Approved!

Apple’s review process seems to have become more efficient.  The new version was approved in record time (less than 4 business days–and one of those a Federal holiday).  It should be appearing in your “updates” list within the next couple of hours.

I have a couple of demo/documentation videos that I put together.  I need to add a voice over and upload them to YouTube, but expect to link to those shortly.

Do let me know if you find any bugs or glitches with the new version.  I’ve been hammering at it pretty hard, but I could have missed something.

Enjoy!

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Still here

It’s been a long time since I had time to work on my D&D/gaming apps.  You may have noticed that I released a new version of Hex Map Pro this week.  Not a major update, but I added a few features that people had mentioned.

• Double-tap the “C”/clear color on the drawing tab to erase all the colored cells/
• Any token can be turned into a die/random number generator. (iPad only currently)
• Updated for the larger iPhone 5 screen.
• Grid color can be changed.
• Option to have the text on the back of each token automatically match the front.

As I get suggestions from people about what I should do next, I often wonder how you actually use the app.  Are you using it to run RPG games?  Design maps?  Play other types of games?  I’ve realized that I’m a big handicapped in improving the app because I’ve literally never seen anyone (except my kids) actually use Hex Map Pro.  So I’d love to hear from you and maybe get some screen shots.  Leave a comment if you’re willing to chat via e-mail about your use of the app.  Thanks.

Grumble, grumble

Apple rejected my Old School Treasure Generator app.  And not because the name was too long.

• 2.12: Apps that are not very useful, are simply web sites bundled as apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected.  We found that the features and/or content of your app were not useful or entertaining enough, or your app did not appeal to a broad enough audience, to be in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.

I somewhat see their point, but still it hurts a bit.

 

I’ll incorporate the functionality into Old School DM at some point, but I liked the idea of a simple one-screen free app to help DMs.  Oh well.

Where did June go?

It’s been over a month since I posted anything here.  Let me catch you up on what I’ve been working on.

Last night I submitted my 5th app to the App Store: Old School Treasure Generator.  The name is a mouthful, but it does what you’d expect if you’re a user of Old School DM.  Enter the treasure codes from the Monster Manual listing, tap Go and you get a randomly generated treasure hoard.  It’s a simple, one-screen iPhone app.  This started off as a new feature for the Old School DM app, but decided to release it as a stand-alone app for now.  It’s free, so don’t complain too much that it doesn’t generate the values for each gem and piece of jewelry (yet) and roll the random magic items for you.  It’s exceedingly unlikely that I’ll ever add the random magic item generator–primarily for copyright reasons, but also because it would be a PITA to enter all the necessary data.  And besides rolling magic items is fun and (at least in my experience) requires quite a few “thumb-on-the-scale” non-random adjustments by the DM.  Look for this app in the App Store next weekend.

I’ve also been working on two other apps: Old School DM and a new app I’m calling 3″ x 5″.

Old School DM is being updated to work properly on the iPad.  This will be added to the existing version as an update (although I’m sure you all would have been thrilled to buy the app again for the “HD” version like some companies offer, right?).  No ETA on this yet.

The new app (should have been my 5th app, but it will be my 6th since the treasure one was quick and easy), is a spin-off of Hex Map Pro.  Instead of tokens on a hex board, it has 3×5 cards on a table top.  Personally, I like to brainstorm and organize my thoughts on index cards, and since the Hex Map app was (I thought) 90% of an index card sorting app already I decided to create a new app.  Then I started to get clever, excited, greedy, grandiose, or something and added extra features.  It turns out that determining which arbitrarily rotated rectangle is “close” to which other rectangles is non-trivial.  In any case, it’s probably a couple weeks away from being ready for release as a 99c app.  It’ll be competing with plenty of free somewhat similar apps (note taking/to-do/brainstorming) apps and some paid ones, so I have no idea how well it will do.

Once that gets released, it’ll be time to show Old School DM some love and get a new version of that out.  Then back to Hex Map or perhaps a quickie 1st edition AD&D character generator.  That would be another free app to serve as a “gateway drug” for Old School DM and/or Hex Map Pro.  I implemented the logic for that app in Perl a few years ago, so it should be fairly easy to turn it into an iPhone app.  Famous last words of course.

4% more intuitive

This weekend I downloaded and watched some presentations from the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference to get some ideas how to best convert Old School DM for the iPad.  Instead I was inspired to “fix” some shortcuts I had taken with the Hex Map Pro user interface.  I hadn’t realized these little details until I saw what thought and care went into Apple’s own apps and some others they highlighted in the training.  My daughter thinks the improvements are “awesome,” and I know some of you will appreciate then.  Well worth the effort.

I’m going to go ahead and let 1.1.1 get through the approval process, and then I’ll submit 1.1.2.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Fixed the link to my support site (yes, again).
• The top tip the triangle-shaped token no longer gets snipped off (unfortunately it’s now even smaller).
• As you change the color of a token, the token on the board (and control panel) adjust in real time.
• When you drag a token, it “hovers” a little bit.
• Tap and hold the Shape or Size button to bring up a popover that let’s you immediately choose the size and shape.
• New boards default to a pattern instead of boring tan.
• Single tap anywhere on the board to close the token control panel.

Obviously none of those are “features.”  Just a little polish.  In my day job, I could never justify this level of attention to detail.  The number of hours involved in describing what I had in mind, convincing people it would be cool, getting it done, testing it, and promoting it to production would likely be 10 times what it took for me to just do it (which was a non-trivial, but rewarding 8 to 10 hours).  Sometimes it’s very good not to be the boss, and just be “the guy.”

1.1 out; 1.1.1 coming soon

Hex Map Pro 1.1 was approved today (a week after being submitted, just like every other time).

I’m working on a help/support page which you can find here.  Too bad one of the minor bugs in 1.1 is that the link to the support site doesn’t actually work on the iPhone (and I forgot to add the link to the iPad version).  D’oh.

While I waited for 1.1 to past muster with the lovely and talented App Store app screeners, I found a few non-showstopper bugs.  These have all been stomped out, and I’m submitting Hex Map Pro 1.1.1 tonight.

Fixed with 1.1.1:

• Fixed the Support link on iPhone; added link on iPad.
• Fixed the font not always updating correctly in the token control panel.
• Fixed the background color of the “prior position” “ghost token” when a custom color is used.
• Fixed a long standing bug where deleting a token selects the oldest token instead of the one created just before the one deleted.
• Deleted three slow-loading background images that I was using for debugging and weren’t intended for inclusion.
• Maybe one or two other things that I’ve forgotten.

New features:

• A new token shape: rectangular!  (hey it’s a bug-fix release what do you want?)

Look for Hex Map Pro 1.1.1 this time next week (unless I hear reports of other bugs that I need to fix and thereby restart the one-week app approval clock.

And for you patient Old School DM users, good news: the updates to make it work natively on the iPad are well under way.  This app has my attention now after Hex Map Pro monopolizing my spare time for the past few months.

Demo rough cut

I need to edit it and add a voice track, but here’s a sneak peek of Hex Map Pro 1.1.

This is the iPad version (in landscape mode).  It starts in Safari with a Google search for “cathedral hex map.”  I find a cool map and add it to my Photo library.  Then I switch to Hex Map Pro and import the picture and demonstrate how to line up the hex printed on the image with the game board hex.

Hex Map Pro demo rough cut

I’m new to this video stuff (including how to embed it into a posting here), so bear with me.

And some screen shots:

Back to basics

Now that Hex Map Pro 1.1 is in the bag (see prior posting), I’ve decided to return to my roots.  Way back in the summer of 2011, I started iPhone development with a little app called Old School DM.  Over the past few months, I’ve been spending 10-20 hours a week on Hex Map Pro, neglecting my first app.  Now it’s time to rectify that.

The good news is that my work on Hex Map Pro has made me at least moderately proficient with the challenge of writing a “universal” app that can work natively on the iPhone and the iPad.  So I’m ready to take a crack do this for Old School DM.  I think it will be really cool.  And I’m sure you’ll appreciate that I’m not going to try to gouge you by selling a separate iPad only version (“Old School DM HD!”).

Might be a month or two until I’ve done this, but hang in there.

More about Hex Map Pro 1.1

Hex Map Pro 1.1 is in the hands of the App Store reviewers now.  As I said yesterday, I expect it will be released to the store next Friday.  My daughter helped me work out some final UI glitches last night (and add an “Easter egg”).

What made it into this release?  The new feature is the ability to import your own background image for a board.  Implementing this in a (hopefully) user friendly and fairly intuitive way required quite a few other changes.

1. Hex Map Pro is no longer a “one-screen” app.  Now when it starts up you arrive at a landing page that gives you big friendly buttons for: return to your last board; open a different board; import an image; and create a new board.  (The iPhone version includes a 5th button taking to a page on this site that I haven’t created yet; for no good reason the iPad version doesn’t include that link–I’ll fix that in 1.1.1.)
2. When you create a new board you can either get a standard one (the way it has always worked, or you can have it based on an image you’ve imported.  The size of the board will, in the latter case, be based on the size of the image.  Really big image –> really big board.  Small image –> normal sized board with the image in the upper left corner.
3. When you’re interacting with a game board (the normal screen you’re used to), there are a few changes.  First, I got rid of the Add/+ button to create new board.  You have to go Home and create a new board.
4. In place of the Add button is an Info button.  Tapping that brings up a view that shows you the name of the board (editable), the current font (tap to cycle through a few different options), and some other mundane stuff.
5. The “control panels” (the thing at the bottom and the game token editor for the iPad version) are now more swipe-able.  You can close and open them with a swipe of your finger instead of a tap to the small close icon.  On the iPad version, you can make the game token control panel small and simpler by swiping up to make it shrink.
6. I fiddled with the min and max zoom parameters and the size of the default map to address the complaint that you couldn’t zoom out to see the whole board.  I hope these new values are an improvement.  The problem/risk is that zooming out all the way uses more memory and causes the device to work harder.  So redrawing can take longer and in a worst case scenario, the app can quit unexpectedly.  It’s been stable in my testing, but I imagine both will be more of an issue with iPod touches and earlier model iPhones.  Do let me know if you experience crashes, so I can improve stability.

I think that’s everything.  Before the app is in your hands I hope to post some video tutorials about how to use the new import option.  I think it’s intuitive, but perhaps only after you’ve watched someone do it.  Importing a picture is easy; lining up the hex or square grid that the app provides with a corresponding grid included in the picture is the tricky part.  It’s still not hard, but given that you have to adjust the magnification of the picture and the location of the picture, it’s an iterative process.

Ok, enough about this.  You’ll see it soon enough, and then you can remind me that what you really want is to be able to draw on the map, have better, most custom game tokens, “fog of war,” export/print, saved sets of token, and lots of other cool stuff that I want too. 🙂

Finally!

Wow, this second release of Hex Map Pro has taken a lot longer than I expected.  The good news is that it’s done and after a little more testing should be submitted for approval by Apple tonight.  If my past experience is any guide it’ll be released to the world one week later.  So, fingers crossed, Hex Map Pro 1.1 will show up as an available update next Friday.  Lots of little changes, and one big one: you can import your own images (or images you randomly download from the Internet as the case may be) as backgrounds for your game boards.

More later after I get the testing and submitting done…