

The Price field and the Type field are very important, because they are the basis for the monetization of the video games.

In each sale, the OUYA store keeps 30 percent of the profit. The developer will receive the first payment when they have collected at least $150 and payments are made after every 30 days. Once you create a product, it cannot be removed. It should be noted that for testing purposes, any purchases made by the account that created the game will not be charged. This is imported if you are testing with more than one account.

Creating a game in the OUYA store

To begin receiving payments from the sales of the inventory or unlock levels, you need to create a video game by using your developer account and associating the products to the game. Take a look at the following screenshot:

Creating a new game

It is important to have some pictures of what our game looks like so that they can be published on the OUYA server, as shown in the following screenshot:

Creating the Key.der file

It is not enough to just create all the purchasable items and the video games in the OUYA store.

You also need to download an encrypted code associated with each game that is published on your account. This code is in the Key.der file, as shown in the following screenshot:

View of a game created with the link to download the Key.der file

To download the Key.der file, you need to click on the Download link in the My Games page and save it on your hard drive.

The inside view of the Key.der file is a set of encrypted code that generates the link between our program and the OUYA store to allow it to make a purchase.

The project has a Key.der file and this must be replaced with the downloaded file from your user account.

Programming access to the marketplace

The OUYA SDK provides us with the ability to use a script to quickly configure our interface for shopping. You need to install a script into Unity3D. To see it in practice, you must go to the following path and import the respective script:

Assets/OUYA/examples/scenes/OuyaShowProducts.unity

The ShowProducts.cs script shows us how to get details about the items that can be purchased from the OUYA store. Open the scene by double-clicking on the OuyaShowproducts.unity file, as shown in the following screenshot:

Using the ShowProducts script

The publishing portal also allows our games to be customized, including specifying which countries will be allowed or denied access to our video game.

The game must meet specific requirements that define the company's OUYA and are posted on the developer's website.

A general guide to OUYA game content

In general, the following recommendations should be taken into account before releasing a video game on the OUYA console:

· Safe zone: This is a margin to be taken into account on all the edges of a screen to avoid problems when viewing the application on a TV.

· Prohibited content: Make sure that the game does not promote violence; does not contain explicit sexual content; or does not promote hatred towards a person or group of people for their race or ethnicity, religion, disability, sex, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity.

· Gameplay: The game should be playable without being connected to the Internet and should not require any additional hardware or software.

· Shopping: The In-App Purchase API must be used for purchases and sales.

· OUYA Content Ratings: To rate a game, the following scale should be used: everyone, ages 9 and higher, 12 and higher, and 17 and higher.

· App's images and icons: Each game or application needs icons and image resources that help us customize the look and feel of the game. Icons are used to customize the shortcut that launches the game.

· The application's image path is Assets\Plugins\Android\res\Assets\Plugins\Android\res\drawable-xhdpi\ouya_icon.png, and the image size must be 732 x 412

· The application's icon path is Assets\Plugins\Android\res\Assets\Plugins\Android\res\drawable\app_icon.png, and the image size must be 96 x 96

More information is available at https://devs.ouya.tv/developers/docs/content-review-guidelines.

Build settings

To compile the video game within the Unity3D program, perform the following steps:

1. Inside the Scenes folder, you will find the following three main files of THE LAST MAYA video game:

· SetUp.Unity: This is the file application that runs in the beginning

· TitleScreen.Unity: This is the scene that shows us the title or cover of the game

· GameScreen.Unity: This is the main game scene

2. First, navigate to the Assets\Scenes folder and drag the following files to the box labeled Scenes In Build, in the following order:

· SetUp.Unity (stay with consecutive number 0)

· TitleScreen.Unity (stay with consecutive number 1)

· GameScreen.Unity (stay with the consecutive number 2)

The three files should be selected. If the numbers are not consecutive in the preceding order, delete the files in the window (check each file and press the Delete key) and repeat the process.

3. Secondly, in the PlayerSettings window, set the following parameters, as shown in the following screenshot:

· Company Name: your_company (for example, inHouseLabs)

· Product Name: your_product_name (for example, THE_LAST_MAYA)

The Build Settings window

Testing the project with the emulator

Load the Android SDK and run the Android Virtual Device for OUYA's emulator. Next, run the ouya-framework.apk and ouya-launcher.apk applications that are within the OUYA-ODK directory. Type the following commands in a console or a terminal:

adb install -r ouya-framework.apk

adb install -r ouya-launcher.apk

Next, go to the ouya_mayan/apk folder, and run the following command to load the video game:

adb install -r ouya_mayan.apk

After executing the preceding command, the following screenshot will appear:

Running OUYA's emulator

Summary

After reading this chapter, you will possess the ability to set up your account to receive money from the sales of your products and video games.

Also, use the main features to process purchases such as the product creation, creating a game, and creating the Key.der encrypted file.