Topic: Phone & tablet apps (Iphone and Andriod)

[Warl]

I was wondering Why No Apps for a Combat/skill tool/resolution or even a GM tool hasn't been Made BY ICE and been made available on Itunes and Google Play.

I Understand ICEs Issues/concerns with independent Apps and IP protection, But wouldn't it be just as protected using such a "Pay for app" service. It would seem no more risky of ones IP than selling a book or PDF.

AND yet Such tools, regardless of which version they were made for, Would be So very useful to the community and Might even aid in drawing Interest to the game, as it would alleviate so many concerns about the "Infinite RM Charts" and make the game open to those such things intimidate. Not to mention Making our own games run so much more quickly and Smoothly.

I also understand the concerns about supporting "dead" Systems. But if such tools were made for For RM2/RMC and RMSS Those fans still using those systems would Buy those APP products and provide some additional Funding to ICE to help them finance the develoment of the next Version of RM.

Do you get the Idea I would really Like to see these things done? 

If there isn't Anyone on the ICE staff with the know how or time to do such a thing, Make it Known that you would be willing to make a fair agreement with some one amongst the Fans who Does have the Know how to and is willing to either sell it to ICE or take a small, reasonable per sale residual from the venture. I wouldn't be surprised f some one has already worked on such a thing.

It just seems odd/sad that in such a Technological world we live in, ICE appears to not be taking advantage of such great opportunities to Support and Expand it's Player/fan base along with making a some money on the side.

[Magistrate]

Answer is easy. RPG is almost non-commercial or lets say you don't earn money with roleplaying products.
I've developed in my free-time Rolemaster Office. I took me around 600-800 hours in the last three years and I got 10$ donations.
Nobody will pay for this stuff. Nobody will pay for support.
My active user base is 300-500 user and now the calculation:
600 hours = 75 days * 600€ per day (thats extremly low for professional developer) = 45000€  / 500 users => 90 € per user

Would you buy an app for 90€/130$? After that you had to pay for support, hosting, etc.
Ah, I forgot:
45K *3 because you have to support iPhone, Android and PC => 135000€
135K * ~3 => RMU, RM2/RMX, RMFRP/RMSS => 405K

[arakish]

I had thought of developing apps for such, but after installing the Android SDK and iOS SDK software, I found that I MUST have a constant internet connection to use either.

At least that is the error message I got when I opened either one.

You can call me paranoid if you want, but I refuse to use any SDK software that requires an internet connection.  I prefer using my machine that is NOT connected to the internet for developing any kind of software.  Reason: I want it to work without having internet access before I actually code in for such.  As said, call me paranoid.

It might be that the only reason I need that internet connection is for their Help System.  Again, I refuse to any SDK software that does not also have a Help System I can download and install and use without an internet connection.  Yes, the internet Help System will be most up to date, but I just still prefer to create apps without needing an internet connection.

The one machine I have connected to the internet is paid for by the NMEDAC, and my usage is logged with their system, and I get a nasty email for using a connection they pay for for my personal usage.  I refuse to pay the $120+/month for internet that comcast/xfinity wants to charge me.  I feel that cable internet should only cast $20/month.  I know it does not cost comcast/xfinity more than that to provide me with cable internet.

Thus, I shall not be writing any Android or iOS apps.  I am also taking a course this fall in Phone App Creation just to see if I can do it.  This way I'll be using the university's internet connection.

Plus there is the reason that Magistrate gives.  The more complicated the app, the more I feel I should get paid for having written it.  If it is something simple such as this RMFRP Species Generation Worksheet I wrote, then I have no problem with offering it for free.

rmfr

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

For the iPhone, there are the XPCalc and XPTracker commercial apps for Rolemaster.

For the PC and to a lesser extent Unix, there is AutoHARP which we sell through RPGNow, and David Klecker receives a royalty on every sale.

If someone believes they have the expertise and willingness to develop apps commercially, then get in touch with Aurigas/ICE.  But be advised the market for all such apps is very small, because the market for the games is small and the potential user base is fractured across multiple  platforms

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[jdale]

A combat tracker is super useful. I don't know that I like phone or tablet better than PC, but whichever you pick you'll lose part of the market... I got sidetracked on the work of modernizing my own for RMSS/RMFRP on Windows (which is not currently pretty enough I would want to sell it), mostly due to wasting time trying to use Microsoft's crappy DataRepeater component. I did get it updated from VB6 to VB.Net though. But assuming no one else makes a good one (in which case I'd buy it), I will probably get back to it over the winter. If someone is a VB.Net programmer and wants to help, message me.

Character generators have a tougher time because there are multiple options currently, many of them free, at least for RMSS/RMFRP. If I played HARP I would buy AutoHARP for sure.

[Warl]

I understand the issues of Time Versus Compensation.

My brother and I make busts and staction figures (static Action figures) of Fan created characters that we offer for sale to those fans who are interested in such.
Do we sell them at a $ value that makes a profit over material cost? Yes
Do we sell them at a $ value that would "justifiably" recompense us for time spent making them? not even close.
#1 because if we did so, no one would ever Buy them. Most Artists and Freelance Writers understand they will never receive a Compensation that will equal the over all time spent producing their product. A lot of Free lance Writing gigs Pay by the word count. I have done a few and the compensation doesn't come close to the time involved in producing the work.
But that brings me to the next part that answers "why do it then?"

#2 We would be making those Bust and staction figures anyway for our Own Pleasure, enjoyment and entertainment. So since it is something we are doing for ourselves anyway, and we KNOW there are many others that enjoy it as well, Why not offer them up and Make a Profit over Material costs to produce? Why Not Receive SOMETHING for the work over nothing. This is something Most Artist and Freelance writers understand, because half of why they do it is because they enjoy doing it, so why not get paid a bit on the side for doing what you enjoy and may do anyway.

Fact is There are Lots of people out there producing gaming modules for their Preferred game and then putting them up for sale. WHy? Because they were going to write the module anyway for their own game, so why not get a little $ on the side as well.

Another reason is to contribute and promote the Community you Enjoy and love.

Now I am not trying to convince you here, Magistrate, I am just pointing out the counter arguments of Why people would do it, regardless of the Facts you put out.

My Main point is that if RM is to continue to have a Basis for continuing to develop and produce it's IP, There needs to be some keeping up with advancements in the Industry. There needs to be something that is going to Draw in the New gamers, the younger Generation. Else a Game WE ALL here Love, and Want to see continued support for, Will Die out.

Also as for the part about the cost for doing it on all platforms...
If you were JUST doing a Combat tool/ Skill resolution tool. One App would do it.
There are Minor Variations between the combat tables between the two versions of RM, So insignificant that one tool, regardless of which tables you plug into the tool, would make all happy just to have something that made Combat results quicker to acquire and thus speeding up combat resolution.
Character generators are a whole other ball game, and I don't really look for that as I have my house rules that modify Character creation enough that, Unless I made the tool (had the ability to) for myself, I wouldn't be likely to use them.

[Cory Magel]

Coincidentally I have some ideas for Apps that I think would be worth while, but I just haven't really pursued the idea yet.  The wife is starting to network with a lot of people more recently (she's a freelance graphic designer), so I've been thinking about her tracking down someone that knows the actual programming side.  I figure I can create the content, but I need someone to design the framework.

[Larswik]

I built XPTracker and XPCalc for the iPad and iPhone. As Magistrate said this is more of a labor of love then making money. I spent about 500-600 hours building XPTracker and you can really break that down in to pennies per hour for work. I made them because I still game and have programming skills. With the limited time my friends and I have to game every few months we needed a faster way to get through the paper work and calculations.

When I started playing in the 80's I could walk in to a book store and there would be a whole wall dedicated to gaming, now days there is a book shelf if that. Joysticks have replaced dice and endless gaming imagination is now been confined to a TV box.

XPTracker was built to speed up gaming as well as simplify what new users had to learn on the fly. My goal was to reduce the scratch paper part of the gaming while handling combat,multi attacks, XP, skills and XP Calculating. It was not designed to replace the character sheet or the books but to aid and speed up game play.

I have a new version coming out in the next few weeks that has bug fixes and a few new features too.

We had also talked about a GMTracker app that would help speed up the GM finding the results on the tables. You enter the characters attack data and other information and the result is presented to you with out tracking down the info from the tables. But this would be a situation where we would just provide the GMTracker app and ICE would sell the table modules that you can download and use through the app. End result would be faster gaming which is what we are all looking for but it is just talk right now and have not talked to ICE about anything like that officially.

[jdale]

We had also talked about a GMTracker app that would help speed up the GM finding the results on the tables. You enter the characters attack data and other information and the result is presented to you with out tracking down the info from the tables. But this would be a situation where we would just provide the GMTracker app and ICE would sell the table modules that you can download and use through the app. End result would be faster gaming which is what we are all looking for but it is just talk right now and have not talked to ICE about anything like that officially.

As I said, this sort of thing is super useful, especially if you track injuries (rounds of stun, amount of bleeding, etc). I don't use any iOS devices so it wouldn't be as great for me running a game (although our GM does, so...) but based on personal experience I can say it does really speed things up.

[Voriig Kye]

I have developed an application to use with my gaming group, with different modules that manage character creation, leveling up, adventuring, inventory, and character sheet.
All can be run from a Windows PC, and everything but the leveling up can be accessed via web browser, so no worries about iOS/Android/Windows.
Also, the character sheet module is specially tailored for mobile devices, and updates the player with info on stun, bleeding, remaining hits, etc, and also shows the description and parameters of all known spells.
The GM application resolves all spell casting, attacks, criticals and skill rolls according to the tables.
I contacted Thom 2 months ago about it, but I am still waiting for a response.
Mind you, the system has potential for RM2,RMFRP,RMU, but it is currently more dedicated to solving things the way that my group prefers, and before I could release it as a commercial (or even free) product, it would require some tweaks to make it more useful for a larger audience.

[Merkir]

A combat tracker is super useful. I don't know that I like phone or tablet better than PC, but whichever you pick you'll lose part of the market...

Actually that's not necessarily the case. I've created a cross-browser, cross-platform combat tracker web app that works on basically anything (PC, iPad, tablet, iPhone/Android smartphones, etc.) using responsive design. I wrote it one weekend a few months ago for our own RMC group. It includes all the combat and crit tables (yes all of them), and I'd be very happy to release it for free. I'd have to strip out the copyright stuff first (tables), then give instructions (and regular expressions) for how you would copy and paste the table data from the PDFs into the javascript. The app actually works without the tables - you can just type in the results - but of course that defeats much of the time saving benefits.

I'll post some screenshots after this.

[Merkir]

Rolemaster (RMC) Combat Minion screen shots

1. Main Screen




2. Combat.
Note 1: Any and all rolls can be overridden by typing over the computer rolls - don't want to take the fun of rolling away from players 
Note 2: The software parses the crit text to extract the wounds for you automatically
Note 3: Can zombies be stunned? GM must always check and change the wound where required




3. Encounter Log (so you can go back and check what happened)




4. Creation/Edit of PCs & NPCs/Creatures




5. Works on Smartphones (though why you'd ever want to is beyond me)

[Cory Magel]

That would still work pretty good for RMSS/FRP.  Where's it at?

[Merkir]

That would still work pretty good for RMSS/FRP.  Where's it at?

I can't give out the public website address without first stripping the copyrighted attack and crit table data (which won't happen today).

Also I've already been sent a private message by ICE about the possibility of releasing it as a commercial program. Personally I have no interest in making money out of it (ask me again if RM gets millions of players ), but it would make sense for ICE to wish to commercialise it with full table data. Something like this has the possibility of increasing RM's popularity by moving it away from the perception of being "chartmaster". Since the software itself is a website, comercialisation could work by adding login/password access of some type.

If nothing happens with ICE, my intention is to release it sans data and let GMs add the data themselves from their (paid for) PDFs. (I've kept the regexes I used to convert a PDF copy/paste straight into javascript form - in fact it's documented in the javascript itself).

[jdale]

The cross-platform connectivity in both of those is a great feature.

Merkir, that looks pretty nice. I also really like the log. Is there a way to load and save characters/groups? E.g. the GM wants to prepare a set of encounters ahead of the session to save time during play. (For ours, I also included the option to specify in the file a random number of creatures of type X, armed with a random weapon from a set of 1-4 options.) I think I also save more information about the characters/monsters than you do. Here are some of my screen shots for comparison:

Main screen. Note that I have the targets, parry amount, etc right on the main screen. Easier to keep things consistent, you only have to ask people for their parry amount once (not both when they attack and defend). If they do the same thing next round, you don't have to change anything. You can also designate groups, and then save or delete entire groups at once (e.g. unload all the monsters, keep all the PCs loaded). I put everything on the same list and then it sorts to show initiative.


Character/monster stats. I included critical reduction and such in the stats so it's automatic. Also, you can have multiple weapons listed to make it easy to switch between them on the main screen (I'm not sure why Sam has a beak...). There's a checkbox to mark whether the program should roll automatically for the character (NPCs, monsters) or not (players).


Condition page. The injury description is a short summary instead of the full critical text. Otherwise pretty obvious.


Combat. There is an "other modifiers" field but mostly you can do everything with the checkboxes. There are automatic links (e.g. checking Rear also checks Flank, checking Surprise also checks Static).

[Cory Magel]

That would still work pretty good for RMSS/FRP.  Where's it at?

I can't give out the public website address without first stripping the copyrighted attack and crit table data (which won't happen today).

I'm really mainly just interested in the information tracking found on the first and last screen shots.  Looking stuff up can be done by the players, but as a GM I love to have something that tracks most that stuff (that being the OB, DB, hits taken, stuns, etc, etc).

[Merkir]

The cross-platform connectivity in both of those is a great feature.

Note that it's only a single site/web app. Responsive design means it adjusts layout to fit the screen size of the underlying platform.

Is there a way to load and save characters/groups? E.g. the GM wants to prepare a set of encounters ahead of the session to save time during play.

Yes, in fact the screenshots I gave above have a database of about 80 PCs/NPCs/creatures behind it (for our campaign). If you look closely you'll see in the search/filter 'key' box the characters "z1".  When I entered the zombies, I gave them all the keyword "z1" for filtering purposes. You can search/filter by either this keyword, or the name itself, as wildcards. Typically you would want to give each creature a keyword like "E1" for encounter 1, or "R3" for room 3, or whatever is suitable for your campaign, grouping the creatures to where they exist within your world.

Regarding attacks, it was my design choice not to store (initially) any attack info. The software saves each char/creature's most recent attack. The next time that char/creature attacks, it automatically restores the last attack info.  The aim was to save the last 5 (or more) attacks and be able to choose from the "most recent attack" list, but that's a TODO. It only stores the most recent attack at present.

[Merkir]

I'm really mainly just interested in the information tracking found on the first and last screen shots.  Looking stuff up can be done by the players, but as a GM I love to have something that tracks most that stuff (that being the OB, DB, hits taken, stuns, etc, etc).

That's one of the main functions of the software, and it automatically does all the end-of-round upkeep adjustments as you can see in one of the screenshots.

The other main function - the other big time saver - is that it looks up all the tables for you. The idea is that nobody has to look up tables if they don't want to.

[Merkir]

Since my software is broader reaching than the topic of this forum, I think I'll start a new topic and post it there in the interests of letting more people see it, and to get more feedback.

Also I'll consider stripping the copyright material and making the software (url) available publicly, but I will wait a while to see if ICE wish to give feedback on that idea first.

[Voriig Kye]

A good way to encourage the use of RM in modern groups is that the smartphones can become a virtual character sheet. Here's a screen of my current version of my system for the character sheet module, which updates automatically and shows the current status.



While some groups may find this idea heretical, I have found that when their characters are not being the center of attention, some players will now use this time to review their spells in their smartphone instead of playing fruit ninja.

But just as Merkir said, the main reason to have this kind of application is to include all charts and spell lists. My application would look quite empty without all the data that is obtained from the PDF's.