Hero System Mobile - Next Feature

[sentry0]

Now that the dust is settling on my last big feature I've been thinking about what to do next for the app.  I don't really know which feature to work on next so I thought I would open up the choice here.

 

Let me know what you think the next big feature should be.

[Doc Democracy]

I would love something like this to provide SFX for powers.  I realise that is not in the purview of the app - it is not a numbers thing and would hugely increase the memory use but being able to roll damage and have it sound like the power is going off would be really cool....

 

😉

 

Doc

[sentry0]

2 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

I would love something like this to provide SFX for powers.  I realise that is not in the purview of the app - it is not a numbers thing and would hugely increase the memory use but being able to roll damage and have it sound like the power is going off would be really cool....

 

😉

 

Doc

 

That actually wouldn't be a huge deal to implement... it would mostly be a question of finding public domain sound effects and getting them to play on a roll... there should be a way to stop the app from playing them too. 

 

There would be one more permission required by the app too but that shouldn't be a big deal.

[sentry0]

Here you go @Doc Democracy... took about 30 minutes to setup

 

Need to pick out sounds for SFX now...  that'll take longer than the coding lol.

 

 

 

[bluesguy]

In Heroic games players are often left having to track inventory (money, equipment, trinkets, etc).  Many of these items are not recorded as 'Hero Equipment' but in a separate inventory 'tool' (piece of paper, notebook, spreadsheet, etc).  Something to help with 'inventory management' would be nice.

[sentry0]

1 hour ago, bluesguy said:

In Heroic games players are often left having to track inventory (money, equipment, trinkets, etc).  Many of these items are not recorded as 'Hero Equipment' but in a separate inventory 'tool' (piece of paper, notebook, spreadsheet, etc).  Something to help with 'inventory management' would be nice.

 

This isn't the first time I've been asked for this actually.  

 

The issue from the app perspective is that it doesn't have any concept of multiple characters... the app only knows about the current character.  Which means when you load in a new character it forgets about the last one entirely including anything in persistent storage.

 

This may be a nice stepping stone to loading multiple characters or an excuse to just do that feature outright.

[Doc Democracy]

On 1/20/2020 at 11:45 PM, sentry0 said:

Here you go @Doc Democracy... took about 30 minutes to setup

 

Need to pick out sounds for SFX now...  that'll take longer than the coding lol.

 

 

 

Was thinking about this, and how fussy folk are.  Would it be easier, in the round, to allow users to add their own sounds and label them rather than hard coding in a fire or electricity SFX?

[sentry0]

3 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

Was thinking about this, and how fussy folk are.  Would it be easier, in the round, to allow users to add their own sounds and label them rather than hard coding in a fire or electricity SFX?

 

You are absolutely right that people are fussy.  I have the hardcoded version complete from the coding perspective, I just have a few more sounds to pick out.

 

I'll look into the ability to upload custom sounds and see how much work that will be.

[sentry0]

Sounds

I finished the first pass at adding in sound effects... here's how it works right now:

• You need to select a "Special Effect" for a power in HD
• The power must have a roll associated with it like a Blast or Entangle
• Sounds will play when you make your roll
  • Each special effect in HD has a sound in the app... all 48 of them

You can choose to not play any sounds in the newly redesigned settings screen of the app.  Alternatively, you may also choose to just use the dice rolling sound regardless of the SFX assigned to the powers.

 

All the sounds are here if you're curious. 

 

What I'm thinking for phase 2 of this feature is this:

• I'll add a screen to upload a sound (and delete one too)
  • You will pick from a dropdown on this screen what SFX it should play on
• When loading a SFX the app will first check the list of user uploaded files and load anything it finds for the SFX
  • All SFX sounds are loaded on demand (and then cached) to keep memory under control
• Failing to find any user defined mp3's for a given SFX will cause the app to use the default SFX sound

Tablet Support

While we're talking about features, I want to discuss what I mean by 'Tablet Support' as it is currently ahead in the poll.  I will be using a technique to scale up the UI to a reasonable size based on the device screen size and resolution - that's it.  I have no plans right now to make special screens based on the size of the device.  Making screens based on device size adds a level of complexity to my development process that I just don't need right now, especially when weighed against the other feature requests I have in the pipeline.  To reiterate, it will look better on bigger devices but there won't be a changes to the UI beyond the addition of scaling.

 

Perhaps this will change someday but for now I want to add in this first step and move on to other features.

[BigJackBrass]

A note on adding sounds: does anyone actually need sounds in an app like this? It only came to mind as I keep the sound switched off by default when I'm using a computer, whether it's a 'phone/tablet or PC, and it seems as though sounds files would add to the program size quite a bit.

[Doc Democracy]

Ah Jack, you mistake need and want. 😄

 

I think with just the default sounds it will make little difference.  If someone wants lots of sounds then the size will not matter to them...

 

Personally, since I asked for it, I think I will have fun using it. 

 

I feel greedy, but if Sentry is looking for further advancement, I would love a way of sharing the rolls made, so being able to set up a small group, the five of us round the table using the app and when a roll is made, it shares the result to everyone in the group...

 

I think an app like this removes some of the drudgery (though plenty of my players love rolling dice, many of them hate counting them up!).

 

I think it should also provide the potential of engaging more senses in the game - sounds can be really evocative and superheroes, to me, are about flash and colour.  That is what attracted me to comics when I was a kid and it is what keeps drawing me back to superheroes in my gaming.

 

 

Doc

[sentry0]

1 hour ago, BigJackBrass said:

A note on adding sounds: does anyone actually need sounds in an app like this? It only came to mind as I keep the sound switched off by default when I'm using a computer, whether it's a 'phone/tablet or PC, and it seems as though sounds files would add to the program size quite a bit.

 

You can choose not to play any sounds at all in the app by going to the settings screen and flipping a switch.  It was the first thing I thought of when Doc requested this feature 😂

 

All of the audio files add up to about 1.1m of bloat in the app.  That's roughly a 10% increase in size on the Android side... not too bad.  The PDFs I used to distribute with the app took up about the same space.  Actual runtime memory should be low too because I load sounds on demand and not all at once.

 

But yes, no one needs this feature but it's a nice little option for people to use if they want.

 

Also, I need something to keep me busy while I wait for the poll to finish 😉

[sentry0]

I have been working on some fundamental changes to how characters are managed by the app based on the anticipated future needs of the app.  These changes revolve around how characters are loaded and stored by the application.  The way characters are managed by the app is changing in order to support loading multiple characters into the app and other features like "Notes" and freeform "Equipment" entries.

 

To understand the changes I think it's necessary to describe how character management currently works:

• The app can manage one character as time by picking it from the filesystem
• Loading a new character will erase any data about the currently loaded character like combat state
• Information about the currently loaded character is saved between sessions via platform specific data stores

All the above means is that the app can only effectively manage one character at a time.

 

The next major release of the app will have the new model of character management, which is:

• Importing a character will save them locally to the app
  • You will have a list of characters that you may choose to load from
  • You may delete characters as well
• Character state is saved in the local version of the character
  • Basically, combat state and if you have the "Include Secondary Characteristics?" switch flipped
  • Loading a character will also load their saved state into the app, if any
• Loading a new version of the character via the import button will overwrite the old character

Here's a screenshot of the new character management screen:

 

 

[sentry0]

Another quick update...

 

I added a "Back" button to the left hand side of the application header, mostly for iOS.  I had to center the logo in the header to get this to look right... I think it turned out pretty good.

 

Here's a screenshot of the new header, note the back chevron to the left of the logo.

 

[sentry0]

I started work on tablet support last night, I figured it was a sure thing with regards to the poll.  I'm applying scaling to the application and working through the UI glitches as they come up but I wanted to show some early progress so you get an idea of how things will look.

 

Current App - Samsung Tab S (8.4")

 

New Build - Samsung Tab A (8")

 

As you can see from the screenshots the app looks much better now on the Tab A due to the application scaling.  There's still lots of little things to tweak but the coarse work has been done, now it's just details.  I don't like how long the buttons are on the new build for example, I'll probably be tweaking it... the logo is too big too...

 

Now if only I could get my iOS simulator to load a character... ah well, a problem for another day.

 

 

[sentry0]

Work on tablet support is nearing completion.  I added icons and splash screens for iPad's tonight and fixed some issues with the header on various sized devices.

 

I have a very annoying issue that I've been fighting on the iOS side.  I don't own an iPad or iPhone so I usually use the Simulator tool that Apple provides to developers to do my testing.  Unfortunately, my Simulator tool is refusing to load iCloud files for me at the moment, it throws an error message when I click on a file regardless of the device I'm simulating.  I'm going to try to bypass iCloud entirely but it's a bit of pain to do.  

 

That's a long way of saying that I haven't seen the character screens because I can't load a character  

 

Anyways, barring any further issues with the Simulator tool I may end up pushing a build as early as tomorrow morning.

[sentry0]

I finally got my Mac VM to update to Catalina after 2 days of time consuming and boring install attempts and rollbacks.  

 

The good news is that I can now access files via iCloud again which means I can test the character viewers.  I already found and fixed some display issues and am continuing to test as I write this.

 

It all looks pretty promising for a release soon, probably tomorrow morning.

[Boll Weevil]

I'd like to see a simple knockback calculator. Input distance traveled and what lies behind (wall 10 meters, 5pd 10 body). Calculate total distance traveled and damage. 

[C-Note]

Heroic Template support, please!  Specifically, Powers as "Equipment" support.  Currently, the app crashes when I try to open a piece of Equipment built as a Compound Power.  Also requesting that Equipment displays "Quantity" and "Cost" (currency, not points).

[sentry0]

On 2/7/2020 at 2:39 AM, C-Note said:

Heroic Template support, please!  Specifically, Powers as "Equipment" support.  Currently, the app crashes when I try to open a piece of Equipment built as a Compound Power.  Also requesting that Equipment displays "Quantity" and "Cost" (currency, not points).

 

I fixed the bug with equipment in the 1.6.1 build (currently in review on the app stores).

 

Sorry but I totally forgot about your request for cost and quantity... I'll add that in now so I don't forget again  

[C-Note]

21 minutes ago, sentry0 said:

 

I fixed the bug with equipment in the 1.6.1 build (currently in review on the app stores).

 

Sorry but I totally forgot about your request for cost and quantity... I'll add that in now so I don't forget again  

 

Thank you.  If it isn't too much trouble, while you're adding Cost and Quantity, can you include the "Weight" field?

[sentry0]

1 minute ago, C-Note said:

 

Thank you.  If it isn't too much trouble, while you're adding Cost and Quantity, can you include the "Weight" field?

 

I added that in too while I was in there.

 

Quantity only shows up if there's more than one item... sound good? 

[C-Note]

3 minutes ago, sentry0 said:

 

I added that in too while I was in there.

 

Quantity only shows up if there's more than one item... sound good? 

 

That works fine.