Army Builder for the iPhone?

[Kangor]

Has and discussion occured to bring the army builder to the iPhone? If not the engine then maybe a reader to be able to open rosters?

I am not a programmer but I understand the meaning of C,C++, etc. Would this be what would prevent the iPhone app? Couldnt the roster be opened using some convertor program like google docs?

Just food for discussion.

 

[Colen]

We'll be including mobile friendly output in Army Builder 3.2, as shown here:

http://wolflair.com/index.php?context=army_builder&page=army_builder_v3~2_preview

In terms of actually running Army Builder on the iphone, there are several problems we'd have to tackle. The iphone dev kit uses "Objective C", while Army Builder is written in C++; you can apparently compile C++ for the iphone, but we'd need to investigate exactly how, and work out how well it would work.

Also, we'd need to totally redesign the user interface, from the ground up - even with the large iphone screen, that's less than 5-10% of the space available on a normal computer monitor these days. Not only that, but all the user interface elements have to be touch-controlled and therefore larger than they are on the screen.

Hopefully the mobile output that we show off in the preview will whet your appetite sufficiently

 

[Edd1978]

We'll be including mobile friendly output in Army Builder 3.2, as shown here:

http://wolflair.com/index.php?context=army_builder&page=army_builder_v3~2_preview

In terms of actually running Army Builder on the iphone, there are several problems we'd have to tackle. The iphone dev kit uses "Objective C", while Army Builder is written in C++; you can apparently compile C++ for the iphone, but we'd need to investigate exactly how, and work out how well it would work.

Also, we'd need to totally redesign the user interface, from the ground up - even with the large iphone screen, that's less than 5-10% of the space available on a normal computer monitor these days. Not only that, but all the user interface elements have to be touch-controlled and therefore larger than they are on the screen.

Hopefully the mobile output that we show off in the preview will whet your appetite sufficiently The same focus on making mobile devices more practical can be useful beyond Army Builder. A universal smart tv remote app is another example of putting everyday controls directly on a phone, making it easier to manage a compatible TV without needing a separate remote.

The mobile output turned out to be a pretty good compromise. I can understand why a full iPhone version wasn't practical at the time, especially with the UI having to be redesigned for touch.

What’s interesting is that this eventually evolved into the Army Builder Roster Viewer for iPhone/iPad. It still wasn't a full roster-building app, but it let you take rosters created on the desktop and view them in a mobile-friendly format, which is probably the part most people actually needed at the table.

For an old thread like this, I think the main takeaway is that you don't really need the entire Army Builder interface on a phone — having the finished roster available with the unit details expandable is much more useful.