i4E
In July I wrote a design spec for an iPhone app for D&D4 and posted it on RPG.net.
Four months later (today) some dude posted in the thread and said “I made it,” and linked to the app.
http://cordax.net/i4e
Now, I don’t know if the guy based his app on my spec. It’s entirely possible he did not, and is just saying “hey I made something just like this” and used my existing thread to promote it. But the two are very close! If he did use my spec, that’s the fucking internet, yo. A designer, a coder, not working together, don’t even know each other. I posted the spec publicly, on purpose, in the hope someone would see it and think “this is a good idea.” I didn’t want anything out of it, except the app, and that’s exactly what I got.
It’s $4 and requires only that you go to his site and give it your email addy. There’s no password associated, and no email verification. As far as I can tell, it’s purely using your email as a unique identifier. You could, I’d wager, use one email for your whole group and everyone would be able to see everyone’s characters.
Once you give your email to the site, you can upload characters from the DDI. I did so and was instantly able to access them on my iPhone.
The only hitch in his gitalong is that the Powers in the App don’t know what the Powers actually do. In some cases you can see the attack vs defense info (STR vs AC, for instance, but not the actual numbers) and the damage, but that’s it.
That is a pretty big stumbling block. As soon as I saw the Powers were missing this info, I opened up a DDI character builder file in TextPad and checked it out. As I suspected, the actual power info is not baked in there. The file says “Sly Flourish” for instance, but does not say what sly flourish does. Because, of course, you open the DDI file with the Character Builder, and the Character Builder knows what Sly Flourish does.
It’s my hope that enough people will see this and try it out that the author of the app will be motivated to find a way to include that data. Or that someone reading this will think of a way and collaborate with the dude. Collaboration in this case may just mean posting a comment here saying “I think this might work…”
I thought maybe there was a way to save or export the character sheet from DDI and get the information out of it that way, but I haven’t looked into it.
Anyway, the app is simple and works great except for that one admittedly important missing piece of infos. If it had that info, you’d be able to ditch your character sheet and keep track of HP and healing and surges and powers and items all with this app.
This is the kind of problem that might be solvable purely by putting enough eyeballs on it. It’s the Bazaar!
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November 5th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I might just be dense, but how is this different from iplay4e.com? I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have players at my table who are using their iPhones to track their PCs. Are we talking about an iPhone app vs. a web app?
November 5th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
That’s exactly what we’re talking about. A web app obviously has some advantages, but it won’t work if you don’t have ‘net access.
November 10th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Hello, my name is Mike and I created i4e. I think this comes down as just being a good idea imho. I actually didn’t create an account on rpg.net until after I had found your posting on there through google. I came across this posting in much the same way, I try to keep up on anything thats being said about i4e.When you import from the .dnd4e file it should be bringing in some of the numbers. The only ones that are absent should be range, keywords, and description. If its not showing proper values its possible that the weapon or implement assigned to the power didn’t import properly. If you send me an email at i4e_support@cordax.net I can work through it with you. I actually found out about iplay4e.com after I had started this project also. I should have done more research first I guess. I think the key advantages to it are that it doesn’t require an internet connection to work and also I like to think the UI is a little more usable, I might be biased though. If you have suggestions please email the above email address. I love feedback and interacting with i4e users.Mike
November 10th, 2009 at 1:35 am
I went back and re-read your initial post. I had skimmed it earlier but hadn’t read it completely through. It is uncanny how close some things came to what you described. In a lot of them I wish I had read your spec first because it would have saved me a lot of time iterating through the design. Although I think a lot of the items are just presented in their most logical way.