# iPhone App - Power Card Viewer



## wireframe (Sep 16, 2008)

I'm a *huge* fan of the fan created printable power cards, but printing these things out is:

* fairly expensive if you do decent card stock.
* makes baby bunnies cry because you're chopping down their trees.

The iPhone is almost a perfect match for the size of these power cards, so I've been working on an iPhone application for searching and displaying power card stats.

Anyone interested?


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## keterys (Sep 16, 2008)

Yeah, sounds cool


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## guysorrow (Sep 16, 2008)

i would be very interested.


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## Kzach (Sep 16, 2008)

Man, between this and Mach Dice, it's time I got an iPhone


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## Enforcer (Sep 16, 2008)

Wow, yeah! Totally interested.


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## Samadhi (Sep 16, 2008)

Yes please!!!


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## zlorf (Sep 16, 2008)

Friend just got his iphone, so it would be good.

You should also be able to view your powers in a condensed view and also touch the powers once you use them so they turn red or disappear until the powers are reset)
You would need a short rest and extended rest reset.  Maybe healing surges can be incorporated as well and magic items 

Cheers
Z


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## Ghaerdon Fain (Sep 16, 2008)

/nod ...

question: copyright issues?


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## cerberus2112 (Sep 16, 2008)

Chalk me up as interested too.


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## Witchfinder General (Sep 17, 2008)

Nice! I've been thinking about this very thing as an excuse to learn how to develop for the iPhone.


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## skaveng3r (Sep 17, 2008)

I like Zlorf's idea, and would add that it might be nice to have an option of entering some basic stats (but not manditory) and then filling in some of the data, so you would see +5 vs AC rather than Str vs AC.

other than copyright issues, i would worry about power drain due to keeping the phone on all the time, and the annoyance of turning it on every few min, after it's auto-off'd, to check something.

~s


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## wireframe (Sep 22, 2008)

Thank you all for your responses.  I wanted to post a follow up and let you all know that things are progressing well.

It's definitely still early, but you can check out the inprogress work at:
DnD 4e Power Cards Index

If any developers are interested, all of the code is open source and contributions would be appreciated!
wireframe's power-card-viewer at master — GitHub


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## keterys (Sep 22, 2008)

Nice! Works great so far.


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## Orcus Porkus (Sep 22, 2008)

awesome, please continue


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## Traveon Wyvernspur (Sep 22, 2008)

This is awesome. So you just go to the webpage to use it, or is this an actual application that you can download somewhere?


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## wireframe (Sep 22, 2008)

Traveon,
It's a plain old webapp.  It's intended for use with an iPhone, but it works just fine with any web browser.

A *native* iPhone app may be unique, but it's not something I'm interested in at this time.


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## Enforcer (Sep 22, 2008)

I can't speak for the developer, of course, but the webpage is a preview for the iPhone app. For an iPhone app to be made available, it must be approved by Apple first.


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## Traveon Wyvernspur (Sep 22, 2008)

Thanks, I got it now. I put a direct link to it on my iPhone just a moment ago. It works great. Thanks for all the hard work, it's very nice looking as well.


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## Enforcer (Sep 22, 2008)

Ah, clearly I misunderstood the intentions of the developer. Still, it's very cool and useful!


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## guysorrow (Sep 22, 2008)

this is awsome! now i just need to find a web based character sheet (or make my own web character page) that's formatted for the iphone...


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## sidonunspa (Sep 22, 2008)

OMG this rocks

Please put in the SwordMage powers... please!


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## Sensai (Sep 22, 2008)

Oh man.  This is awesome.

Thanks so much!  I'm bookmarking right now.


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## Alphastream (Sep 23, 2008)

Very cool as is. I liked some of the posters' ideas, such as an app that would allow you to mark the ones you have available, then temporarily set them as used. It would be great to use this at the table.


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## taza (Sep 23, 2008)

This has to be the best thing to ever happen to my iPhone.  I've been _craving_ dnd4e apps on my phone.  I've fantasized about a plethora of incredibly useful tools - everything from power cards to enemy stats, character sheets, reference sheets... oh, man now I'm foaming at the mouth.

Anyway, thank you so much for this!  You said you were still working on it, but roughly how complete is it in regards to content?

And in case you're taking feature requests... the search is wonderful, but from a usability aspect, having a button to change the sort order (from power level to say, alphabetically, and back again) would help find things quicker.  That way you could easily find powers based on class/power name, and it would be more single-thumb friendly than searching by name.

Again, simply awesome app.  Thanks!!


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## emass (Sep 25, 2008)

wireframe said:


> Traveon,
> It's a plain old webapp.  It's intended for use with an iPhone, but it works just fine with any web browser.




That's BRILLIANT!
The only issue I'm having is with IE... while on Firefox the webapp works like a charm, on IE7 it has lots of impagination/functionality issues


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## Hadrian the Builder (Sep 25, 2008)

Is there anything the community can do to help speed this along? Perhaps typing up powers so you can cut and paste?

Has anyone tried viewing the Compendium powers via iPhone? how is it?


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## wireframe (Sep 25, 2008)

@emass,
sorry to hear that it doesn't work in IE.  Since it's intended as an iPhone app, i'm not too worried about it right now.  It would be nice to support other browsers though, but for now I would recommend downloading firefox.

@Hadrian,
This entire application is opensource, so if there are things that people would like to enhance, I'd say go for it.  for right now, i'm focusing on polishing the core user experience, and I'll be working on the search functionality for a bit.

Next up is hopefully user entered powers and adding the ability to create your own "power card deck" with just the powers your character uses.


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## keterys (Sep 25, 2008)

wireframe said:


> Next up is hopefully user entered powers and adding the ability to create your own "power card deck" with just the powers your character uses.




Fantastic. Every encouragement I can heap on you in getting this done


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## darjr (Sep 26, 2008)

This is cool.

I've been interested in iPhone dev but just haven't crossed the right idea/project.... I may have to tinker.


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## Hawke (Sep 26, 2008)

I'm in. I prolly wouldn't pay money for anything like that though... anything we can do to help?


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## erja (Sep 27, 2008)

Do apps like these work on the ipod Touch or just iPhone?


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## knightofround (Sep 28, 2008)

It works on my iTouch; they use the same software as iPhone.

I'm loving this app so much its unhealthy. Care to post a tutorial about how to add powers? I'm unfamiliar with the code, but I wouldn't mind putting in some time to add more stuff to it *cough*swordmage*cough* 

My one beef with it is the "sliding" animation that goes from right to left. I know its in the iPhone style but over the web it looks really choppy; personally I'd rather have the transitions between powers quicker.


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## wireframe (Sep 28, 2008)

user contribution isn't quite ready, but I'll be sure to let you know when it's ready.  I'd *love* to see the powers for swordmage and barbarians make it into the app.

The sliding animation will be *much* improved with some updates that I'm working on.  The choppy behavior is because i'm listing far too many powers at once.  I'm going to make the app more performant by using AJAX calls to only load the powers you're viewing when you need them.

Thanks again for the feedback!


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## erja (Sep 28, 2008)

Awesome - getting an ipod Touch soon; super excited about the app!  Once it's up and available for user contribution I'd love to help out with simple data entry.


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## idolminds (Sep 29, 2008)

This is really great! Is there any way to use it offline on the PC? Saving the page and opening the file makes it...not right.


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## knightofround (Oct 9, 2008)

Actually I don't know if this is by design or by accident, but I can use the site offline. Basically what I do is load up the power cards website in my iTouch's browser where I have wireless access. Then I turn off the iTouch and then I go wherever I'm gaming that doesn't have wireless. I turn back on the iTouch and the entire power card site still works even though I'm not connected to the internet.

However, if the power cards website is not the last thing I access before going offline, or if I try to access another website while I'm offline, I lose the power card site entirely. (And I have to dip back into a wireless access area to get it back)


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## darjr (Oct 9, 2008)

I have not tried that... cool.

Have you tried to open it as a 'new' page and then kept that? I think I'll just do that...


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## Bodhiwolff (Oct 9, 2008)

While I'm not interested in the iPhone aspects of this, I am very interested in the open-source aspects of this, and therefore interested in seeing if this can be applied to the upcoming Android phones.

I checked, and the website can be viewed using Chrome, which means (hopefully) that the site will be viewable using the Android phone, and thus the various Android devices will be able to utilize it.

Which means that developers ...
a) wouldn't have to go through any mediators or hoops to get approval  (i.e. the Apple Store)

b) could have their apps talk to other apps and exchange information ... such as having a dice-roller app feed off the power card currently viewed, read variables from a character sheet app, and spit out a finalized damage result.  (which is what Android's "Apps without Borders" is all about)

I think that this is a good first step, and a good proof of concept, and I appreciate what you're doing.  I also think that there is a future in other apps out there, which (due to Apple's perspectives) might not be on the iPhone, but that doesn't mean that such apps won't exist or can't exist.

Your work provides a good proof-of-concept for that vision to start from.


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## Ghaerdon Fain (Oct 10, 2008)

Is there any movement on this? Especially with a character sheet / generator?


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## gergLeft (Dec 30, 2008)

I'm going to be jumping in to help on this soon (probably within the next week or so), and if there isn't a functionality to allow users to enter power cards yet, I think that'll be my first task as that needs to get going so that we can have a complete database quickly.


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## lymang (Jan 3, 2009)

wireframe said:


> Thank you all for your responses.  I wanted to post a follow up and let you all know that things are progressing well.
> 
> It's definitely still early, but you can check out the inprogress work at:
> DnD 4e Power Cards Index
> ...




I spoke with a friend here at the gaming table, both of us would pay a nominal fee for this application without a problem.  Very nice beginning, as well.


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## killeropus (Jan 16, 2009)

*Edit*

I love the look and would definately fork over the coin for a app such as that.  However, being a simpleton, I hate having to do the math for each card.  I'd like them to be editable so I can have my total attack and damage, any special notes and such.  Nothing slows down a game more than having to do the math ...you power gaming 3.5'ers know what I'm talking about. 

I've been doing my own cards using power point and having everything said and done so all I have to do is roll the dice.  That is what I really want.


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## shamsael (Jan 18, 2009)

wireframe said:


> I'm a *huge* fan of the fan created printable power cards, but printing these things out is:
> 
> * fairly expensive if you do decent card stock.
> * makes baby bunnies cry because you're chopping down their trees.
> ...




If you don't mind, I think I'm going to try to port this to the Nintendo DS...


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## thrillba (Apr 22, 2009)

*HELP!!!  - I want to*

Let me know if you need any help whatsoever.  I have the full version of adobe acrobat and every book in full pdf except the arcane power so I can pull info very quickly and pop it into a word doc.  I also have the iphone so as far as testing goes just let me know what I need to try.  Also what is the probability of the new classes getting in here.  Like I said I will help any way that I can to make this a better DB.  Sorry about that my email is darkoverlordtanthalas@gmail.com


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## Garthanos (Apr 22, 2009)

wireframe said:


> I'm a *huge* fan of the fan created printable power cards, but printing these things out is:
> 
> * fairly expensive if you do decent card stock.
> * makes baby bunnies cry because you're chopping down their trees.
> ...




My itouch is itching for it.. right now though I find myself wanting to insert custom flavor text and similar things.


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## Zaxnyd (Oct 20, 2009)

*This app is awesome*

I registered just so I could say how awesome I think both you and the app are.  Where did you get the data from?  Did you enter it yourself?


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## JadeForlorn (Oct 22, 2009)

*Yes please!*

This is excellent. If it were an actual app I would indeed pay a small fee to access it if it had the abilities that everyone else is talking about. Let me pick which powers are in my repertoire and then check them if they've been used. I would really love this app as a player.


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## Garthanos (Oct 22, 2009)

Well I am not certain about this.. I consider my account somewhat valuable and If I type in the name password I am effectively sharing it with the person who wrote the program... not sure what they could do with it... but I am being a nervous nelly.


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