Tilt Controls: It sounded like a good idea

Mobile phones come with a lot of cool features.  For example an accelerometer.  Everyone I hand this game to always says the same thing; it would be awesome with tilt controls.  Ya ya, I know, it sounds good in theory.  But I promise you, the game sucks with them.

So i paid for and downloaded an acceleration control package from the Unity store and got it working with our game.  However, working is one of those relative terms.  When a game uses tilt controls, typically their on a rail.  What I mean is they run on a predetermined track, with a little bit of play from one side of the track or the other,  In an open world game, where you can move in 3 dimensions and accuracy is required, its not so good.  Trying to line up a target when every little movement changes your trajectory and then pressing a button on the screen to hit a target, it just didn't work.  So we're going to work on refining the virtual joysticks and buttons.

It's not you it's me... ok it's you

Alright OUYA, I think we should take a break, see other platforms, and get some perspective.  After weeks of trying to get the controller working for our game on the OUYA system, I've about given up.  Especially considering there is no way we're going to finish a whole game in time for the OUYA launch.

OUYA has a really cool offer going on where if you release a game for their system at launch, you get a year of free advertising, not to mention being one of very few games available.  The exposure would have been amazing.  But that goal was utterly unrealistic.  Trying to create a game from scratch with no experience making games in six months... umm, no.  

So we're shifting focus and aiming for mabile maybe later this year, maybe next.  But, that means we can focus on a set of platforms, i.e. Android and iOS for release.  Porting it to Xbox or Steam later should be pretty easy, but for now we're going to focus on mobile.

Lets release it for all platforms... yes for the Atari too.

One of the coolest things about Unity is how easy it is to switch platforms.  From PC, to Xbox, to PS3, to Android, to iOS, to web player etc.

Since we're developing this for the OUYA, an android based console, I thought why not get it on my phone too.  That means virtual controls though, so I did some research and some learning.  Turns out its not to hard to implement virtual controllers and on screen buttons.