General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
I know we're two mac guys, but I know my coder does PC programming, as well. I'm thinking that we're gonna really try and nail this first, and perhaps when we're at 2.0 we'll look to porting it other places; but to be honest, especially if Tycho says something nice about us on PA, we're going to probably devote all our time to the iphone version since that's where the most demand will be. But I will definitely talk it over. If it's simple and he's game, no problem. So watch this space and I'll let you know.
Thanks for even responding, naturally I know the demand is for iphone right now so I understand. Wish 12 new android phones coming out in the next 18 months on various carriers I hoping it might change
As for the port, I don't have any clue how hard it might be as I don't know anything about programming for iphone. Android is just basically java, with it's own SDK.
Wow, editing all these text boxes is fiddly. I kind of wish I had the ability to create my own buttons for quick status editing or something similar.
Similarly with changing numbers -- it'd be nice if there were a control that allowed you to easily change numbers, like the timer functionality on the iPhone.
I think that's the main thing for me. It's a good start, but I feel like there's too much fiddliness to deal with when changing states. I'd really love to have something that let me easily track all this stuff quickly; that would definitely get me to replace manual tracking at the gaming table.
__________________ Code of the Rogue Gamemistress
1. Fun is the highest principle.
2. Choice is a form of fun.
3. Let the dice fall where they may.
Hjormir: Thanks for the feedback, my goal is to get it to where it will be faster than index cards. HP is totally optional, you don't have to use it if you don't want to, but I thought including it for those who do was better than not having the feature at all.
As for your issue with delaying/holding, I can promise you that is the big feature that Jerry from PA suggested, and my coder is working on that right now.
And lastly, we're totally working on that, too, although that's probably going to be a minor version or two out, still.
Thanks again for your feedback, and do please check the updates and let me know what you think, even if it's a 'still not going to use it, but it's getting there.'
Larinza: I asked about Android. My coder said "Sure! But tell them they need to send me an Android phone so I can program/debug on it, and I'll get right on it."
Hadrian: I am not a full-fledged codemonkey. I'm a graphic designer, and have owned 3 IT solutions companies. More of a jack of all trades, master of none kind of person. I am really good with UI design, testing, and dealing with the public. My coder is hardcore, and he's in charge of most of the back end. It's been a lifelong dream to develop for apple, so even paying the hundred bucks to do it has kind of been worth it. We've sunk probably 200 hours easy into the project (I know, doesn't seem like much to look at it, right?). The dev part is pretty nice, but the uploading to devices/the store is a bit of a pain in the ass (there are a lot of certificates you have to install on each machine/share if you want to both be able to publish). It's a rather klunky way for such a streamlined UI company LOL. But it doesn't matter, I still love it.
Thanks for the feedback. I originally thought to go with rollers, but I ran into a huge problem with them: Time. Monster HP could be up to 10,000 points. Would you want to roll to that? I mean, I could do rollers for 1 digit, tens digit, hundreds digit, etc, but that would be slower than just typing in the numbers. Not to mention negative numbers, like negative initiative modifiers. So if I do that, then I have to have even different rollers for the different sections of the singular program...
Also keep in mind that you have to drill down for those rollers. There's no way that I've found in the UI for the iPhone to have a status display that you can edit right there, rollers or not. you always have to drill down. The timer has no info display, it's just the rollers. But if you go to the alarm, where there's information to be displayed, you have to drill down to change that info. Not to mention that you're only changing one thing (the alarm time). Add six more fields, and that's six times more drilling down and back to change each thing's info. (if you hadn't gathered, I'm not a fan of extra steps for the user to do things in design build, snazzy or not!)
In this particular instance, we figured simple was better. Originally I wanted everything (name, status fx, hp, init mod, init value) on the main info display and to be editable from there. But the iPhone environment doesn't allow for that, hence the drilling down once to set all that info.
But I'll try to keep my eye for a better way to do it; as I'm scouring new apps all the time.
1) Maybe you could allow for the HP entry to be blank and thus not display on the main page as opposed to defaulting to 0.
2) I don't know about others, but I don't really like the QWERTY layout of the text editor. If I were actually typing - with two hands - it's comfortable, but searching for letters feels slower than those applications that just have the keys listed alphabetically.
3) As I prefer a single-click wherever possible, I'd like it if you just had next (and probably a previous) button as opposed to having to first hit Next Turn and then hit Ok. (I'd keep the OK confirmation for when selecting Previous or New Encounter, however.)
4) While I recognize that you have the character acting at the top of the round in red, I find it distracting (my eye is constantly drawn to the top of the round character as opposed to the character with the current action). Maybe a line between rows indicating a new round or - better yet - a round counter in the upper banner.
5) I don't even know if this is possible, but I'd LOVE an application I could use on my PC to prepare an encounter group and then just upload it to the iTouch/iPhone. I got huge hands and I fumble a lot with the small buttons on my iTouch.
__________________
It only surprised me up until around 1977, ... I had thought we were going to have a considerable audience of gamers and science fiction and fantasy fans. I thought easily with those we'd have 50,000 or more [buyers], but when people began to write me [with questions] about what fantasy books to read, and I saw the wide range of both younger and older people who were attracted to the game, I understood that it was reaching a deeper chord, something deep within us. E. Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 March 4, 2008)
Last edited by Hjorimir; 9th July 2009 at 10:00 PM..
1. No prob! I think that's not a problem, especially since another high priority is a 'duplicate this' button so those that want to use hp won't have to mess with it as much. blank is a good idea.
2. I... I dont' think I've ever seen a non-qwerty keyboard on the iphone? do you know of an app you can refer me to? I'm wondering if they had to build it from scratch, as I'm fairly sure the qwerty is the only one I know of.
3. I've got a request in to actually put a 'Next Turn' button IN the dialog, which would do the same approximation as you are looking for (hence you only go in to edit anything if you press 'ok') otherwise you just move to the next dialog. I think this would approximate what you're suggesting. That's in the cue and is midway/lower on the priority list, look for it in a few minor version updates.
4. I TOTALLY went down this path of logic myself. And here's the problem. Top of the round is always determined by the highest initiative. Which is great, most of the time. But what happens if the person at the top of the initiative holds their action. The items aren't in some sort of 'container' like that, it's a fluid list that depends on who has the highest initiative order (hence the red). If they move initiative, then the program would have no way to know where the end of the round was/beginning of the next. This is something I want to revisit eventually, but as of right now, I may look at some other way to designate the top of the round person; but I do want to keep it fairly easy to see where the new round starts.
5. Hmm. That is something I hadn't thought about before. I think it will not be hard once we get the backbone for loading/saving encounters into the app. I'll definitely add this to the revision list (we'll have to make one for both mac/pc)
2. Ignore me...I was confusing the iTouch with the nav systems my friend and I have on our cars...one is QWERTY, the other is Alphabetical.
3. Looking forward to it.
4. What if you created a row for 'Round' and just treated the row of having an initiative of 99 (or whatever)? This way, regardless of how somebody may delay or ready, the indication of a new round would be it's own animal. Hey, you could even place the counter (that I suggested you put in the banner in an earlier post) and move it to where you currently display the initiative count. So the Row would simply read ROUND X.
5. Groovy.
__________________
It only surprised me up until around 1977, ... I had thought we were going to have a considerable audience of gamers and science fiction and fantasy fans. I thought easily with those we'd have 50,000 or more [buyers], but when people began to write me [with questions] about what fantasy books to read, and I saw the wide range of both younger and older people who were attracted to the game, I understood that it was reaching a deeper chord, something deep within us. E. Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 March 4, 2008)
But I'll try to keep my eye for a better way to do it; as I'm scouring new apps all the time.
Well, how about this:
In v3 of the OS, you can scrape through songs by dragging a slider bar around. But the new feature they added is the ability to use smaller sliding quanta by sliding your finger down -- horizontal represents increase/decrease, vertical defines the degree of change.
So, let's imagine that you can set a "max HP" for a monster. You can then scrape the HP down, decrementing the number, but you can get more fine-grained precision by using verticality.
Doesn't fix the drilling down problem, but I figured it would be food for thought.
__________________ Code of the Rogue Gamemistress
1. Fun is the highest principle.
2. Choice is a form of fun.
3. Let the dice fall where they may.
I have not... Without getting into too much of a derailment, I was quite insulted when the first thing I saw after plugging my brand new iPod Touch into my computer was "Pay us $10 to upgrade to the newest version of our OS," and I refuse to buy it on principle.
Despite the fact that we've publically explained this, people still don't that we actually really don't charge that to spite people.
We got in a lot of trouble a while for "suspicious accounting practices" where we accounted for a sale at time of sale (duh), but then put money into providing upgrades/new features that were accounted for after the sale. While support/maintenance expenditure is obviously kosher, apparently upgrades/new features after accounting for the initial sale is not.
For the iPhone, we account for the sale over a two-year period. As in, you pay $X up front, but we actually account for that sale as a sale of $X/24 for each month over a two year period, so we're OK on providing upgrades/new features post-sale on it. However, this screws with our quarterly financial reports, because it hides the influence of (say) the holiday sales surge, or the sales rate of new releases, which can negatively impact stock performance, etc. As such, we simply can't use that trick for our entire product line, in addition to the fact that it just doesn't make practical sense for a product that really is buy-once like the iPod Touch, in contrast to a subscription-based product like the iPhone.
So the nominal fee for feature upgrades (not bug fix/maintenance updates) really is necessary from a not-getting-in-legal-trouble perspective. Trust me, we wouldn't do it if we didn't have to. The income from iPod Touch upgrades isn't nearly enough to offset the real development costs, and it's a huge pain to audit every free release to make sure it's not too featureful or whatnot.
__________________ 'Imaginary' universes are so much more beautiful than this stupidly constructed 'real' one.
Hmm that might be possible with the row at the top (item that always wins initiative).. still not sure how to tell it that it's at the end of the list to add one to the row counter per se, especially with allowing fluid ordering due to holding of actions/delaying/etc. But I will see what my proggie thinks about that. He's 6 hours ahead of me, so I won't get to talk to him till tomorrow. Hmm that's also going to cause a problem with our alert routines, in that it's going to pop up a window that says 'It's Row Counter's turn!' LOL.
I might have to see if we can do something graphical instead. The main problem is how we coded the list (no lie, because it was easier to move the list than move the screen down through the list statically). Because of that, I'm not even sure we could have a 'Round' row at the top that stays up there, because as you can see whenever the highest item is done, it gets cycled to the bottom, and so would that row counter. I'm going to have to think about that one. It may not be doable, but I'll look into it.
Amy do you know of an app that uses this feature? I haven't seen it yet and would like to check it out.
Resistor, I actually felt the same way when I bought mine last year; I just don't think Apple does a good job of saying loudly enough 'iPod users have to pay to upgrade their OS for every commercial release.' It should be a sticker on the box or something, honestly. Just so folks know what they're getting into; but I definitely see your accounting point (I'm a finance guy believe it or not LOL). I'm about to plunge in for the monster 3G-S. Any chance you can give a guy a hint how long til other carriers can have iPhones? I'm looking at August-September *grin*.
Trevalon, nice Domo-Kun (かれ は とても かわいいですよ＾＿＾）and I look forward to your feedback
Just spoke with my coder, .2 should be in the can and up for approval on Sunday, with hopefully a 2-3 day turnaround. I'll post a full changelog when it's approved.
Okay, I'll preface my comments with the fact that I have not had a chance to really use this in the field--just a bit of experimentation.
1. The pop-up warning is a nice cue for who's turn it is, and the red outline works as a pretty good indication of the starting of a new round.
2. My biggest issue with the app as is, is that it removes initiative rolling from the players entirely--I don't think any of my "regular" (we hardly play enough to call it a regular group) players would particularly care for that.
3. Entering encounter information is fine--it's hard to improve it much beyond what it is, really.
4. A way to save encounter set-ups is a must--this app is simply too slow to speed up the game if a DM has to set up the encounter within the app at the table.
5. A possible solution to issue 2 would be to allow drag-and-drop sorting of the list. What this does is allow the DM to account for things like delaying, holding, etc. Given that it mostly works as a "this is the order determined by the encounter dice rolls, here's who's up" list right now, this might require quite a bit of work, but I think it would be marvelous if that were possible.
An example: Bill, Bob, Bobert and 3 Goblins are in a fight. You enter all their modifiers and have the app roll the initiatives and they're sorted. Things go in order for 2 rounds, but then Bob decides to delay his action. You tap an edit button, and drag icons appear on the sides of each line/combatant, letting you drag him to a different spot in the order. (or all the way at the bottom to a "hold/delay/etc" portion of the screen perhaps)
For an example of this sort of drag and drop, the only app I can think of is the $20 dollar (or is it 40?) task manager OmniFocus, which might have videos online somewhere of it in action.
Another possible solution to the "what to do about holds etc." would be to add a "delay/hold etc." status check box that would exclude the player from the normal order of initiative if checked.
This probably requires quite a bit more code, or a lot of rewriting of what you already have, and may not even be technically feasible but that's my biggest suggestion--a user drag-sortable list. That sort of implementation would definitely make me use this app at the table, but for now, I'm probably still happier with a dry erase board or cards.
__________________ "My name is Will... Will Negates."
2. My biggest issue with the app as is, is that it removes initiative rolling from the players entirely--I don't think any of my "regular" (we hardly play enough to call it a regular group) players would particularly care for that.
I made this mistake as well, but you actually can edit the initiaive for each player to match their roll.
Larinza: I asked about Android. My coder said "Sure! But tell them they need to send me an Android phone so I can program/debug on it, and I'll get right on it."
I"m not Larinza out here
As for sending him an Android phone to code and test on, Android Emulator | Android Developers is the best I'm gonna be able to do for him, sorry It's fully functional though
I made this mistake as well, but you actually can edit the initiaive for each player to match their roll.
Well that makes it better. Still takes a bit of time to edit it, but perhaps not all that different from a pen and paper list.
My feature request and suggestion still stands though--a user-draggable list. You could even have (I have no idea of what's actually code-able) something along the side with the initiative counts so that as you drag, you're actually dragging to the correct number initiative.
On another note, from the "entering info" perspective...is it possible to just use a number keypad for fields with only numbers--like hit points and initiative? That would make for a bit quicker editing, but I don't know if you can mix and match text entry fields with different kinds of keyboards.
__________________ "My name is Will... Will Negates."
My feature request and suggestion still stands though--a user-draggable list. You could even have (I have no idea of what's actually code-able) something along the side with the initiative counts so that as you drag, you're actually dragging to the correct number initiative.
This is actually the request that we got from Jerry/Tycho. My coder is supposed to be on it; but I'm in management school at the moment with no way to contact him atm, I'll have to check on that when I get back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trevalon Moonleirion
On another note, from the "entering info" perspective...is it possible to just use a number keypad for fields with only numbers--like hit points and initiative? That would make for a bit quicker editing, but I don't know if you can mix and match text entry fields with different kinds of keyboards.
Funny part is; that's how v1.0 was; and the problem is that the numeric keypad has no 'done' button, or any way to get it off the screen, so it would cover the items below so you couldn't see them without dragging/being a hassle. It was *quite* annoying.
Also, DarwinofMind, sorry!!!! Habit LOL. Do I still get my +2 to init from you here? I hope so
I'll pass the info along to him, thanks for the link!
Thanks again for all the stellar contact, I'm still reading it (although it's a bear to post right now, my mgmt school is like boot camp) but please keep the thoughts coming! I really appreciate the help!
This is actually the request that we got from Jerry/Tycho. My coder is supposed to be on it; but I'm in management school at the moment with no way to contact him atm, I'll have to check on that when I get back.
Mark
Well I guess the PA guys share my taste in feature requests--awesome!
The number pad thing was just a thought--I hadn't realized that there was a problem with the number pad itself. Perhaps that's why I've almost never seen it in apps!
__________________ "My name is Will... Will Negates."
version 1.2 submitted today (look for it in 1-3 days on iTunes as an update)
- DRAG AND DROP initiative reordering while in edit mode
- Changed UI appearance
- Fixed a bug that made two characters with the same init value loop forever
- Added reset button
- Now supports Max HP and Current HP (bloodied players will have a red HP value)
- Fixed a bug in which some entries would roll an initiative of 0. (die parameters changed from 0-20 to 1-20)
All of these items are suggestions by the communities at Penny Arcade, ENWorld.org and the D&D Official Forums. Thank YOU for helping us keep this a living, breathing project!
I hope you all leave feedback once the release goes live!
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