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Hero Lab on Android

daplunk said:
I've said it before... but imagine a world where I as the DM can see changes happening to my players happening in real time. Changes to their prepared spells, equipped armor and weapons, level up changes, uses of restricted abilities.
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From a security stand point that scares the crap out of me. I don't even let my players current devices onto my internal WiFi network. Let alone allow them to connect to my computer. I see allowing them onto the internal network and to my computer be a huge security hole.

The damage to my real job that could happen if one of my player machines infected my work laptop is really bad. If I didn't notice it and remove it before connected to my companies network could very easily cost me my job.

Yeah no thanks.... :(
 
They wouldn't be connecting to your PC.

You connect to the cloud, they connect to the cloud. You're syncing with a server that setup correctly should have a level of protection against your concerns.
 
daplunk said:
Create a cloud based service that integrates flawlessly with Realm Works and provides support for all of current market leading platforms. Have a web portal that gives players and DMs access to all of the character sheets related to a campaign at any time. Allow full network sync support during live games. Obviously, full phone, tablet, web, PC support is necessary.
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Fine until you end up in a place with no wi-fi (or even just open wi-ifi, which you won't use due to security concerns).
 
There's nothing stopping from creating a service that has an option to output an off-line option. Pdf etc. No single concept will meet the needs of everyone. But that's the point, the RPG market is having a resurgence and technology is taking a huge part in that resurgence. It's going to be more beneficial in the long term to attempt to meet the needs of the larger market share than it is to sit by and think your product is good enough to last through the change.

I pay close attention to a large number of social discussion points related to d&d5e and a huge chunk of them do not even consider hero labs as the first second or third option for character creation.

The question I would be asking is how can that be changed?
 
daplunk said:
I've said it before... but imagine a world where I as the DM can see changes happening to my players happening in real time. Changes to their prepared spells, equipped armor and weapons, level up changes, uses of restricted abilities.
Click to expand...
I have seen you say this before. I am not against HL making improvements and I know for a fact that LW is not against it either. But I read the above and I go that is "cool' and then think how does that really help me DM. Why do I need to see which weapons my players have equipped?

Maybe I am just missing something in this idea is all. How does "live" sync of RW data and HL make my job as a DM easier? Cause I will be honest at this stage its all I care about. How to make my DM job easier. :)

My opinion is LW meds to make a "real" combat tool for Hero Lab so that I can stop using my 3rd part tool. I have told Colen before all the features it would need to compete against my other tool. THAT would make my life easier as I would not need to transfer data from Hero Lab into my 3rd part tool. IMHO make a useful tactical consule with live sync of dice rolls and I will jump aboard the band wagon. :p
 
I see a few benefits. Making my life easier and making my life cooler.

Currently you need to have a copy of your player sheets in hero labs to make use of the encounter manager. Now I don't know about you but I get questions like, what do I need to roll for to attack again? Can I do x with spell y? And I'll be the first to admit that I don't know the answer to every question. Now normally I click the target button to go to the character sheet in hero labs to get them a detailed answer.

But.... This is where I get responses like, oh i dropped that spell and have a new one. Or I leveled up last session, your copy isn't up to date yet. We get around this by having the players come and update hero labs at my station. It works but it's annoying and causes delays at level up time.

Then there's the monk who never runs out of Ki points and the barbarian who seems to have too many rages. The system has built in tracking of these abilities and resets on rests but it's increasing my workload to have to track these all myself. I would prefer to have my players do it.

This is where I picture sync playing out. I see what they see. My entire player base would use hero labs if it worked on their phones or tablets. Half already do use it from laptops. The improvement for me would be significant. When they make a change there could be a little summary tracker showing changes to pcs as it happens letting me audit that the changes are happening as the players say they are while also reducing my need to micro-manage my players.

Now in prep it would also be amazing. If I have a question about a player I just look up the sheet. Right now they take the sheets home. This means I have to ask a question and my players instantly jump to why is he asking that question?

I had a situation recently where a PC was robbed by another PC. It was brilliantly executed and completely matched the story-line. It could have been an NPC. I had to request the player sheet, erase something in secret and watch the alarm bells ring. Yes my players should not be meta gaming, but these are new players to raging. They struggle with that concept. It would be so much cooler if I could remove or even add an item in secret if the players fails the necessary check; then they never know why until they actually notice something is missing. I know some players freak out about others changing their sheets but I think the story-line benefits to the table could be really interesting here. Picture an NPC slipping a little statue into a PC's pocket. Ever since, the enemy always seem to know the location of that person.

I believe these sort of changes are necessary to keep up with the market. I am already reading about DMs who are using Roll20 at the table so that they have all the PC's sheets in the same place. Right now, Hero Labs is at risk of falling behind the competition in a market that is surging forward into using online tools.

Just an opinion obviously. I love hero labs above all other tools I have tried. But my players have been slow to adopt due to things like no android support which I see as a telling sign of what the future may hold.
 
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It's also future proofing.

There are companies already making OS free PCs. The only thing that will load on boot will be a web browser.

Just like companies are working hard to replacing PCs with phones. HPI (aka HP) already have a phone product they are playing around with that will connect to a monitor and keyboard replacing the needing for anyone other than serious gamer's and graphic designers from needing a stand-alone PC.
 
daplunk said:
It's also future proofing.

There are companies already making OS free PCs. The only thing that will load on boot will be a web browser.

Just like companies are working hard to replacing PCs with phones. HPI (aka HP) already have a phone product they are playing around with that will connect to a monitor and keyboard replacing the needing for anyone other than serious gamer's and graphic designers from needing a stand-alone PC.
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Interesting. I know personally, as a person who's family owns multiple devices on various platforms, it would be nice if all the programs worked on all the things. Then again, if that must be accomplished by constant connectivity there are certainly situations in which that would be less than ideal.
 
I think you guys have already shown with Realm Works that constant connectivity is not required. Sure there are extra features available when the connection i available, but the core aspects of the program works without internet. I would challenge that the same thing would be very possible with HL.
 
A simple which would work for those who keep their portfolios in a shared folder (e.g. dropbox) would be a tactical console or style of portfolio where the file for each hero is (or can be) stored separately.

Herolab can monitor the dropbox/shared folder for any changes to the file and then load them automatically (or at least alert the user so he can choose whether to load them or not).

With the correct style of monitoring, it could extend to monitoring a file stored at a HTTP address?
 
I've recommended the party-sync feature before, and it was never well received by any of lone-wolf's employees that chose to respond. Web based got similar responses. Regarding connectivity, The way I see this really working well, is once an HTML5 Character sheet is created, then the full Hero Lab program would work as a web server for those pages, as well as the OPTION to use the cloud for those purposes. This would allow connectivity in places without internet, where all you'd need would be a router to provide a network for the devices to connect to, and Hero Lab w/web server running on the GM's laptop. I only see the need for the cloud as an option for use between sessions, and for online play.
 
In fact, the last response I got on this alluded to them starting on some sort of API for this type of capability they were thinking of rolling out 'later' in 2014...
 
If they're going to redesign it, using a cross-platform toolkit that runs okay to poorly on multiple platforms (like Qt) is not a good idea. There would be a nightmare of integration, testing, debugging, and platform-specific hacks (i.e. future bugs).

A better solution would be to write a platform agnostic API and engine in C++, then write platform specific UI on each desired platform. Android supports C++ through the NDK and Windows C# supports native libraries (I forget what their native toolkit is called). macOS and iOS would be the easiest, since Swift and Obj-C both support C++ library calls out of the box.
 
With the end of Intel's mobile CPU strategy, I guess that the era of inexpensive Windows 10 (Full) tablets is over as well, so I guess if Lone Wolf ever decided to implement a Universal Windows Platform version of Hero Lab it would port over to Android and iOS relatively straightforwardly - assuming Microsoft's plans for Universal Apps don't go off the rails again.
 
They cancelled the "Project Astoria" bridge to get existing Android Apps working on Windows 10 quick-and-dirty, but they still support development tools to make new apps with Windows, Android, and iOS versions relatively easily.
 
Farling said:
Or use Qt which already provides the platform agnostic API in C++ :-)
(I'm not talking QML, just Qt widgets)
Click to expand...
I was referring to an API for the Hero Lab engine. Put all the logic in platform agnostic C++, then access that logic via an API from a thin UI layer in Java, Swift, C#, or whatever produces full featured UIs that integrate well into the OS. The current Hero Lab app looks completely out of place on a Mac or iOS. And cross platform toolkits tend to produce lower quality UIs, which is why I suggested a dedicated UI per platform.
 
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