D&D 4E D&D 4E Character Sheet for iPad - Sneak Xmas Preview!

EvilBeeker · Dec 22, 2010

Digital Adventures introduces their new iCharacter Sheet - 4E project, scheduled for release in the New Year. iCharacter Sheet 4E lets you take your favourite characters with you wherever you travel, and keeps all the character details at your fingertips at the gaming table.

* Full screen character sheet below, so you can see more at a glance

* Fully compatible with D&D 4e

* Stores multiple characters, allowing you to flip between them in an instant

* Email copies of your character to your friends or GM

*Intuitive and easy to use

* More functionality on the way!

* A must-have accessory for your iPad, and native MAC and Windows version on the way in Q1 of 2011

Watch for the official launch of the iPad version in January 2011.

Merry Christmas from Digital Adventures!

RangerWickett · Dec 22, 2010

Looks cool. I've got some questions, though:

Is it just a character sheet, or can you track your character's condition with it? Mark HP damage and healing surges spent, note what powers you've used, put reminders of basic conditions like dazed, poisoned, etc?

I would be really impressed if you could have this with you during play, mark the damage you take and what powers you use, and then at the end of combat have a "take a short rest" or "take an extended rest" option, which would refresh your powers and let you either 'auto-spend' healing surges to get to full (which would work if nobody has healing powers), or let you choose how many surges you spend and what your final HP are.

Also, is this allowed by WotC's game system license? I thought digital tools were forbidden. Maybe I'm getting my wires crossed.

invokethehojo · Dec 22, 2010

I think this is great, but your missing one thing, the phrase "powerful tool". I got an Ipad a month ago and I have spent many an hour looking through apps, and one universal thing that all utility type apps have in common is that they are all described as "powerful tools". I think it's in the apple bylaws, you had better look into that.

EvilBeeker · Dec 22, 2010

This project was submitted to WOTC and basically signed off on by their digital and legal departments.

Due to GSL limitations we're only allowed to present an app that replicates how you would present something on a character sheet. The sheet cannot be "smart" in any way (at least not at this time), or do calculations other than basic addition and subtraction where applicable. No game mechanics or rules can be contained within the code.

There is a place for healing surges on the first page/tab, and that is the extent of what we can do at this time. We hope that in the future WOTC may allow us to add smarter 4E mechanics to the sheet, but right now we're happy at what they are allowing us to present.

I will look into the "other conditions" and see if we can add that to our current build.

Thanks for the questions!

EvilBeeker · Dec 22, 2010

For version 500 of the project we plan to make the app cook you breakfast in the morning and take out the trash. At that time we plan to add "powerful tool" to the description.

falcarrion · Dec 22, 2010

Do you have to manualy enter all the information on the sheet?

EvilBeeker · Dec 22, 2010

falcarrion said:
Do you have to manualy enter all the information on the sheet?

At this time, yes. We currently do not have any "import" functionality from character generators (ie. DDI) due to legal restrictions. However, we hope that this type of functionality might be doable in the future.

Morrus · Dec 22, 2010

Interesting. What sort of file format are the character sheets stored in? Is it a format one could use, for example (with an agreed arrangement with you) to import into an upcoming online campaign manager on a well-known D&D fansite?

EvilBeeker · Dec 22, 2010

Morrus said:
Interesting. What sort of file format are the character sheets stored in? Is it a format one could use, for example (with an agreed arrangement with you) to import into an upcoming online campaign manager on a well-known D&D fansite?

Howdy Morrus!

Right now the file of the character on the device (whatever that device is, our first release is iPad followed by native MAC when that store opens) is encrypted based on the iOS of the Apple devices. Our current export function is to an XSLT output formatted to HTML that basically resembles the presented sheet, which then interfaces with the default email app to send out as an attachment. For future upgrades we're working on PDF export and direct printing.

To actually do an import/export that would work with a character generation program we would need to work out a deal with said company that owns that product. Once we get through the intitial release of our product brand (iCharacter Sheet is our brand, and we're working on other RPG system sheets as well), future upgrades could definitely include exports to third-party applications. We would just have to develop an export around specific specs to work with the other application. FYI, our product is a combination of XCode (Apple), XML, and LUA scripting which gives us great flexability in how the data is exported.

We would be happy to talk more with you Morrus, when you're ready drop me an email at kmelka@digitaladventures.net.

Morrus · Dec 22, 2010

EvilBeeker said:
Howdy Morrus!

Right now the file of the character on the device (whatever that device is, our first release is iPad followed by native MAC when that store opens) is encrypted based on the iOS of the Apple devices. Our current export function is to an XSLT output formatted to HTML that basically resembles the presented sheet, which then interfaces with the default email app to send out as an attachment. For future upgrades we're working on PDF export and direct printing.

To actually do an import/export that would work with a character generation program we would need to work out a deal with said company that owns that product. Once we get through the intitial release of our product brand (iCharacter Sheet is our brand, and we're working on other RPG system sheets as well), future upgrades could definitely include exports to third-party applications. We would just have to develop an export around specific specs to work with the other application. FYI, our product is a combination of XCode (Apple), XML, and LUA scripting which gives us great flexability in how the data is exported.

We would be happy to talk more with you Morrus, when you're ready drop me an email at kmelka@digitaladventures.net.

Well, what we'd basically need is the ability to display the output as HTML. Ideally you could export it as HTML and a user of our upcoming campaign manager could simply upload that html file to our system. They'd use your system to alter the character sheet, etc.; we'd simply display the output on a web page within our system and refer them to you for actual sheet sheet creation.