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Hero Lab on Android

My last few sessions i have been using Hero Lab on my Motorola Xoom via Microsoft RDesktop connecting to a background session on my PC back home. It works well, and with multiple sessions set up, each person at the table can have their own copy of hero lab running. Not as great as a native app, but it covers my needs for now. So great when towards the beginning of the first session with this setup, I took multiple ability drains, ability damage, and level damage. Hero Lab made dealing with that a breeze - would have sucked to have to do all those mods manually on a paper sheet.
 
Given the market is currently 4 to 1 in favour over Android vs iOS and the trend is away from iOS, I wonder about the logic of supporting iOS over Android. The decision may have made sense a couple of years back, in all likelihood it probably did. But times have changed and Android is owning the table/phone space.

But as a wise man one observed "It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future." Who said it first and the actual words used is up for debate (it seems), but you get my point :-)

Colen, the Lead Developer for Hero Lab, actually talked about the reasoning for going with iPad first on a Know Direction podcast. You should check it out.
 
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Hi

I'm Lee of Dysfunctional Apps and creator of PCGen Character Sheet Reader, I am currently working on adding Hero Lab support to my Android app, and have had a couple of email conversations with Liz regarding this.

As dtyrant reported I have made some progress, however with weapons, there is insufficient information in the .xml to do what I need to do, this has been highlighted to Colen (via Liz), and I believe a fix to this is in the works, but how soon this will appear I don't know, as the team appears to be busy prepping for Gen Con.

I have a full-time job and family, so I only get to work on the app in my free time (which isn't always much), and I need to sort out anything that crops up with the app (bugs/tweaks etc...) as well as adding the Hero Lab XML reader, although I cannot promise how quickly Hero Lab support will appear in my app, I can confirm that it is coming.

If you have any questions/suggestions please contact dysfunctional.apps@gmail.com

Regards

Lee
 
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Colen, the Lead Developer for Hero Lab, actually talked about the reasoning for going with iPad first on a Know Direction podcast. You should check it out.

And in that podcast, when he starts talking about android development, he makes the same planning mistake many developers do. "Its going to take a LOT of work", and the conclusion from that is that we won't start it until we know we'll have enough time to complete it. If that decision remains, and Paizo continues to create new content, they will never even get started on the android version. Knowing a project is going to take a lot of work should be a reason to start it sooner, not delay it to later.
 
Actually, Fuzzy, it's not that simple. When doing any project you have to consider the cost vs benefits. Does it make more sense to produce a feature or app that will take 6 months, or does it make more sense to do smaller projects tiger that 6 months. It always has to a risk reward scenario. The argument for doing HeroLab for android over doing data package work has to be that more customers will appreciate the former, or that it means greater potential profits. That's assuming you have to pick one or the other, which it sounds like they might.
 
Actually, Fuzzy, it's not that simple. When doing any project you have to consider the cost vs benefits. Does it make more sense to produce a feature or app that will take 6 months, or does it make more sense to do smaller projects tiger that 6 months. It always has to a risk reward scenario. The argument for doing HeroLab for android over doing data package work has to be that more customers will appreciate the former, or that it means greater potential profits. That's assuming you have to pick one or the other, which it sounds like they might.

Right, that makes sense to consider IF you are going to do a project or not. That is not the case here. They have already (supposedly) decided that yes, they ARE going to make an android version, but are pushing off actually starting it because it will take too long. So either they genuinely DO want to make an android version, but are procrastinating starting, or they have no intention of doing so and are just stringing along enough of the community to discourage someone else making a competing product that will.
 
We have not officially announced our plans around support for other platforms. When we have something to share, we'll share it on our website and in our newsletter. Until then, any statement on what we're doing next is only a rumor.
 
Hi

I'm Lee of Dysfunctional Apps and creator of PCGen Character Sheet Reader, I am currently working on adding Hero Lab support to my Android app, and have had a couple of email conversations with Liz regarding this.

As dtyrant reported I have made some progress, however with weapons, there is insufficient information in the .xml to do what I need to do, this has been highlighted to Colen (via Liz), and I believe a fix to this is in the works, but how soon this will appear I don't know, as the team appears to be busy prepping for Gen Con.

I have a full-time job and family, so I only get to work on the app in my free time (which isn't always much), and I need to sort out anything that crops up with the app (bugs/tweaks etc...) as well as adding the Hero Lab XML reader, although I cannot promise how quickly Hero Lab support will appear in my app, I can confirm that it is coming.

If you have any questions/suggestions please contact dysfunctional.apps@gmail.com

Regards

Lee

looks like the race is on to get an android app out on the market then :)

I have made a heap of progress on mine, and while at this stage I'm not working on something as dynamic or as many options as what Lee is working on I hope to have a release ready by the end of the week so watch this space.
 
looks like the race is on to get an android app out on the market then :)

I have made a heap of progress on mine, and while at this stage I'm not working on something as dynamic or as many options as what Lee is working on I hope to have a release ready by the end of the week so watch this space.

Hi Philderbeast, I hope your app is going well. When I released my app, I got a lot of emails asking for Hero Lab support so there is definitely demand for it.
 
I have made a thread over in the user projects area for feedback so we can keep this as a we want the real thing thread as well :)
 
Looking for Beta testers of the latest version of the apps, if you are interested please join this community:

https://plus.google.com/communities/115843119435790454610

I will try to approve requests to join within 24hrs

EDIT: Apologies if you tried to join and couldn't, when I set it up it asked if I wanted to hide it from searches, I thought if a gave you the link it would be ok, I didn't realise it would make it invite only, it's been changed so you can ask to join now.
 
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scratch all that.

I have just published version 1.0 of my app to Google Play and it should come available in the next few hours

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.philderbeast.herolabportfolioviewer

edit: its live on the play store now

Can you please also add it to the Amazon Store? My Kindle fire can only run Android Apps which either are on the Amazon Store or where I have the APK file. I cannot access Google Play with the Kindle (yes, stupid policy of Amazon, I know...).

Thanks!
 
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