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Hello my dear AGK2 developers and friends,

I have an OUYA and since than I am fooling around with some 3D tests on OUYA.
In 2015 Razer announced, that the OUYA hardware will not continued anymore, but the store front. I also bought the ForgeTV.
But at the end of last year, Razer announced also, that the Cortex ("new" OUYA-Store) will not be open anymore for updates or submissions. (http://view.connect.razerzone.com/?qs=ef621db06356afccb88607bde5e8e9db5661856431202af7d37b30e9b0545fcd728f846c1a7c91398ed8b9ea608ca4c7e936a6382a5b9ff3db4b6caed8682f6f568c7b9313c67adc)

The last years I am working on some ideas and a game. It's far (some month, some more month) from release.

After I followed some Kickstarter campaigns, I thought, maybe it could be a good idea, to have a Re- ... ReRelease, ReRestart, Re-Imagination ... ReBoot, ReLoad ... of ... some ideas from the past.
The OUYA e.g. was a great success for me personal, not financially, I never released a game. But a success, because it was nearly the only company that tried it against Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo at once. Maybe some where not ready to understand it's potential back than.
And also nowerdays AndroidTV setup boxes, Amazon FireTV / FireTV-Stick and Apple with there tvOS-Streaming-box are doing not so great compared to mobiles phones or "the big consoles". https://www.fastcompany.com/40457373/where-did-apple-tv-games-go-wrong

So what is my idea?

Yes, everybody could try it for themself and release the games on it's own on any "console" out there. BUT! What if ...

Maybe we focus on one target. A console or device, which never got that attention before, what it deserved?

Here is the problem, OUYA and ForgeTV will not sell anymore, maybe in China, I don't know. That specific hardware will maybe not reproduced anymore.
So there are maybe only some fanboys and fangirls out there. Will that be enough for a serious game developement, or has it be a fan- / hobby project?

The OUYA has about 12 GFLOPs http://kyokojap.myweb.hinet.net/gpu_gflops/
same as the Nintendo Wii. And the Razer ForgeTV with Adreno 420 nearly as much GFLOPs as the WiiU. (Switch docked mode, ~ XBox 360 / PS3)

The power is there, but no games kind of. And the best solution would be, to support the nVidia Shild with Android.

But, there would be one interessting plattform, you can buy and there are not many (new) games for, if any. And that is ... the Raspberry Pi! With the VideoCore4 and about 24 GFLOPs, some openGL problems, but ..
You can buy the Raspberry Pi, and the Raspberry Pi 3 has about 1 GB RAM, 4 cores. Not as powerfull as the ForgeTV, but maybe like an OUYA / Wii.

AND! It is a kids-device, and!, there are about more sold than the c64 now (https://t3n.de/news/computer-raspberry-pi-c64-806761/)

So, could it be a good idea, to have some "Exclusives" for the Raspbian Pi?

And could there be an impact, if we release our projects on that plattform maybe as some group or so. To focus it for marketing? Maybe a new selling Store-Front, where you can buy and download you stuff?

Or the other question, is anybody interessed in new OUYA games? Or in Raspberry Pi Games at all or is the OUYA dead and the Rapberry only for tinkering, but not for "Gamers". So they will stuck forever with RetroPi and ROMs from 20 years ago.

I like the idea of putting more focus on Raspberry Pi. They are great little devices. I think the technical knowledge required often puts people off, but if we had a bootable loader that we could distribute with our game as a stand-alone embedded game (i.e. burn an image to the SD and pop it in the device), or as a loader with a menu of games - perhaps with a web-based game shop - then that would put minds at ease. The whole "how do I install Raspbian" thing scares a lot of regular users.

I have a game on Rasberry Pi, but I had to shelve it because of some missing functionality. When you start up a game, the IO pins are in an unpredictable state. They can be set, but not in AGK.

I am scared of having the simplest problem with:

Downloading the right Image (e.g. Raspbian Stretch 2017-11-29 V. 4.9)
Downloading AppGameKit 2017-12-12 (Raspberry Pi)

After Downloading (with registration and login, and on Raspbian the Browser is the slowest) ...

extracting and now ... now what?

AGK-link to Geany does not start, but "Geany Programmer's Editor" preinstalled will open. So no information, what to do ... and so on. So programming on a Raspberry Pi is complicated for no reason.

And with working games, that would be also a problem. Should every game has it's own "Image" with OS and so on, that are some GigaBytes per game. Or would it be more a compilation, like the "Tiny Excample Games", but with bigger games maybe. The support with the different versions of the OSes could be difficult.


--> So maybe ... first step could be, that TheGameCreators provide an Image for the Raspberry Pi with AGK2 installed and working. It could also be download able after Login like it is now, but Pre-Build with Image.

It'd be great to see an additional "Export to Raspberry Pi image" within the IDE that exports a standalone, bootable Pi game. You'd still need to burn the image to an SD card using something like Win32 Disk Imager (https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/), or perhaps the burning feature could also be built into the export process too?

I used "Etcher", but last time I used Win32 Disk Imager. But that is the easy part, I think. But the frustration with the error messages and some *.io not found, or not starting because some rights are not set in the beginning ... it's not like an APK -> Sideload ... works! I would also like an Raspberry-Pi-Export from the PC Version. So that I could only copy the "pack" to thy Rasbian and try that with the libs it needed.

I never exported from Windows AGK2 to Linux. Is it possible? Or do I have to install "Steam" / "AGK" on a Linux machine and there I will have the Export-Option? (Like on MacOS for MacOS)

... for marketing I could imagine, that this project would be big as Raspbian itself and would sell on a SD/MicroSD Card in Stores as well next to the Rasberry Pi itself (Conrad (Germany), Element14, PIMORONI ... )


Or at least, an offical guide, how to get the AGK2 editor, compiler and own games to work with Rasbian Step-By-Step, or proof in a YouTube-Video. Sometimes it feels dump for me, and I am thinking, I am the only person don't get it to work.

The idea would be, to have maybe some finished games, we could provide for that "device"

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1464832835/pip-the-playful-handheld-device-you-program-yourse/description