Hero Lab on Android

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I was in no way trying to get Hero Lab to sync to the cloud, I see no point in that. My intentions were to have the ability to view and manipulate profiles via a web server running within hero lab on a PC. As described, this is not porting anything over to anything else, it is effectively rendering the same data to a different target. Then, you could have a single PC/laptop running HL, with profiles for all party members, and each member could use their portable device, regardless of OS, to connect to it and not just display the data, but manipulate it as well (at least the ability to add/set adjustments and conditions).

If that is all you want then its already available. The app your looking for is "Splashtop" and runs on all tablet OS. It lets you take control of your desktop remotely and would allow you full access to any program including Hero Lab.

Its what I used before the iOS app and it worked great. I heard splashtop is even free on Droids. My players even still use it for leveling their characters and stuff at a game because they no longer bring their laptops. My brother uses it on his droid phone all the time to do "test builds" while at work on a construction site.

[Fuzzy]

I have used splashtop for it (have used it often like your brother at work), the problem being the single-user nature of it. It if could actually interact with the data directly, then multiple users could interact with the same instance, allowing all the characters to be in a single profile. This would allow full use of the tactical console.

The other option here is if there was a auto-save, auto-load feature. If, whenever a portfolio was altered, it created a live save file. this, combined with an added ability to open up multiple profiles at a time, and you'd be able to have the GM have all player portfolios open plus the NPC portfolio. The Players, in there own instance of HL, could have just their own character's portfolio open (including their player, plus any cohorts/familiars/etc that they control). If whenever a change is made on one instance, the live save is updated, then the other instances would see the file status update, and reopen. This would provide a 'shared' experience, and not add a lot to the actual product, code wise. This biggest thing would be some way to open more than one portfolio at a time. Simply monitoring a file for changes is very simple, even in 'old code'.

[Colen]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I was in no way trying to get Hero Lab to sync to the cloud, I see no point in that. My intentions were to have the ability to view and manipulate profiles via a web server running within hero lab on a PC. As described, this is not porting anything over to anything else, it is effectively rendering the same data to a different target. Then, you could have a single PC/laptop running HL, with profiles for all party members, and each member could use their portable device, regardless of OS, to connect to it and not just display the data, but manipulate it as well (at least the ability to add/set adjustments and conditions).

Ah! That's an entirely different kettle of fish.

We don't have any specific plans for this feature right now, but we have something planned for later this year that could be the first steps towards something like this. Hopefully we'll be able to share more in the upcoming months!

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Colen

Ah! That's an entirely different kettle of fish.

We don't have any specific plans for this feature right now, but we have something planned for later this year that could be the first steps towards something like this. Hopefully we'll be able to share more in the upcoming months!

Honestly, the best option (at least in my view) is not so much the web page view, but some sort of API (XML Service perhaps) that could access and manipulate the same options that can be done from the UI. I can imagine the power this could provide to a VTT, by being able to link directly to Hero Lab's highly evolved math, scripting and rules library.

[Colen]

That would be useful indeed, wouldn't it

[Mathizsias]

Just came here to vouch for an Android Pathfinder sheet app, my DND grp have been craving for it. We're not in the US and unlike the US, I tend to see Android tablets more often..

[Mathizsias]

+1 for Android!

+5 for the 5 people in my grp now working with pnp or RDP!

Even and Android HL Sheet App only, anytime soon would bring a world of convenience! Wish you would finetune the iPad sheetapp, build the Android/MS sheetapp, build the entire HL suite for iPad, etc, etc..

Why is there no similar sheet app for Windows? The iPad version can deal with the extended packages, while the 'demo' can't do that.

[Philderbeast]

In my frustration over this i have started working on an android app that will let me view my character(s) on my android tablet with out having to save a pdf of the character sheet.

I won't make any promises on functionality or eta at this stage, but I do have a working implementation to open the portfolio inside and get access to the characters inside it, I'm currently working on an interface to pick a character and display a character sheet for it.

I'm not planning on a massive amount of functionality in this app (so please don't expect much more then what i have listed above) since I have no intention of trying to work out how wolflair stores there data outside of the portfolio files, but with a but of luck this might provide a bit of a stop gap for us android users until we get a true herolab for android.

I will keep you posted with updates and hopefully I will have something to show people in the coming weeks but no promises on that one.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Philderbeast

In my frustration over this i have started working on an android app that will let me view my character(s) on my android tablet with out having to save a pdf of the character sheet.

I won't make any promises on functionality or eta at this stage, but I do have a working implementation to open the portfolio inside and get access to the characters inside it, I'm currently working on an interface to pick a character and display a character sheet for it.

I'm not planning on a massive amount of functionality in this app (so please don't expect much more then what i have listed above) since I have no intention of trying to work out how wolflair stores there data outside of the portfolio files, but with a but of luck this might provide a bit of a stop gap for us android users until we get a true herolab for android.

I will keep you posted with updates and hopefully I will have something to show people in the coming weeks but no promises on that one.

The problem with doing this, as far as I can tell, is the portfolio information just has the picks, it doesn't include the calculated results. For that, you need to process all the scripts. That's a LOT of work, and is likely the major part of the hero lab code.

[Colen]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

The problem with doing this, as far as I can tell, is the portfolio information just has the picks, it doesn't include the calculated results. For that, you need to process all the scripts. That's a LOT of work, and is likely the major part of the hero lab code.

If Philderbeast is basing the tool on Hero Lab's saved portfolio format, we actually include the calculated results in an XML file with each saved portfolio, which would be ideal for using in some sort of character sheet viewer. You can check the "Reading Hero Lab saved portfolios" section of the manual for more information.