Telltale Games share their tips for success on Android TV

Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play

Editor’s note: This is another post in our series featuring tips from developers finding success on Google Play. This week, we’re sharing advice from Telltale Games on how to create a successful game on Android TV. -Ed.

With new Android hardware being released from the likes of Sony, Sharp, and Philips amongst others, Android TV and Google Play can help you bring your game to users right in their living rooms through a big screen experience.

The recent Marshmallow update for Android TV means makes it easier than ever to extend your new or existing games and apps for TV. It's important to understand how your game is presented in the user interface and how it can help users get to the content they want quickly.

Telltale Games is a US-founded game developer and publisher, based in San Francisco, California. They’re well known for the popular series ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Game of Thrones‘ which was created in partnership with HBO.

Zac Litton, VP of Technology at Telltale Games, shares his tips for creating and launching your games with Android TV.

Tips for launching successful games on Android TV

1. Determine the Device for Android TV: Determine what device your game is running on by using the UiModeManager.getCurrentModeType() method. If the device is running in television mode, you can declare what to display as the launch point of the game on the Android TV itself (Configuration). Add the LEANBACK_LAUNCHER filter category to one of your intent-filters to identify your game as being enabled for TV. This is required for your game to be considered a TV app in Google Play.



2. Touchscreen vs TV: TVs don’t have touch screens so make sure you set the touchscreen required flag to false in the manifest as touch is implicitly true by default on Android. This will help avoid your game getting filtered from the TV Play store right out of the gate. Also, check your permissions, as some imply hardware requirements which you may need to override explicitly.



3. Use Hardware APIs: Use the package manager which has System Feature API to enable your game to reason about what capabilities it can and should expose. For example, whether to show the user touch screen controls or game controller controls. You can also make your app location aware using the location APIs available in Google Play services to add location awareness with automated location tracking, geofencing, and activity recognition.



4. Use appropriate controllers: To reach the most users, your app should support a simplified input scheme that doesn’t require a directional pad (D-pad controller). The player needs to be able to use a D-Pad in all aspects of the game—not just controlling core gameplay, but also navigating menus and ads, therefore your Android TV game shouldn’t refer to a touch interface specifically. For example, an Android TV game should not tell a player to "Tap here to continue."



5. Appear in the right place: Make sure you add an android:isGame attribute to the application element of the manifest and set it to true in order to enable the installed game to show up on the correct launcher row, games.



6. Provide home screen banners: Provide a home screen banner for each localization supported, especially if you are an international developer. The banner (320 x 180) is the game launch point that appears on the TV home screen on the games row.



7. Use a TV image for your Store Listing: Be sure you provide at least one TV screen shot on your Store Listing page. Then include a high res icon, feature graphic, promo graphic and TV banner.



8. Improve visibility through ‘search’ and ‘recommendations’: Android TV uses the Android search interface to retrieve content data from installed apps and games, and deliver search results to the user. Implement a ContentProvider to show instant suggestions to the user, and a SearchManager to deep link your game’s content.



9. Set appropriate pricing and distribution: Check “Distribute to Android TV” in the relevant section in the Developer Console. This will trigger a review by Google to ensure your game meets the minimum requirements for TV.



10. Guide the user: Use a tutorial to guide the player into the game mechanics and provide an input reference to the user based on the input control they are using.

With the recently released Android TV codelab and online class from Udacity, you can learn how to convert your existing mobile game into Android TV in just four hours. Find out more about how to build games for Android TV and how you to publish them using familiar tools and processes in Google Play.

New Android Marshmallow sample apps

Posted by Rich Hyndman, Developer Advocate

Three new Android Marshmallow sample applications have gone live this week. As usual they are available directly from the Google Samples repository on GitHub or through the Android Studio samples browser.

Android Direct Share Sample

Direct Share is a new feature in Android Marshmallow that provides APIs to make sharing more intuitive and quick for users. Direct Share allows users to share content to targets, such as contacts, within other apps. For example, the direct share target might launch an activity in a social network app, which lets the user share content directly to a specific friend in that app.

This sample is a dummy messaging app, and just like any other messaging apps, it receives intents for sharing a plain text. It demonstrates how to show some options directly in the list of share intent candidates. When a user shares some text from another app, this sample app will be listed as an option. Using the Direct Share feature, this app also shows some of contacts directly in the chooser dialog.

To enable Direct Share, apps need to implement a Service extending ChooserTargetService. Override the method onGetChooserTargets() and return a list of Direct Share options.

In your AndroidManifest.xml, add a meta-data tag in your Activity that receives the Intent. Specify android:name as android.service.chooser.chooser_target_service, and point the android:value to the Service.

Android MidiSynth Sample

Android 6.0 introduces new support for MIDI. This sample demonstrates how to use the MIDI API to receive and play MIDI messages coming from an attached input device (MIDI keyboard).

The Android MIDI API (android.media.midi) allows developers to connect a MIDI device to an Android device and process MIDI messages coming from it.

This sample demonstrates some basic features of the MIDI API, such as:

• Enumeration of currently available devices (including name, vendor, capabilities, etc)


• Notification when MIDI devices are plugged in or unplugged


• Receiving and processing MIDI messages

It also contains a simple implementation of an oscillator and note playback.

Android MidiScope Sample

A sample demonstrating how to use the MIDI API to receive and process MIDI signals coming from an attached device.

The Android MIDI API (android.media.midi) allows developers to connect a MIDI device to Android and process MIDI signals coming from it. This sample demonstrates some basic features of the MIDI API, such as enumeration of currently available devices (Information includes name, vendor, capabilities, etc), notification when MIDI devices are plugged in or unplugged, and receiving MIDI signals. This sample simply shows all the received MIDI signals to the screen log and does not play any sound for them.

Check out a sample today and jumpstart your Android Marshmallow development.

Android Developer Story: Domain increases installs by 44% with Material Design and Google Play services

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

Australian developer Domain is part of a multi-platform property business, which provides search tools and information for buyers, sellers, renters, investors, and agents across Australia. The Domain Real Estate & Property app was voted a top five lifestyle app in Australia and now has three dedicated Android developers who work closely with their design and UX teams.

Product Manager, Henrique Marassi, and Android Developer, Gary Lo, explain how Domain successfully improved their user rating from 2.8 to 4.1 and increased monthly downloads by 44 percent by adopting Material Design and Play services to create a better user experience.

Learn more about how Domain found success on Google Play:

• Material Design guidelines: How Material Design helps you create beautiful, engaging apps.


• Google Play services: Learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it.


• Find success on Google Play: Products and best practices to help your grow you business globally on Google Play.

New permissions requirements for Android TV

Posted by Anirudh Dewani, Developer Advocate

Android 6.0 introduces a new runtime permission model that gives users more granular control over granting permissions requested from their apps and leads to faster app installs. Users can also revoke these permissions from Settings at any point of time. If an app running on the M Preview supports the new permissions model, the user does not have to grant any permissions when they install or upgrade the app. Developers should check for permissions that require runtime grant from users, and request them if the app doesn’t already have them.

To list all permissions that require runtime grant from users on Android 6.0 -

adb shell pm list permissions -g -d 

RECORD_AUDIO

Apps should generally request as few permissions as possible. Voice search is an integral part of Android TV content discovery experience. When using the internal SpeechRecognizer to enable Voice Search, apps must declare RECORD_AUDIO permission in the manifest. RECORD_AUDIO requires explicit user grant during runtime in Android 6.0. When using the Android TV Leanback support library, apps can eliminate the need for requesting RECORD_AUDIO during runtime by using SpeechRecognitionCallback instead of SpeechRecognizer.

SearchActivity.java

Commit from Android TV Leanback Sample repository.

mFragment = (SearchFragment) getFragmentManager()
                .findFragmentById(R.id.search_fragment);

if (!USE_INTERNAL_SPEECH_RECOGNIZER) {
   
    mSpeechRecognitionCallback = new SpeechRecognitionCallback() {
        
        @Override
        public void recognizeSpeech() {
            if (DEBUG) Log.v(TAG, "recognizeSpeech");
        
            // ACTION_RECOGNIZE_SPEECH
            startActivityForResult(mFragment.getRecognizerIntent(), REQUEST_SPEECH);
        }
    };
    mFragment.setSpeechRecognitionCallback(mSpeechRecognitionCallback);
}

When SpeechRecognitionCallback is set, Android Leanback support library will let the your activity process the voice search action instead of using the internal SpeechRecognizer. The app can then use RecognizerIntent to support speech recognition.

If you have an Android TV app targeting API Level 23, please update the app to use SpeechRecognitionCallback and remove RECORD_AUDIO permission from your manifest.

Play Games Loot Drop for Developers

Posted by Ben Frenkel, Product Manager Google Play Games

Launched last March, Player Analytics is already becoming an important tool for many game developers, helping them to manage their games businesses and optimize in-game player behavior. Today we’re expanding Player Analytics with two new analytics reports that give you better visibility into time-based player activity and custom game events. We’re also introducing a new Player Stats API to let you tune your game experience for specific segments of players across the game lifecycle. Along with those, we’re rolling out a new version of our C++/iOS SDKs and Unity plug-in and giving you better tools to manage repeating Quests.

New useful reports for developers

We are launching two new reports later this week in the Play Games developer console: the Player Time Series Explorer and the Events Viewer. We’ve also made improvements to our player retention report.

Player Time Series Explorer

Ever wondered what your players are doing in the first few minutes of gameplay? What happens just before players spend or churn? The time-series explorer lets you understand what happens in these critical moments for your players.

For example, you carefully built out the first set of experiences in your game, but are surprised by how many players never get through even the first set of challenges. With the Player Time Series Explorer, you can now see which challenges are impeding player progress most, and make targeted improvements to decrease the rate of churn. Learn more.

Customize settings to explore player time series

Select from a list of preset questions

Find out what happens before your players spend for the first time

Select “What happens before first spend” to see what happens just before your players spend for the first time. Time series are aligned by first spend event so you can easily explore what happened just before and after first purchase.

Find out what happens before your players churn

Select “What happens before churn” to see what happens before your players stop playing. In the example below, all the churn events are right aligned to make it easier to compare player time series.

Hovering over events shows you additional details

You can see more details for all event types by holding your cursor over the event’s shape. In this example, you can see that “Player 03” spent $4.99 after earning six achievements. Hovering over the achievement shapes will show you which specific achievements were earned.

Events Viewer

Now you can create your own reports based on your custom Play Games’ events. You can select multiple events to display and bookmark the report for easy access. Learn more.

Here’s an example showing how a developer can compare the rates at which Players are entering contests, winning, and almost winning. This report would identify opportunities to improve the balance of its contest modes. You can then bookmark the settings so you can easily track improvements.

28x28 day retention grid

We added a 28-day-by-28-day retention grid to help you compare retention rates across a larger number of new user cohorts.

Tailor player experiences with the Player Stats API

Stats and reports give you insights into your what your players are doing, but wouldn’t it be nice to take action on those insights in your game? That’s what the Player Stats API is all about. The Player Stats API lets you tailor player experiences to specific segments of players across the game lifecycle. Player segments are based on player progression, spend, and engagement.

Here are some examples of what you can do with Player Stats API:

• For highly engaged players that just aren’t spending, you can show them special bonuses that are aimed at recruiting others to play instead of spending


• For your most prolific spenders, you can provide occasional free gifts and upgrades


• For users that haven’t found their stride in your game, you can show them a video that directs them to community features, like clan attacks or alliances, that drive deeper engagement


• For players that have been away from the game for a while, you can give them a welcome back message that acknowledges impressive accomplishments, and award a badge designed to encourage return play

The Player Stats API is launching in the next few weeks.

C++/iOS SDK and Unity Plug-in updates

iOS support for Play game services just got a lot better. This update includes improved CocoaPods support, which will make it easier to configure Play game services in Xcode. This also means you’ll have a much easier time building for iOS using the Unity plug-in as well.

The latest build of the C++/iOS SDKs is now built on the new Google Sign-In framework, which adds support for authentication via multiple Google apps, including Gmail and YouTube. More importantly, if a player does not have any applicable Google apps installed, the Sign-In framework will bring up a webview within the app for authentication. Opening up a webview inside the app, instead of switching to a separate browser instance, makes for a much better user experience, and addresses a top developer request. For more on the new Google Sign-in library on iOS, check out this video. Learn more.

Improved Quests

Quests are a great way of engaging your players with new goals, and with this update we have made managing Quests easier with the introduction of repeating Quests. You can create Quests that run weekly or monthly by checking the repeating quest box. This will make it easier for you to engage your players with regularly occurring challenges. Repeating Quests will be launching in the next few weeks.

If you have previously integrated Quests, you can easily convert them into repeating quests by following two easy steps.

1. Go to Quests section of developer console, and open up an existing Quest. Click the copy Quest button at the top of the page

2. Scroll down to the Schedule section of the Quest form, check the “Repeating quest” box, select between monthly and weekly quests under “Repeats”, and leave the “Ends:” field set to “Never”. After hitting save, you are done! From then on, the quest will run weekly or monthly until you decide to end it.

Google Play game services (GPGS) docs and SDK downloads

• GPGS overview: https://developers.google.com/games/services/?utm_campaign=cwag-voice-actions-94


• Gettings started with GPGS guide: https://developers.google.com/games/services/console/enabling?utm_campaign=cwag-voice-actions-94


• Downloads
  
  
  
  • Android, iOS, and C++ SDK
  
  
  • Unity Plugin
  
  
  
  

New Course: Android Design for Developers

Posted by Nick Butcher, pixel pusher

What makes an app intuitive and easy to use? What makes it hard or frustrating? How can your app stand out in a competitive market? Learn the fundamentals of good Android design and the patterns that have proven to work on Android to help you to build better apps.

This 5-lesson series, available on Udacity, begins with a crash course on the fundamentals of Android UI design. It helps you to sort your DIPs from your pixels, to pick the right layouts and navigation structures and shows you how to style your app to match your brand. The rest of the course is a deep dive into the principles and implementation of material design to show you how to build beautiful consistent experiences that are right at home on Android.

Lesson 2 dives into the concept of tangible surfaces, and how they establish hierarchy to make your UI more understandable. Lesson 3 looks at applying bold graphic design, or how the principles of space, color, typography and imagery help you to create a beautiful, branded experience. Lesson 4 studies the use of meaningful motion to bring your apps to life and create a seamless and more intuitive experience. Finally, lesson 5 shows how adaptive design makes your app shine on any screen size.

This course is aimed at developers familiar with Android who want to boost their design skills or designers who want to understand more about the platform they’re creating for. The full course is available for free or you can enroll in Udacity’s Android Nanodegree for extra help and support. So sign up for the Android design for developers course and go build something brilliant!

Chrome custom tabs smooth the transition between apps and the web

Originally posted on the Chromium blog

Posted by Yusuf Ozuysal, Chief Tab Customizer

Android app developers face a difficult tradeoff when it comes to showing web content in their Android app. Opening links in the browser is familiar for users and easy to implement, but results in a heavy-weight transition between the app and the web. You can get more granular control by building a custom browsing experience on top of Android’s WebView, but at the cost of more technical complexity and an unfamiliar browsing experience for users. A new feature in the most recent version of Chrome called custom tabs addresses this tradeoff by allowing an app to customize how Chrome looks and feels, making the transition from app to web content fast and seamless.

Chrome custom tabs with pre-loading vs. Chrome and WebView

Chrome custom tabs allow an app to provide a fast, integrated, and familiar web experience for users. Custom tabs are optimized to load faster than WebViews and traditional methods of launching Chrome. As shown above, apps can pre-load pages in the background so they appear to load nearly instantly when the user navigates to them. Apps can also customize the look and feel of Chrome to match their app by changing the toolbar color, adjusting the transition animations, and even adding custom actions to the toolbar so users can perform app-specific actions directly from the custom tab.

Custom tabs benefit from Chrome’s advanced security features, including its multi-process architecture and robust permissions model. They use the same cookie jar as Chrome, allowing a familiar browsing experience while keeping users’ information safe. For example, if a user has signed in to a website in Chrome, they will also be signed in if they visit the same site in a custom tab. Other features that help users browse the web, like saved passwords, autofill, Tap to Search, and Sync, are also available in custom tabs.

Custom tabs are easy for developers to integrate into their app by tweaking a few parameters of their existing VIEW intents. Basic integrations require only a few extra lines of code, and a support library makes more complex integrations easy to accomplish, too. Since custom tabs is a feature of Chrome, it’s available on any version of Android where recent versions of Chrome are available.

Users will begin to experience custom tabs in the coming weeks in Feedly, The Guardian, Medium, Player.fm, Skyscanner, Stack Overflow, Tumblr, and Twitter, with more coming soon. To get started integrating custom tabs into your own application, check out the developer guide.