Frames, JFrames, and the #test Menace

Hey all,

After a day of working on it, I got this to show:

What does this mean?  I now have frames!  Nothing is inside them at the moment because I'm just testing frames from a .GEX file.  In here I'm going to put tabs, and inside said tabs I'm putting the data you want to see, and I mean your game data of course!

I have another day of code with my only other plan to be a long bike ride.  Until then, feel free to make a bizarre background out of my screen shot if you have nothing better to do.  As gamers, I hope you do have something better to do, otherwise we have no plots!

ZBott

After thought: What other games are people looking to have a Grapevine like program for?  I know the Fate system has someone working on an app for it, and there is one for Legends of the 5 Rings, but what do you want, personally?  Leave the game you want to see Grapevine-ified in the comments below.

Update!

I got a little farther, so I wanted to post showing what it looks like with tabs:

I'm having some weird error drawing in the correct data, but I'll be fixing that, and the sizing issue soon.  I might just skip ahead a little and make it where the areas that should have data (instead of 'null') will be a text field with the correct data inside.  -ZBott

Fun with Tabs

Hey all,

I know some people have been keeping tabs on me (Puns!), so I want to show what I have so far.  Nothing amazing, but it does have promise.  This is the very rough stage of making an entire GEX file load up all it's pertinent data into tabs.

Problems I'm working out: It's full of odd junk data (#text:  is half of my tabs!), it doesn't layer quite right so the traits aren't nesting under the character sheet, and is quite limited on how far it can grow.  All this will be fixed soon, it's all just stupid bugs that need smacking.

I wanted to go on to match the full image length, but this post is mostly a rush to have it out this week sort of deal, and not leave people wondering where I am when I promised to get back to work.

ZBott

PS: Still exceedingly poor.  I couldn't go to Gen Con this year, though I don't exactly have a lot to show if I went.  Even going there as a spectator is wildly out of my price range.  I hope to go next year, though, and to many more showcasing a working, in-phone version of the app.

Question to the Vampire: The Masquerade Crowd

Hey all,

Odd problem has been causing me some grief, and I realized I might not need to worry about it.  How many use the Aura field for both level and name?  Or even at all?  If it's used it make XML all made because of duplicate attributes.

It looks like this for those who don't know what I mean.

If it's important to games, I'll make sure it flows over nicely, but otherwise for each thing I don't need to worry about the better off I am.

ZBott

August Returns

Hey all,

All this summer till now I've been exceedingly busy, but now I have some more time on my plate to work on the program.  Each week I'll be trying to get at least one post out covering my progress toward Applet Grapevine, the test bed for all things going into the final app.

I did a little coding today:

This is a more sophisticated used of XML compared to last time, where I'm choosing what I pull instead of just dumping everything into the terminal.  Still pretty much just spitting out data like I did months ago, however it's using pure XML instead of me pulling it out and turning it into a text string.

For now my plan is to use just XML for the data, and then finding a way to have users generate rule sets for games.  This will eventually lead to there being 3 files related to the game: The game's data itself, the official rule set, and then house rules addendum file.  I know most of this is reiterating everything, sorry if it seems redundant.

With my next post I hope to have things back to a graphical user interface for people, instead of dry text.

ZBott out

New Poll!

Power Poll, Extend!

Enough Dragon Ball references.  To the right of the dodelledo (-->) is a new poll, asking what sort of features you, gentile readers need the most.

To the left (<--) is a +1 button if you are so inclined.  Please let others know if you think this project is hot, or at least worth talking about.

Thanks to all people reading up, I hope to not have to do more blog maintenance for a while now.

ZBott out!

Web Based Options

Hey all,

Still alive, still kicking, still reading up on stuff.  I finally got my book on XML, and working on streamlining the back end so it's worth, well, stuff.  It's given me several new options that will be alot, LOT easier to work with versus the way I was planning on making it.  Literally a quarter of the typing needs to be done with XML parsing over the previous way.

In the pursuit of this info, though, I came across a job offer looking for a JavaScript guy, which at some point I studied.  While brushing up on my 'Script, I realized if there might be another option, hinting back at the web-based solution for Mobile Grapevine.  Still the same great service, and making the rules set something to be downloaded instead of hard coded, but I can program it once for all systems (iOS, Android, WebOS, even the dreaded MS8!) and get the same functionality.  The problem then becomes you need to always be connected.  I might be able to even work around that given enough time.  A second problem is that JavaScript is not related to Java (JavaScript came out a little after Java and tried to suck in programmers with a confusing name), so everything I worked on so far would have to be completely redone.

Still looking into it while I work on XML parsing for Java.  I'll hopefully get some screen shots by the end of next month and work toward multiple windows in one applet by September.  The pole shows people want tabs over a single window, so I WILL have that functionality, but it comes after I get the back end working correctly.

ZBott out!

PS: Again, whoever clicked the ad: Thank you!  Each click gives me on average $1.50 lately, and for each $10 in my AdSense account, I can transfer over to my bank, and then buy me the foods.  I'd click on them, myself, but it's against my contract.

DOMinating

Hey all,

Working on parsers for XML still, and while it's definitely the right track, I wish I started down this one months ago.  I've gotten my project to spit out some data now, scrubbed all on it's own!

On the left is the scrubbed data with headers letting me know where it's attached to, the right is the original GEX in Notepad.  Easier to ready, but nowhere where I need it to be.

My idea is to get it into a tree, like the ones used for file structures, then break those into pieces.  A GEX file then can transport out 50 characters, and when loaded into Mobile Grape Vine it will turn them into 50 separate windows with the character data in the correct field for the venue it's part of.  Getting close, more work needed.

My productivity might hit zero this summer.  I'm extremely strapped for cash, and time researching and at the computer is looking like it's going to be sacked to do things like work.  Rent, daycare, electricity, the usual woes, damnable money.

ZBott out.

The XML Menace!

Hey all,

Interesting update, or at least I hope so for people curious on where I hope to be going with this project in the long run.  So I've talked about a bit the sort of end goal, where version 1 will be at, so here goes a bit of explanation:

Mobile Grapevine isn't about just supporting old World of Darkness Mind's Eye Theater, it's about providing support to all games with the new technology we have in hand that is only getting better every year.  MET and backward support for Grapevine is the current stage, a test that I know I have players for on a grand scale who will report back readily.

Luckily, I think I got the right start with XML.  What it will do is three fold:

• Store and make it easier to transfer game files (characters, equipment, messages, updates)
• Hold rules for the system to quickly process through when activated
• Keep logs machine readable then display them in human readable text when required.

It also had me thinking on how basic parts of a game look.  All role playing games are essencially the varying levels of complexity of the same four components:

• Statistics - The numbers to be weighed on an object, be it a character or a weapon
• Abilities - The functions of the object
• Items - Things that can be added or removed from an object
• History - The list of what has happened to an object over time, including increasing stats, etc.

Some games have one stat, "Alive/Dead", while others have so many it needs a whole program just to take track of that (And why not Mobile Grapevine?).  Same for abilities and items.

What will differentiate them is flags and attributes.  Stats will need primary and secondary, rolled/calculated/purchased, static or spendable, et cetera, et cetera.  These will make it where having mother and daughter (or master and slave if your into that sort of lingo) for stats, abilities, and items, and not just in their own categories.  A sword has it's own set of stats, like damage; it's own abilities like slashing damage; and sub items like hilt and blade.  All of these are highly important for the item, even more so when games require a significant amount of complexity when players do wacky shenanigans like enchant each component of an item then assemble it into some sort o a Voltron esque weapon.  

The next step then is the interaction of these components per the games schema, determining how each stat works and when, where the abilities and their activation come into play, spends, and so on.  This will get very, very complex as any major game tends to have books and books of just stat and ability interactions with items upon items, and that's not looking at things like the character's own body as a item in the abstract sense of the program.  All of this will be handled by scripts, and, hopefully, be attractive to companies as well as players, and the big houses will start making these rules for players and distributing them... or paying me to enter them into the system for them!

As it stands, I'm stuck "hard coding" so everything is enforced at the moment, and it's just MET-oWoD.  Thus the stall out as I research XML.

Thanks for time and patience, if I was working on this full time I could show faster results, but alas.

ZBott out.

PS: To whoever clicked, thank you!

Still Working on the Vampire Reader

Hey all,

So my time has been broken up between working on the vampire reader, which will take in a .GEX file and read in the vampire data, and researching ways to make it slightly more efficient.

Hopefully everything I've been doing hasn't been the exact opposite of useful, but I'm finding out there are things built into Java that read XML data easier than the way I've been doing it, so it's looking not so likely.  Good learning I guess, but I wanted to bring this to market soon and not have it be a freshmen style project. Frustrations aside, I'll keep plugging away at it.

It seems like a lot of people want tabs, so I'll see what I can do when I get it reading the vampires in correctly, and definitely have it available by the time I start reading in all old WoD critters.

Take time out to vote if you haven't already!

How should Applet Grapevine look?
	One Big Display
	Tabs
	Size Dependent
pollcode.com free polls

If you can see ads on this page but don't have money to donate, please click on them.  I get paid a little bit per click, but every little bit helps.

ZBott Out

Another rough draft

Hey all,

I got some progress today, and I wanted to share it with you all (or Y'all if you are so inclined):

To cover some details: Advantages hasn't been filled out yet, nor has the buttons for adding new traits, ability, or backgrounds.  Not visible is the fact I'm failing to get the boxes for traits, abilities and backgrounds to update when I change to a new character.  Luckily, I have two days off in a row, and my job has moved me into a new position that has slightly better hours.

Now here is a question for you the reader: Do you like the layout so far?  As Grapevine uses tabs, I wasn't sure if I should use tabs as well in my applet version.  Mobile Grapevine will be using it, but that is due to space limitations.

How should Applet Grapevine look?
	One Big Display
	Tabs
	Size Dependent
pollcode.com free polls

Anyways, let me know what you think,
ZBott out!

Update 1: New Screenshot!  Took less time than I thought, but I finished up Advantages, and broke Merits and Flaws into it's own panel.  Still exceedingly rough, but let me know what you think:

Raw Applet Grapevine.  Will work on spacing and proper loading tonight (5/20) and tomorrow (5/21).

Update 2: Got the fields to populate correctly, today is progressing along swimmingly.

Applet in the Raw

Hey all,

Layouts are tough, but I'm tougher, or however the hyperbole goes.  I've gotten the character info pane together enough for a screen shot:

Now I'm going to be bringing in Traits, Abilities, and Advantages into the mix.  Then Vampires will get a treatment, followed by saving and generating an XML GEX file.  Once all of those are together, I'll be find a place to host it and putting it online!  My hope is by June, but as May is half way done and I'm struggling to find time to work on this, no promises just yet.

Details on the Applet's next step:

Traits Pane: Physical, Social, Mental.  Each will just be populating into a text box and allow entries to be highlighted.  The highlighted entries can have their level raised or lowered, but once they hit zero, they delete out.  There will also be an "Add ** Trait" where the stars are the specific category.  Adding will launch a pop up where you can enter the name, level, and any notes.

Abilities Pane: A lot like the Traits pane, but only one box and one add button.  Removing all levels from an ability will drop it.  Adding will launch a popup as well.

Advantages Pane: This one will be a little bit different from the other two, as it will have subpanes of Tempers, Renown, Merits, Flaws, Health, Rites, and Gifts.  Tempers will detail temp and perm levels of Rage, Gnosis, Willpower.  Renown will look like Tempers but cover Glory, Honor, and Wisdom.  Merits and Flaws will be similar to Traits and Abilities.  Rites and Gifts will have the ability to pick between Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced, with an out of BTA button to add +1 to the cost.  Health will be closer to Exalted (For those familiar) by having a number of check boxes, some autofilled to normal levels.

With the Vampire update I'll be pulling non-generic info out of the Character pane into a separate venue specific one, where Vampire's will cover things Clan and Coterie, and Werewolf will cover things like Tribe and Auspice.  The Advantage section will be the only other thing that will change, reflecting Disciplines instead of Gifts, Blood instead of Rage or Gnosis, and Combo Disciplines and Rituals instead of Rites.

Once launched, I'll be letting people play with it, finding errors and fixing them, while I work on the next part that'll deal with experience and expenditures, and saving a catalog of previously entered options.  This will in turn be savable to the users computer.  I might even be able to make Applet Grapevine mimic most if not all the functionality of the Grapevine application, so then anyone with access to the internet could use it.  That will be an interesting bonus on the way to Mobile Grapevine!

As usual, let me know what you want to see, any questions you have, or feel free to donate either to my Paypal or by checking out my advertisers, because I'm not above begging.

ZBott out!

Alpha Applet Are Arrrrgrivating

Hey all,

I've gotten started on my applet viewer, and a shiny new screen shot! (Hands off, Corax!)

As is visible in the background, I'm posting it over my code to show it's as raw as it gets.  Right now it's just pulling data and dumping it into the 3 fields I'm using to test that it works.  When I get to publishing it online, it'll allow players to generate new characters, or turn .gex XML (still outright refusing to work with binary files, even Adam Cerling said it wasn't worth it) into human readable text, or even allow editing!

The applet will be the quintessential format for Mobile Grapevine V.10 to V.40, except, you know, on the phone!  I might even skip a lot of sub-levels (like moving to support all old WoD games at V.40, for example), and start working on handling in game spends, and transferring info from one player/storyteller to another.

Feel free to ask questions, even for clarification on stuff I've covered.  It helps me polish my my ideas.

ZBott out!

PS: If you see anything you like on this page, click on it please.

Subminor update, and a question

Hey all,

I'm working on the Vampires next to help me correct a dumb error, but I don't have them entered in just yet: 

As I was working on this, I was looking over some other house ex miscellaneous (Ha, a Hermetic joke!) info that Grapevine can share, like Players, Experience, and Rumors.  Does anyone really want that?  If not, I'll skip trying to work it into the system neatly.

As my current plan stands, a storyteller passing a sheet to a character can send just the character or choose to add player and location info.  This will be passable back to the original Grapevine the same way.  Will this work for most games?  Either way, let me know, I'd like to help build this for your games, not just mine.

ZBott out!

I'm on 4, I mean 5, I mean I'm on fire!

Moving away from the console, I've gotten the text to do dialog boxes and popups:

That screen cap shows the program (over source code) pulling in strictly .gex files, and in the background it shows that only XML format will be taken.

The next one shows a character being displayed for the verification.  Not pictured: Pop Ups for creation of Text and HTML versions of the character.

Next step is to populate the character over to an editor, and printed it back out into XML .gex format.  I'm trying to decide if I step straight into screwing around with an applet or keep dealing with a non-webbernet style window.  My next update will include sexier screen shots instead of code and boxes.

For anyone not interested in jargon and techspeak (it's like newspeak, but better!), since I've decided to do a strictly computron version first, when I finally migrate to android I'll be far enough along to go straight to all oWoD support instead of one venue at a time.  Hopefully this should make people happy.

ZBott out

.gexXML to .HTML

Hey, two updates in a week?  I must be on something!  Joking aside, I'm vaguely proud of this new direction taking off.

Why am I proud(vaguely)?  I can now churn a character sheet into HTML!  No more ugly text, now boring text!  It also means I'm getting closer to making the applet converter!

For proof of life, I mean the project, not mine, I'm literally programming on my free time:

I'll be polishing it for a bit (working on the Rites display) and then going to character generator next.

ZBott out

Status Update, May 2013 Style

Hey all,

I've swapped directions again while trying to get things to run.  I was first attempting to build a data structure, but that got to be a wild randomAnimal.insert() problem.  So instead of trying to think beyond Grapevine for now, I went back to think about just getting Grapevine files onto the phone.  I've turned this GEX file:

Into this TXT file: 

A good start, pulling each piece of data out and printing it off in human readable drab text, but nothing that Grapevine doesn't already do and do so better.  The next step from here will be building a data type of a "Werewolf", then of course all of the other World of Darkness game types, and then play with the data.

I've also got some new people following my work, as calling them my followers makes me feel like I need robes and secret handshakes.  I'll be trying to make more posts, with hopefully more intelligent writing to go along with it.

Feel free to leave comments, and or suggestions.

ZBott

PS: If people want to know if I'm alive I'll also start just dumping ideas I've been having down, as my current day job gives me lots of time just to think.

PSS: Also, I have updated the look, as I think I'll be posting more black text on white in the future.  This'll make my screen shots from Notepad less obnoxious.

Not Dead, Just Morphing

Hey all,

Sorry for the long time, no post situation.  Like the guy who's maintaining the W20 page said, no news can be good news (paraphrasing of course).   The situation is I'm having all sorts of stupid errors, and most of them are trying to stack in new functions and getting software feature bloat problems.  I'm taking a new route by making a Java applet version to just check character sheets, character generation, and in game point spends.  If and when I get this to work, I'll reskin the Android app over the Java, and then hopefully go to testing sooner than later.  If it all works out like I hope, I'll be releasing versions v0.1 through v0.5 one month after another to act as a testing period.

What this means for you: Online testing!  Due to the fact I don't actually own or have specific permissions from White-Wolf, the best I can do is make a gaming calculator.  This will allow people to see how much work they'll have to do to make this pre v0.6 work for their game, and offer a presentation to White-Wolf/CCP to possibly hammer out a deal to have the same pre-loaded gifts, disciplines, merits, etc etc as original Grapevine has.  This fancy gaming calculator will have two features to play with as well: making and reading XML versions Grapevine sheets that will work hopefully seamlessly with the original.

I'll make a post by April to cover more details and how I'm coming along.  Till then, know I haven't given up on Mobile Grapevine, just having to circumnavigate issues in a new way.

Thanks for bearing with me,

ZBott

Back At It

Hey all,

November is over, and my book is... um, unfinished.  It's been a crazy month with work and stuff, and now I'm back to programming.  I'll be splitting my time between coding and writing.

Please offer any suggestions or wants in comments, I'll respond in the evenings (US central time evenings, that is).

ZBott

Post Kickstarter Update

Hey all,

So I seemed to have failed to achieve the kickstart, or whatever it's called.  So I wanted to touch on that before getting back to work.

First and foremost: I will NOT be giving up on the project, in fact I've been working on the latest subversion, and have been trying to cut through a damn snag that keeps me from displaying gifts and rites correctly.  I got some headway, and will be using my time off to try to finish it up for some sexy new pictures to demo.  So long story short, I'm working on the app still, just caught on a bug for the moment.  Short story long: Anything by Dickens.

As for funding, I got two things I can do:
A: I'll still have my paypal account, and to sweeten the deal will take one request per donation per month.  For any donation I get through there at a reasonable amount, I'll push forward a feature to a new version, swap version goals, or add an all new feature to the queue.  So if you want to say have All oWoD game support before tablet support for example, I could do that, with, of course a donation.  If you want to be listed on the special thank's section, I just ask that the name you want listed is appropriate for all audiences.

B: I'm going to retry a funding site approach again in the near future after November so I can take part in NaNoWriMo.  I'll also be using a different service, Indiegogo (the same one used to fund the Nikola Telsa Museum), as they won't charge too much and have an option for underfunded projects to still launch.  Kickstarter has a nice color scheme, but they charge up to 10% of the final amount between them and Amazon, while Indiegogo only charges 7% max with their processing fee included (plus 5% to partial funded projects probably to discourage people from shooting for the stars every time).  I'm going to also have Mobile Grapevine at a much more advanced stage so I'll be looking for a smaller amount for testing equipment, a paid-for website and blog over this free one, and travel costs so I can make it the games where it will be tested.

For everyone who donated, thank you.  It means a lot that you had my back, and I'll try to move a little faster on getting the Android and iOS versions to market.  For everyone who wanted to donate but couldn't, thanks for the support during the Kickstarter campaign.  For all people watching, I'll keep everyone updated on my progress.

ZBott out

PS: I'm also going to start a through-app game after I finish both versions, though I'm still wondering what system I'm going to using.  It might be pan-oWoD, or use any number of published-to-books or online available only systems... or maybe even something just developed strictly for Mobile Grapevine!  Let me know your ideas and thoughts in comments.

v0.035 and Kickstarter Update

Hey all,

The March Toward v0.04
So I've done a few things on the Android version, like make a delete and update, though I'm still getting weird errors.  I haven't gotten the gifts and rites either.  So all in all, I'm at like v0.035, not quite to the next level.  Here are some screen shots for peoples to peruse, I'll be adding them to my Kickstarter update when they work right.

Kickstarter Update
I've gotten a few people to back me, but not enough.  If your sitting on the proverbial bench, please don't.  The number of backers will help me decide how to move if I succeed or not.  If I get 1,000 backers but not enough backing, I can still turn around and use those numbers to help me get something off the ground.  If I get only 10 people backing me, it shows very little interest from gamers.

Lastly, if you would like to see it succeed, help me put the word out.  What I run into as a problem is not having enough time to talk about it to people who would be interested, or good ideas on where to reach out to people.  Just let people know the link and why you think it's a worthy cause, that will help me out immensely.  Here's the link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1220609366/mobile-grapevine

A little Q&A

One question I get a lot is "Why do you need $40,000?"  So I'm going to answer it as I have time and time before, though probably not in such a polished way:
Right now I spend roughly 10 hours a week, sometimes more and sometimes less, working on the app.  With that in mind I feel I can confidently say that Mobile Grapevine will be to both Google Play and the iTunes store by some time in 2015.  The kickstarter will allow me to take off time and work exclusively on designing and programming the app, and I can get both versions done by next year.  It will be like going to warp speed.  I picked that number not out of a hat, but after running some figures, like rent and utilities, as well as testing equipment.  In retrospect I might have been able to do it for half that amount, but when I set up the project, I picked a number that I knew would work, and now I'm locked into that.

Question 2 is "What will I do if it doesn't work?"
Keep going on.  Hopefully I'll have a good number of people trying to back me, but if it falls through, I'll be back at what I've been doing.  I've already made some headway, but not enough, not as much as I've wanted to do.  In theory I should already have v0.10 (Laws of the Wyld version) and working on v0.20 (Laws of the Night version), but I just don't have the time to make it happen as fast as I'd like.

Anyways, let me know any other burning questions in comments, and I'll get to them as soon as I can.

ZBott out!