BombSquad: 8 Player Party-Game Madness

**efroemling** · 04-20-2013

Good news - just snagged an already-delivered OUYA on ebay (for an arm and a leg, but oh well..) so I should be able to get this thing polished up and submitted to the actual store within the next week or so.. :-)

**PeasantDave** · 04-21-2013

I was able to play 4 player simultaneous on my dev unit and it worked great. I've been able to use dev ouya controllers, PS3 controllers, phones, and tablets. This is the only game that works natively with other controllers so far, which is incredible.

I haven't quite been able to put my finger on it, but there is something not intuitive about the menus when using a controller. I find myself going back or forwards accidentally a lot.

You'll see it on your own Ouya, but I'm not able to customize the names, as it does not bring up the keyboard.

**efroemling** · 04-21-2013

Originally Posted by PeasantDave

I was able to play 4 player simultaneous on my dev unit and it worked great. I've been able to use dev ouya controllers, PS3 controllers, phones, and tablets. This is the only game that works natively with other controllers so far, which is incredible.

I haven't quite been able to put my finger on it, but there is something not intuitive about the menus when using a controller. I find myself going back or forwards accidentally a lot.

You'll see it on your own Ouya, but I'm not able to customize the names, as it does not bring up the keyboard.

Thanks for the feedback!
I'm planning on adding in ouya-specific button icons for default/back buttons so hopefully that'll help navigation a bit. Are there any particular screens or menus that seemed the most problematic? (I've been staring at all this stuff forever so fresh-impressions are great to hear).
Also good to know that text-input needs to be fixed.. I should be getting my box wednesday-ish so I'll take a look at that first..
-eric

**PeasantDave** · 04-21-2013

Originally Posted by efroemling

Thanks for the feedback!
I'm planning on adding in ouya-specific button icons for default/back buttons so hopefully that'll help navigation a bit. Are there any particular screens or menus that seemed the most problematic? (I've been staring at all this stuff forever so fresh-impressions are great to hear).
Also good to know that text-input needs to be fixed.. I should be getting my box wednesday-ish so I'll take a look at that first..
-eric

I will run through the menus and write down when I click the wrong button.

**efroemling** · 04-21-2013

Quick heads-up that I've uploaded a new build if anyone's interested:
BombSquad_OUYA_1.3.6b1.apk

What's new:
- properly picks up controller attach/detaches that happened while the app was backgrounded
- additional controller config options
- bug fixes and bits of UI polish here and there

Hopefully the next build you'll be able to get through the OUYA store :-)

**PeasantDave** · 04-22-2013

Just tried out the new build, single player.

So most of my menu issues were from each d-pad button being mapped to the accept key. Also I have no idea what the menu key was mapped to (I couldn't access the menus before in mid-game). Thank you for including such a good controller mapping interface.

I know this game is accounting for many types of controllers but it seems to auto-detect them correctly, do you know if it will be possible to auto-map the buttons?

The other (small) issue was that on the Player Profile screen down/up brings you into the profile section box, but not out.

I am so excited about this game by the way!

**efroemling** · 04-22-2013

Originally Posted by PeasantDave

Just tried out the new build, single player.

So most of my menu issues were from each d-pad button being mapped to the accept key. Also I have no idea what the menu key was mapped to (I couldn't access the menus before in mid-game). Thank you for including such a good controller mapping interface.

I know this game is accounting for many types of controllers but it seems to auto-detect them correctly, do you know if it will be possible to auto-map the buttons?

The other (small) issue was that on the Player Profile screen down/up brings you into the profile section box, but not out.

I am so excited about this game by the way!

Yeah once I get my OUYA I'll set up defaults for common controllers so that it will never need to ask to configure those. I actually just added a feature a few days ago where when you configure a new type of controller it stores that info online so that controllers can auto-configure themselves if enough people have configured that type of controller already. ...So eventually there should be no configuring needed for any decently-common controllers.

In the case you describe where up/down will navigate into a list widget but not out of it: once you're on a list it sucks up the up/down presses but left/right will still switch to the next widget. This is a little unintuitive I know but I couldn't think of a cleaner way.. I could make it so that you have to press a button to focus the list but that seems a little odd too. Holler if you have any ideas; I want to make this as easy to pick up as possible.. (this is the first time that controller navigation has been the primary way to do things; on the mac version I assume most folks just used their mouse).

Glad you're excited for the game; I'm excited to get it polished up and on the store as soon as I get my console :-)

**Wilds** · 04-23-2013

This is at the moment my #1 game in polishment! great job!
It really shines and is fun!

**Magnesus** · 04-23-2013

Wow, this is a game that I think OUYA was made for. Excellent. Do you know old DOS game Megablast? It was a Bomberman clone and used the same classical music to a great effect.

Nice to hear it again with bombs exploding in the background.