iPad In Game Combat Management Use

[Harrek]

So I want to start using hero lab to manage the combats while playing. It's great at tracking spells up, attacks, spells cast, etc. But it does not seem to have a way to keep track of rolled initiative to keep track of combat order. Or a way to do the same for the PCs (who are not "in" the Hero Lap app).

So my question is what are people using on their iPads with Hero Lab in order to completely manage the combat? Or am I missing some functionality Hero Lab on the iPad has that I am missing?

[Farling]

Oops, answered for the desktop version.

I guess the iPad version doesn't have the tactical console?

Try Combat Manager app for that sort of thing.

[Azhrei]

Correct, no TC on the iPad.

I don't have a good automated manager for that on iPad. I tried a bunch of apps (DM Master, I think was one of them) but they each had limitations in how they managed initiative.

Heh, maybe it's time to write an iOS app.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Azhrei

I don't have a good automated manager for that on iPad.

Have you tried the "Combat Manager" app?

[Azhrei]

You mean the one that costs $5 and has a rating of 2.2 (out of 5 stars)? No, I haven't. (Of course, it only has 11 ratings so far, so I don't consider that a statistically significant sampling size, but it's all I've got.)

I've been learning Swift via the Playgrounds app and an online video from Stanford University (the videos of an instructor teaching Swift Programming are pretty good up to the third week of class). But Swift v4 is out and most of the resources are outdated. I've found the biggest problem isn't learning Swift -- it's a pretty easy language to get into - the problem is that almost all of the UI libraries are in Objective-C and there's not much in the way of documentation for using those libraries from Swift.

Still, how tough could it be? A list of combatants with initiative and Dev modifiers, an option to "advance" the initiative with an "undo" feature so I can go back in time , and an option to add an effect with a particular duration (so that spells and such can be tracked). Added bonus would be the ability to import a portfolio (should be pretty easy given that it's just a zip file and there are only two fields needed for each PC).

I've got some time in June; we'll see what I come up with. Worst case, there will be a GitHub repo with the code that other people can use to learn basic Swift.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Azhrei

You mean the one that costs $5 and has a rating of 2.2 (out of 5 stars)? No, I haven't. (Of course, it only has 11 ratings so far, so I don't consider that a statistically significant sampling size, but it's all I've got.)

I only the PC version. The android version has a 4.5 rating from 89 people :-)

Have fun with Swift, the latest of a long stream of programming language that is hailed as the ultimate language ;-)