Amazon Fire TV is a Streaming Set-Top Box and Game Console

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04...+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Looks interesting.. It use Android, so i suppose we can publish games from Unity.

 

yeah, really interested to know if this works with Unity ? anyone bought an Amazon Fire already ?

buy
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CX5P8FC

developers
https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/asb/overview-gs.html

 

Wow, shipping today. That controller looks pretty cool. I'd love to hear if anyone tries a Unity project on there and if you could get the controller to work.

 

looking at their announced games, I'm pretty sure some of them were already made with unity... isn't walking dead game made with unity ?
don't know if there was anything custom/special they needed to do though to make it compatible

 

I just ordered one, I'm very interested in seeing how things turn out for it, particularly since Amazon bought Double Helix (Strider/Killer Instinct). I hope to make my personal project for something just like this as well, was originally targeting Ouya, but I see no reason I couldn't work it out on both.

 

Mine arrived, and I am setting up testing. I'm guessing the direction keys will map to arrow keys, but our titles need a few more inputs from the remote.

Is a mapping or plug-in available that routes the Fire TV remote input to Unity KeyCodes?

Fire TV Remote Inputs: https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/asb/remote-input.html

Select (D-Pad Center) KEYCODE_DPAD_CENTER
Play/Pause KEYCODE_MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE
Rewind KEYCODE_MEDIA_REWIND
Fast Forward KEYCODE_MEDIA_FAST_FORWARD

 

Maybe use the controller instead of the remote ? (or probably best to support both in some way if possible)
Does it come with the controller or is that extra cash ?

 

Controller is like $40 extra- but a friend of mine uses a bluetooth controller- a steelseries I think he called it. Said it worked perfectly with his Unity project. Says it matched 360 controls. I imagine it'll be quite easy to get going.

 

Thanks all! The controller is optional and extra cost, most of our titles will need to support the basic remote control as well.

Any thoughts on how to map the remote inputs above to Unity KeyCodes would be appreciated.

Oh, my controller arrives next week, so I'll try it out then and post the results.

 

Mine should be delivered pretty soon. Would love to hear some feedback about this platform. STELLAR GHOSTS would be ported to that platform pretty soon with some enhancements if the device's performances allow this ( and I bet it does ) So yeah, I thought the review team would only require to get the game take care of just the controller not the remote as well. Please guys post your progression and any hurdles you encountered on the way to get it recognized via ADB, the hook ups for the controller etc...
Cheers

 

A redditor posted their unity project working with the packed in controller. I imagine its using Input.GetAxis or something.

 

Well it shouldn't be too hard to do so. Amazon has a SDK with some special plugin just for unity. Maybe that can help. Not a dev on my end but trying to gather some info for my programer.

 

From Amazon support:

At the moment our FireTV Remote has the following mappings in Unity3D:

FireTV Button Unity KeyCode
Up Arrow KeyCode.UpArrow
Down Arrow KeyCode.DownArrow
Left Arrow KeyCode.LeftArrow
Right Arrow KeyCode.DownArrow
Center Button KeyCode.JoystickButton0
Back button KeyCode.Escape
Menu Button KeyCode.Menu

The following buttons are not mapped in Unity and would need a plugin developed to accept input:
Play/Pause
Rewind
Fast Forward

The following are system-wide buttons and would not be mapped in 3rd party applications:
Microphone
Home

 

This sounds better all the time. The above is one of the things I think OUYA did a terrible job of, and it sounds like the Fire... just works? I'm there!

 

Does the Amazon Fire have motion tracking in its controller? Its beyond me why people don't have motion tracking when people have done it for a few dollars (Or like $30 for a perfect optical system).

 

I did buy the Amazon FireTV. It is the best streaming device I have ever used by a mile. We previously used various Sony hardware to stream both Netflix and Amazon Prime video, but the Sony hardware would constantly struggle with nagging streaming problems. The Amazon FireTV works flawlessly. No troubles at all streaming video. The Amazon FireTV is amazingly small physically, but it runs so well that it really is shocking.

I have not tried to develop any games for it yet, but that is definitely something I am interested in doing soon.

 

How about the game controller? Are all button and joystick mapping in unity without plugins?

 

I'd also love to know how well it can stream games played on PC, if it can do it at all. (Though being an Android I assume someone will make an app for it.) I pipe my PC to my TV a fair bit for couch gaming, it'd rock to be able to do it via this.

 

Here is the list of button and axis mappings for the actual controller that I figured out while porting Infinite UFOs to the Fire TV. This was done on an Xbox 360 controller, but I am pretty sure the mappings would be the same using the real Amazon Controller.

D-pad up - Negative 6th axis
D-pad down - Positive 6th axis
D-pad left - Negative 5th axis
D-pad right - Positive 5th axis
Left stick up - Negative Y axis
Left stick down - Positive Y axis
Left stick left - Negative X axis
Left stick right - Positive X axis
Right stick up - Negative 4th axis
Right stick down - Positive 4th axis
Right stick left - Negative 3rd axis
Right stick right - Positive 3rd axis
Left trigger - Positive 13th axis
Right trigger - Positive 12th axis
A button - KeyCode.JoystickButton0
B button - KeyCode.JoystickButton1
X button - KeyCode.JoystickButton2
Y button - KeyCode.JoystickButton3
LB button KeyCode.JoystickButton4
RB button - KeyCode.JoystickButton5
Left stick button - KeyCode.JoystickButton8
Right stick button - KeyCode.JoystickButton9
Back - KeyCode.Escape
Start - KeyCode.Menu

 

Managed to side load STELLAR GHOSTS on the Fire TV. it was a OUYA build, the game run kind of twice faster than on the OUYA... Also the button were almost all recognized, just the shoulder triggers needs to be re assigned. Really a great and powerful device! Will definitely enhance the graphics of the game before submitting. Also only a hundred games in here! An awesome visibility! Worth it to port your game on that platform! really happy with that thing.

 

Can't currently purchase them in Australia. :-(

 

Yes it's definitely a nice platform, but it's hard to say how many people are actually buying games. I only saw seven reviews for Sev Zero on the Amazon page for it. Does that mean not many people played Sev Zero? It comes free with the Amazon controller, so I thought it would have more reviews.

 

didn't check the reviews on SEV ZERO. But noticed that on dead trigger 2 there was about 60 reviews.Not sure if it's fire TV only or combined with Kindle HDX.

 

thanks Rosor

 

Its for the combined kindle platforms. You can tell by the release dates and also by reading some of the reviews mention the HDX. That being said the platform is brand new so I'm sure it will pick up users.

Also, unlike most platforms writing a review on device seems to be impossible currently (couldn't find a way to do it and even if you could would be annoying). They'd have to rely 100% on writing reviews elsewhere presumably from their normal follow up emails which will probably cut down on the review rate but not necessarily the user base. I certainly look forward to data on how many of these are being bought and also if this forces apple to allow apps on the apple tv and I think its a given that when android tv from google comes out it will need to support games/apps. I'm certainly liking this device so far as a micro console much better than ouya.

 

having a hard time trying to figure out the input used for the L2 and R2 triggers. Tried several possibilities but nothing worked so far. Some help regarding this would be highly appreciated.