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August 15th - App


Lucidicide

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  • 1 month later...

OK, some general points about apps for those who are not super technical, and never had to do app support, just to keep expectations realistic:

More than likely, the iOS (Apple) version will come out first, and will always be more stable. There will probably be an Android version, but it will be unreliable, and for some iterations of provider and make and model, the app will be a horrible crash prone mess. There will likely never be a version for MS or other types of device, because the development cost is multiples of the number of devices you're trying to support, and provding an app for a tiny percent of a tiny percent of users (Windows phone users who also play Malifaux) won't be worth it.

Apple is a dictator, which means they can be a bit evil, but they are able to dictate terms to both phone carriers and app developers. This means that they have a stable environment where apps will usually work in expected ways on iOS devices.

Android is totally wild west. Not only are there multiple models by multiple vendors, but phone carriers are free to take devices that worked fine when handed to them by Motorola, Samsung, or whoever, and mess them up so they can do stuff like shove advertising in your face (I'm looking at you Sprint) which they're not allowed to do with iPhones. If you jailbreak your device God only knows what it'll do.

I hope they make a point of looking at what War Room does well (let players dispense with cards, view multiple armies at once) and dispense with what they do badly (tiered cost structure that seems extortionate for an app, handoff to a less than stellar games developer that made a battery hogging mess of an app, load the app with pretty pictures and design that gets in the way of functionality)

Hopefully, there will be a bug reporting and refund mechanism in place for the Android users. 

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12 minutes ago, ringsnake said:

I hope they make a point of looking at what War Room does well (let players dispense with cards, view multiple armies at once) and dispense with what they do badly (tiered cost structure that seems extortionate for an app, handoff to a less than stellar games developer that made a battery hogging mess of an app, load the app with pretty pictures and design that gets in the way of functionality)

In fairness to the people who made War Room, also consider:

* War Room 2 is a big improvement over the original War Room, in part because the platform they chose improved a lot, as far as performance and battery life goes.

* War Room 2 has improvements over War Room because they redid the game mode and the rules presentation.. And they made the card library searchable by stats and ability/weapon/spell/what-have-you names.

There are reasonable business parameters where the discussion would have boiled down to "For $X thousands of dollars, we can do this and cover both Apple and Android" and Unity ends up being used to deliver at that price.  And then the business had to figure out how to pay for that.

Seeing what the testing chatter for one of the Infinity "stats included" apps looks like, continuing data entry is a big deal on the hidden, business side of these things.  Especially when they do near same day releases.

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...

A touch of thread necromancy here...

I'm excited to see an app coming for Malifaux. But as others have said, I hope Wyrd has learned from the mistakes of War Room.

Pricing - War Room is extremely expensive. I've no objection to paying for the app, but being expected to pay that much is really annoying, especially now that PP isn't including physical cards with their models. Yes, they'll have POD and print-and-play cards, but it's not the same. And I understand that it's a cost-saving measure for them as well, but still...

Software Engine - A decent chunk of the fundamental problems with War Room come from it being built on the Unity Engine. Unity makes a great engine for games, but isn't a good choice for a utility app like War Room.

Honestly, I'm hoping that we end up with something like Guild Ball ManagerInfinity Army (which is mobile-friendly, and is in development as a ported app), or even an upgraded version of CrewFaux. If you'll check those out, you'll find it's possible to get a lot of utility and even damage tracking in something that's very light-weight.

And yes, I'm picky about apps, it's an occupational hazard given that I work in software development.

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6 hours ago, daniello_s said:

From the end of February to August 15th... Small change of plans... ;)

Model kits have been pushed back years and digital games get later dates all the time. I'm guessing they're not doing the programming in house so it could be something there. Maybe they changed partners. 

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4 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

I'm confusing myself now, maybe I jumped to conclusions... My sincere apoligies to you all. In my defence: who the hell posts in an august post in February the following year?! Damned ressers ;) 

I mean that's fair. All good, Ludvig: I was just assuming I was missing something in my caffeine-free state. 

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2 hours ago, Ludvig said:

I'm confusing myself now, maybe I jumped to conclusions... My sincere apoligies to you all. In my defence: who the hell posts in an august post in February the following year?! Damned ressers ;) 

I wasn't going to call you out..   I thought maybe you was just joking.   Guess not.  :D

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Just saw this thread and so happy. I play multiple different wargames and having a convinient app is the best.

 

I have found crewfaux to be amazing but downside is it doesnt have the cards stats  and i doubt I'm going to memorize everything.  Having played alot of warmachine i found that i greatly enjoyed warroom. I realize the danger of my phone dying during a tourney, but to date has never occured. I also have never had any hard feelings of me playing against a person who does have cards and needs to see my phone for questions on stats.

 

The ability to think about warmachine any place and answer any question i may have was aweaome.

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