The dice roller button there would also need to let you choose which weapon to smite with, but that's a really interesting idea. I'll put this on the to-do list. Thanks!
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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
Ipad first impressions
- Thread starter Globetrotter
- Start date
The dice roller button there would also need to let you choose which weapon to smite with, but that's a really interesting idea. I'll put this on the to-do list. Thanks!
I believe this is the algorithm we're using for random number generation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator
I wouldn't use this for encrypting critical data, or for "choosing points in an n-dimensional space" whatever that is, but it should generate numbers that are more than good enough for dice rolls.
Coloring really seems to be a good idea, but timing in my opinion is not. Almost always the pizza service arrives in the middle of a heated battle
Coloring the data would be one way of doing things, but then we don't serve colorblind users or those with visual disabilities as well.
Another way of showing a change might be better, like a small icon beside it (kinda like how we show the * now to indicate "situational bonuses available").
Just played first game last night with the iPad app.
One glaring bit missing:
Nowhere to record in game free form notes
EDIT: Just found the notes button (pen icon) on the Journal
Really want to be able to see all notes at once so either promote the notes field to the main journal record or
{better suggestion} New page for free form notes accessed from main character page and has add new note, edit note and delete note options
One glaring bit missing:
Nowhere to record in game free form notes
EDIT: Just found the notes button (pen icon) on the Journal
Really want to be able to see all notes at once so either promote the notes field to the main journal record or
{better suggestion} New page for free form notes accessed from main character page and has add new note, edit note and delete note options
Thank you. I guess the LCG is good enough for all but the most squeamish people, and it is definitely good enough for me
ShadowChemosh
Well-known member
So my group did game Saturday night and everyone but one player used the iPad app for gaming. Did find a few bugs and I will be sending those in separately. Mostly dealing with the journals.
Good
-All the players agreed the layout was WAY better than HL itself for actual play at the table.
-The die roller over all most liked as it was easy to simply click a button and get the result. Seemed to help speed up the game and I heard less of "25", no wait "24", wait no whats 12 +14, oh yea "26", is that your Final Answer?
-We had iPad2 through iPad4 and the app ran over all smoothly.
-The saving really didn't get noticed or really became a problem during actual game play.
-Players really like how much more "space" at the table there was with the iPads vs Laptops. It was nice to "see" my players as less fiddling with mice and more just playing it seemed. Some of that was the better layout of app vs HL software.
Opportunities
If you are going to have a die roller than it needs some improvements. I read the post about color blind people and that is a good point I had not thought of. My thought here would be nice if this was a option for Color could turn on as I think most gamers would like the color. The ones that don't turn it off.
-Most players agreed they would like a way to say "show" for the weapons they would like listed on the front page. It became very hard for the Monk player with multiple weapons or trying to flurry with weapons and unarmed strike to get the correct values to display. So maybe instead of "equip" their could just be "Show/display" option saying I want this weapon as is to be displayed on the character. Also by having to be forced to equip weapons when the players with Natural attacks had to go in and often "unequipped" something to get the right values to display.
--Example is a Minotaur character we have that has the Powerful Charge ability and when he charges even with a weapon in hand he does not treat that as a secondary attack. So he had to go in unequipped the greataxe to get the value to display correctly.
-The die roller needs a way to visually cue a person to the fact that they just rolled a Natural 20 or Natural 1. These are both important as without knowing its a natural 1 which always misses at higher level its easier for a fighter to read the final value and think they hit. Saying nothing about groups houserules here from fumble rolls to a -10 instead of auto-miss.
-Be really great if it also gave a visual cue for the threat range of a weapon. So a longsword rolls a 19 maybe it could simply say "Threat". My DM software I run says "Threat" and simply rolls the dice/damage again the number of times the critical value is. If it doesn't roll again at least letting a player know its needed is really important.
-Both of the above is needed as it was really easy for players to only look at the "final" total value and forget to look at the actual die roll value.
-The extra damage dice needs to be careful with as this value does NOT get added in again on a critical hit. So now a player has to subtract out the value which just starts making it be harder instead of easier. If the dice where rolled again on a threat then maybe you could also NOT roll any extra dice in damage.
-Another idea was that extra damage dice was always next to the main damage but not added in? So damage was 1d8+4(+2d6) gives 6(+4) so that its up to the player to know when to add in this extra damage. This is also nice for say a Fire weapon hitting a creature immune to fire or with fire resistance as I need to have the player tell me 6 physical and 4 fire damage.
-Leads into the issue with Bane weapons which always show the +2d6 damage. Really this needs to be something to turn ON/OFF otherwise you have to most of the time subtract the amount out of the final damage.
-Their was some confusion with subtracting values out of which value was which. Which was the + bonus and what was the rolled Extra Damage.
-Thoughts where that the adjustments on the "Personal" tab should NOT be displayed with the list of adjustments on the front page. Most of these get used as permanent adjustments or DM adjustments so once on a player can forget about these.
-With the new app players would like "more" things that can be turned ON/OFF not less. Many different combat abilities need to be able to be clicked on. In example Barbarian Superstition which applies specific bonus types to saves. The purpose of the software is to do this kind of math and we would like to be able to simply turn these on now in the app. With this the feeling was almost no paper use would be needed at the game.
Good
-All the players agreed the layout was WAY better than HL itself for actual play at the table.
-The die roller over all most liked as it was easy to simply click a button and get the result. Seemed to help speed up the game and I heard less of "25", no wait "24", wait no whats 12 +14, oh yea "26", is that your Final Answer?
-We had iPad2 through iPad4 and the app ran over all smoothly.
-The saving really didn't get noticed or really became a problem during actual game play.
-Players really like how much more "space" at the table there was with the iPads vs Laptops. It was nice to "see" my players as less fiddling with mice and more just playing it seemed. Some of that was the better layout of app vs HL software.
Opportunities
If you are going to have a die roller than it needs some improvements. I read the post about color blind people and that is a good point I had not thought of. My thought here would be nice if this was a option for Color could turn on as I think most gamers would like the color. The ones that don't turn it off.
-Most players agreed they would like a way to say "show" for the weapons they would like listed on the front page. It became very hard for the Monk player with multiple weapons or trying to flurry with weapons and unarmed strike to get the correct values to display. So maybe instead of "equip" their could just be "Show/display" option saying I want this weapon as is to be displayed on the character. Also by having to be forced to equip weapons when the players with Natural attacks had to go in and often "unequipped" something to get the right values to display.
--Example is a Minotaur character we have that has the Powerful Charge ability and when he charges even with a weapon in hand he does not treat that as a secondary attack. So he had to go in unequipped the greataxe to get the value to display correctly.
-The die roller needs a way to visually cue a person to the fact that they just rolled a Natural 20 or Natural 1. These are both important as without knowing its a natural 1 which always misses at higher level its easier for a fighter to read the final value and think they hit. Saying nothing about groups houserules here from fumble rolls to a -10 instead of auto-miss.
-Be really great if it also gave a visual cue for the threat range of a weapon. So a longsword rolls a 19 maybe it could simply say "Threat". My DM software I run says "Threat" and simply rolls the dice/damage again the number of times the critical value is. If it doesn't roll again at least letting a player know its needed is really important.
-Both of the above is needed as it was really easy for players to only look at the "final" total value and forget to look at the actual die roll value.
-The extra damage dice needs to be careful with as this value does NOT get added in again on a critical hit. So now a player has to subtract out the value which just starts making it be harder instead of easier. If the dice where rolled again on a threat then maybe you could also NOT roll any extra dice in damage.
-Another idea was that extra damage dice was always next to the main damage but not added in? So damage was 1d8+4(+2d6) gives 6(+4) so that its up to the player to know when to add in this extra damage. This is also nice for say a Fire weapon hitting a creature immune to fire or with fire resistance as I need to have the player tell me 6 physical and 4 fire damage.
-Leads into the issue with Bane weapons which always show the +2d6 damage. Really this needs to be something to turn ON/OFF otherwise you have to most of the time subtract the amount out of the final damage.
-Their was some confusion with subtracting values out of which value was which. Which was the + bonus and what was the rolled Extra Damage.
-Thoughts where that the adjustments on the "Personal" tab should NOT be displayed with the list of adjustments on the front page. Most of these get used as permanent adjustments or DM adjustments so once on a player can forget about these.
-With the new app players would like "more" things that can be turned ON/OFF not less. Many different combat abilities need to be able to be clicked on. In example Barbarian Superstition which applies specific bonus types to saves. The purpose of the software is to do this kind of math and we would like to be able to simply turn these on now in the app. With this the feeling was almost no paper use would be needed at the game.
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Globetrotter
Well-known member
Shadow.. a great write up!!!
I was pretty upset that my session last night was cancelled and I can't try out the app for another 2 weeks. Painful.
I was playing the journal on Sunday and found it a little difficult to pool through notes. I think having a note pad would be a great idea. They could model it after the gear tab, but instead of adding rope, you are added in an NPC or a Point of interest, with a editable description to put info.
It ends up being a small wiki on your ipad of things you need to know, while the journal lets you write about the adventure.
I am surprised that your group used the die roller more than dice, did the algorithm seem to be natural?
I was pretty upset that my session last night was cancelled and I can't try out the app for another 2 weeks. Painful.
I was playing the journal on Sunday and found it a little difficult to pool through notes. I think having a note pad would be a great idea. They could model it after the gear tab, but instead of adding rope, you are added in an NPC or a Point of interest, with a editable description to put info.
It ends up being a small wiki on your ipad of things you need to know, while the journal lets you write about the adventure.
I am surprised that your group used the die roller more than dice, did the algorithm seem to be natural?
Silberfuxx
New member
Hallo,
Thank you for this nice tool.
I haven't been able to play with this tool, but i'm playing around on my iPad and follow the discussions very interested.
One question. How do you confirm critical threats?
I saw the suggestion with the color code or something else to schow the treat, but what to do after you rolled a treat.
I would love to have all neccessary rolls shown to an attack when hitting the attack roll dice (after selecting the sort of attack).
I think the information needed would be all attacks (full attack) showing whitch one is a threat (inverse colors, cursive, fat or something else) confirmation roll (perhaps also inverse colors, cursive....) and all the damage the would be applied if they were hits including double or tripple etc. dmg, if there was a threat.
Perhaps schowing all that information in something like a table. As long as i attack the rest of the sheet is not that important, so the table could be quite big and the background of the colums could be colorcoded or the headline could tell something like threat...
Thank you for this nice tool.
I haven't been able to play with this tool, but i'm playing around on my iPad and follow the discussions very interested.
One question. How do you confirm critical threats?
I saw the suggestion with the color code or something else to schow the treat, but what to do after you rolled a treat.
I would love to have all neccessary rolls shown to an attack when hitting the attack roll dice (after selecting the sort of attack).
I think the information needed would be all attacks (full attack) showing whitch one is a threat (inverse colors, cursive, fat or something else) confirmation roll (perhaps also inverse colors, cursive....) and all the damage the would be applied if they were hits including double or tripple etc. dmg, if there was a threat.
Perhaps schowing all that information in something like a table. As long as i attack the rest of the sheet is not that important, so the table could be quite big and the background of the colums could be colorcoded or the headline could tell something like threat...
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So a buddy used his ipad mini last Sunday and HL was universally loved. Everyone was impressed, well done!
I'm running full herolab on my tablet yet was sadly jealous anyway. It did seem easier to use at the table.
Regarding color, please consider it anyway with an accessibility choice of icons as an option. Real estate is bad enough.
Regarding weapons, it would be nice to be able to transfer armor and weapons not needed to the gear section. For full version a well. It's difficult when you have daggers and crap floating to the top when you only have them for occasional use.
I'm running full herolab on my tablet yet was sadly jealous anyway. It did seem easier to use at the table.
Regarding color, please consider it anyway with an accessibility choice of icons as an option. Real estate is bad enough.
Regarding weapons, it would be nice to be able to transfer armor and weapons not needed to the gear section. For full version a well. It's difficult when you have daggers and crap floating to the top when you only have them for occasional use.
Ooh, that's a good idea! We may not be able to do a 3d animation of dice bouncing across the table, though.
A roll log is one of the items on our to-do list - I actually had one in a previous version of the dice roller I implemented, but it was way too clunky, so it got scrapped in favor of the simpler dice roller we have now. It should find its way back in at some point.
Fair... and yeah, I don't need to see a die animation, but I would like to hear that the player rolled (and didn't roll more than once). I can see where some users might not like the sound, so maybe have the audio cue optional if UI permits.
Actually, that raises a good point... those buttons at the bottom of the character sheet. I'd really like to be able to swipe left or right to move between them.
I used the app "in earnest" at our Jade Regent game this last weekend. Worked very well. A couple notes for improvement though.
First, I was doing a lot of full attacks, and at level 13 Hasted I get a lot of stuff like this:
34, 40, 20, 30
10 (1d20)+24; +16 (1d20)+24; +1 (1d20)+19; +16 (1d20)+14
With a sword critting at 15-20, it is SUPER hard to pick crit threats out of this list of +X's. (I'm not really sure why the subsequent rolls have +'s on the d20 value, actually.) And then it's a lot faster to pick up a 'real die' to roll the confirms rather than remember the +whatever and go find wherever the stock dice roller is. At a bare minimum, bold the actual die rolls in there so they're easier to pick out:
34, 40, 20, 30
10 (1d20)+24; +16 (1d20)+24; +1 (1d20)+19; +16 (1d20)+14
But ideally identify crit threats and roll confirms. Maybe columnize the rolls too.
34: 10 (1d20)+24
40: 16 (1d20)+24, crit threat, confirm 41: 16 (1d20)+24
20: 1 (1d20)+19
30: 16 (1d20)+14, crit threat, confirm 21: 2 (1d20)+14
definitely being able to roll damage in this same popup too would be nice.
First, I was doing a lot of full attacks, and at level 13 Hasted I get a lot of stuff like this:
34, 40, 20, 30
10 (1d20)+24; +16 (1d20)+24; +1 (1d20)+19; +16 (1d20)+14
With a sword critting at 15-20, it is SUPER hard to pick crit threats out of this list of +X's. (I'm not really sure why the subsequent rolls have +'s on the d20 value, actually.) And then it's a lot faster to pick up a 'real die' to roll the confirms rather than remember the +whatever and go find wherever the stock dice roller is. At a bare minimum, bold the actual die rolls in there so they're easier to pick out:
34, 40, 20, 30
10 (1d20)+24; +16 (1d20)+24; +1 (1d20)+19; +16 (1d20)+14
But ideally identify crit threats and roll confirms. Maybe columnize the rolls too.
34: 10 (1d20)+24
40: 16 (1d20)+24, crit threat, confirm 41: 16 (1d20)+24
20: 1 (1d20)+19
30: 16 (1d20)+14, crit threat, confirm 21: 2 (1d20)+14
definitely being able to roll damage in this same popup too would be nice.
Globetrotter
Well-known member
Bolding the die is genius!
Thanks, this is a really good idea! What if there was a button on the main form that accessed the notes on the most recent journal entry?
I've put this on the todo list to think about for a future release.
This is another really interesting notes idea, thanks! Maybe a notepad button at the top of the screen?
One thing to keep in mind is that we're not going to do anything too complex with a notes feature; if you're looking for something complex and full-featured, you'd be better looking up a separate note-taking program, or using something like Realm Works on your laptop.
Your mistrust of my dice roller offends me, sir! I look forward to implementing a dice roller report mode where it rolls 10000 times and then sulks until you tell it how well it did.
Can you expand on what you mean by this?
Moving weapons to the gear section is an interesting idea. We definitely want to do something more flexible with weapon ordering, it's just that we want to do it correctly the first time rather than implementing a bad solution and then having to live with it forever.
Re Shadowchemosh's big post, which I'll link here instead of quoting in its entirety:
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=153889&postcount=46
Firstly, thanks for taking the time to type all this up! We appreciate the feedback, and I'm glad everything went so well at the game.
We're definitely planning to make some improvements to the dice roller, such as critical threats, etc. We may not automate everything to the extent your DM software does, but it's definitely important to show "critical threat" and make sure that people know they need to do whatever manually.
Are any damage dice (from Bane, flaming weapon, sneak attack, etc) multiplied as a result of a critical hit? From what I've read none of them are, but I want to double-check that. If that's the case, that would make it easier to correctly roll crit damage in Hero Lab.
Sorry, I'm not quite following here - can you give me an example?
Permanent adjustments shouldn't be getting displayed on the front page, and aren't in my tests. If you're experiencing this, can you email me a saved portfolio?
Superstition gives you situational bonuses, and our prefered method for those is simply to show them as part of the "tap info" for the saving throw. It's likely that a character will often have several conditional bonuses that might apply - isn't it better to show the base score for them and have the user add them up him/herself?
I would think that'd even be quicker than activating an ability from the list, looking at the value, then deactivating it - having to do that also increases the risk that you forget, and end up with a bonus to the save that you shouldn't have.
Thanks again for your feedback!
http://forums.wolflair.com/showpost.php?p=153889&postcount=46
Firstly, thanks for taking the time to type all this up! We appreciate the feedback, and I'm glad everything went so well at the game.
We're definitely planning to make some improvements to the dice roller, such as critical threats, etc. We may not automate everything to the extent your DM software does, but it's definitely important to show "critical threat" and make sure that people know they need to do whatever manually.
Are any damage dice (from Bane, flaming weapon, sneak attack, etc) multiplied as a result of a critical hit? From what I've read none of them are, but I want to double-check that. If that's the case, that would make it easier to correctly roll crit damage in Hero Lab.
Sorry, I'm not quite following here - can you give me an example?
Permanent adjustments shouldn't be getting displayed on the front page, and aren't in my tests. If you're experiencing this, can you email me a saved portfolio?
Superstition gives you situational bonuses, and our prefered method for those is simply to show them as part of the "tap info" for the saving throw. It's likely that a character will often have several conditional bonuses that might apply - isn't it better to show the base score for them and have the user add them up him/herself?
I would think that'd even be quicker than activating an ability from the list, looking at the value, then deactivating it - having to do that also increases the risk that you forget, and end up with a bonus to the save that you shouldn't have.
Thanks again for your feedback!
Globetrotter
Well-known member
My friend beta tested Realm Works, so I am eager to view it once completed.
I am not looking for anything too complex, more like something to jog the memory... I do have word processors on my ipad, so I can always go there. It's pretty easy to switch back and forth.
Your mistrust of my dice roller offends me, sir! I look forward to implementing a dice roller report mode where it rolls 10000 times and then sulks until you tell it how well it did.
Poor little die roller...