Attn: DMs with iPhones/iPod Touch - Need help and feedback.

[Asmor]

Have you updated to 3.0 yet?

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.

If that is a requirement, you should probably make that more clear... There is no mention of it anywhere in the product's description; the only hint is that at the very bottom of the product's page it says it's tested on iPhone OS 3.0. Even there, it doesn't say anything about requiring it.

 

[Hjorimir]

I looked it up on iTunes initially and it has 3.0 as a listed requirement...for what it is worth.

 

[Asmor]

I've only looked it up in the app store on the ipod itself.

 

[Hadrian the Builder]

I really need to avoid providing feedback when I'm tired...

I agree that showing the defenses in the initiative list is not feasible. But drilling down is fine

By "damage dealt" I mean that I should have fields for current HP, total HP and the bloodied value, but also a clear field that I can enter damage into. Once I've put a number into the "damage" field I click a button and it reduces the current hit points by that amount and resets the "damage" field.

And a new idea: if the Status FX field is not blank, then include the effect in the Alert message. Also, can you make a pull-down wuth common status effects, and an option for additional Status FX fields?

Now that I've gotten some sleep, I can see its trivial to manually enter an initiative

It also looks like I forgot to mention I am excited to see this app and I'm going to tell everyone I know about it.

 

[balth]

Asmor, I can definitely understand your reservations about plopping down the $10 for the upgrade; I had the exact same problem last year when I bought my iPod touch. I will say that the copy/paste features are pretty cost-valuable, but that's neither here nor there.

I don't think we compiled under 2.x, so 3.0 is definitely a requirement. The good news is that if you claimed the code, it will be there waiting should you ever decide to upgrade (which I would recommend at some point from a personal level, I think it's great imho). If it makes you feel any better, I paid the $10 when I bought mine, and then I paid $100 for 3.0 (to become a dev is $100, but I get 3.0 with it WHOO LOL).

Hadrian: I had a completely different layout designed in my head when I started the project, but my main coder and I found that the iPhone design layout is a bit more limited than we had imagined. So we can do some things, but it requires a lot of drilling down. One thing that I've got on our current upgrade list is similar to what you're saying. I think we're going to add a field called 'Starting HP' and leave the current 'HP' field. You'll drill down and change the current HP field when the monster takes damage, and it will compare the value. If it's half or less on the main screen, it will turn the HP display red (showing it's bloodied).

I get where you're going; I'll see if we can't work a damage calculator routine in.
The reason I was talking about the initial design I had envisioned was because in it, I had imagined listing status fx, editing the HP right on the status display without having to drill down and more. Putting the contents of the status fx field in the alert display is a good idea. I'm not sure if we're limited to text length in there, but we can find out

Just fyi for those following the thread; we DO intend on making savable/loadable encounters so you can preload rooms in advance, just have to drop your players in and go. To that end, I'm going to try to make it so you can designate one of those saves as your PC list, and be able to drop them at the touch of a button into any encounter. This is all a bit out, cuz there is only two of us, but we are working on it

We have a pretty healthy changelog already, but the feedback is giving us some really good ideas. Jerry/Tycho probably gave us our most interesting idea, and we're slaving away at implementing that now. Don't want to spoil the surprise just yet

But we're attempting to really make this an evolving/living app, because there is a lot of need for it for us poor GMs who don't want to use pen and paper for pnp games LOL!

 

[Moon_Goddess]

Any chance of an android version.

 

[balth]

GAH. Apparently in fixing one bug, we made another. I'll have to update my forums. Heads up, thanks to another board member, there is apparently a bug when two entries are on the same initiative, it simply cycles through those two entries and never moves on. You will have to adjust your inits manually to get rid of this error. This moves to the top of the changelog for 1.2.

 

[balth]

Hey Darwin

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.

 

[Hjorimir]

Okay, I've downloaded and played around with the application. While I appreciate the effort, I won't be using iNit in it's current form. Here is what I'd like to see:

1) I don't want to have to have HPs on the tracker as I find them distracting and I'd never track HPs on the iTouch (I can track them on paper much, much faster and I always need to scribble down notes about conditions anyway).

2) I want an easy way to delay or ready an action...without having to drill down and reset the character's initiative number. I guess I envisioned may two buttons per character labeld [D] and [R] that I could toggle and just tap again when they character reinserts.

3) I would absolutely need the app to keep entries (PCs and a list of NPCs that I preloaded) ready to go so that when I hit 'New Encounter' I don't have to enter everything again. Maybe create a way to designate entries as PCs (and thus always included in an encounter) and a sub-screen of a list of NPCs that I have pre-loaded that I could add to the encounter with a single click. Obviously, if I could pre-load full encounter sets as well, that'd be even better.

We currently use 3x5 cards (turning the card when a character is on a Ready and pulling the card out when the character is on Delay). This is very, very fast at the table. I'd want iNit to be simply faster and easier. As it stands now, it would feel like a distraction to the game as I noodle around with my iTouch instead of paying attention to the players.

Hope that helps and I'll keep looking for updates.

 

[Hadrian the Builder]

Just fyi for those following the thread; we DO intend on making savable/loadable encounters so you can preload rooms in advance, just have to drop your players in and go. To that end, I'm going to try to make it so you can designate one of those saves as your PC list, and be able to drop them at the touch of a button into any encounter.

Oh man...I didn't even think of that one! I love it!


What's it been like to develop iphone apps and get them on the iTunes store? How many hours have the two of you put in so far to get the app where it is now? Are you both experienced programmers?