HS-aholic free heroscape iOS app

[Blue Dane]

Originally Posted by CiananBrage

HS-aholic version 1.2 sent to the store for review.

Bug fixes:
-Corrected issue preventing d20 from rolling 20
-Ninjas of the Northern Wind and Kozuke Samurai are now Unique Squads.
-Empty ability slots will no longer show up as None in the UI for newly saved custom units.

New Features:
-Added full ability text and bios to the Unit Detail View. (Tap any card image to view.)
-Added fields to custom unit creation form to allow for custom ability text and bios to be entered.
-Added controls to globally adjust the strength of Special Rules as a whole. This allows a user to easily adjust how random or rule based the army is.
-Added compatibility for iOS 3.1.3. iTunes File Sharing is not supported on iOS versions before iOS 4.0, and the application can be sluggish and show minor graphical issues on older devices.

I can't wait for the updates. The full ability text and bios are an excellent addition. Support given! Thanks!

[CiananBrage]

Originally Posted by CiananBrage

HS-aholic version 1.2 sent to the store for review.

Bug fixes:
-Corrected issue preventing d20 from rolling 20
-Ninjas of the Northern Wind and Kozuke Samurai are now Unique Squads.
-Empty ability slots will no longer show up as None in the UI for newly saved custom units.

New Features:
-Added full ability text and bios to the Unit Detail View. (Tap any card image to view.)
-Added fields to custom unit creation form to allow for custom ability text and bios to be entered.
-Added controls to globally adjust the strength of Special Rules as a whole. This allows a user to easily adjust how random or rule based the army is.
-Added compatibility for iOS 3.1.3. iTunes File Sharing is not supported on iOS versions before iOS 4.0, and the application can be sluggish and show minor graphical issues on older devices.

HS-aholic 1.2 just went live last night.

Special thanks to those who offered support (Blue Dane and an anonymous generous Canadian). It really helps morale to know peeps like the app that much.

It'll be a while before I can release 1.3 (I'm buried in other work currently), but it'll have cool new features like multiple collections, etc.

[Schulzy]

You are a credit to your race, sir.

[Wanderer999]

Originally Posted by Schulzy

You are a credit to your race, sir.

He's probably a great Primadon Aphallon scientist under Vydar, with great tech at his fingertips! +rep for the update!

[Blue Dane]

I just upgraded to 1.2 and the text and bios are great! Thanks! Do you know if in 1.3 you will be able to store armies that are created? Maybe a place to add notes about the army... What is the multiple collection feature?

Thanks again...

[CiananBrage]

Originally Posted by Blue Dane

I just upgraded to 1.2 and the text and bios are great! Thanks! Do you know if in 1.3 you will be able to store armies that are created? Maybe a place to add notes about the army... What is the multiple collection feature?

Thanks again...

Multiple Collections will be similar to Saved Armies in some ways. Both features would need to allow for meaningful filenames/descriptions at a minimum to be useful.
Collections would allow for easily switching between groups that you own for various reasons for example, All Figs, No Marvel, Marvel Only, No Customs, etc. Or even a friend's collection. It was intended to make the collection management more versatile, and would likely make the collection files available in iTunes File Sharing so that you could back them up or transfer them to another device as you wanted.

Both will also be interesting to work into the current ui and file structure. But I'll be crossing that bridge when I have more time

[CiananBrage]

Originally Posted by Wanderer999

He's probably a great Primadon Aphallon scientist under Vydar, with great tech at his fingertips! +rep for the update!

They keep promising to show me how the cool Soulborgs are made one day.... one day...

Knowledge is Power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be Evil.


lol, actually my wife always plays the robots and proceeds with murdering the marro squads I get stuck with

[KRUG!]

Just downloaded HS-aholic last night into my ipod touch and so far seems pretty fantastic. I have most of my figs loaded in, hope to finish that tonight. Having fun messing around with it right now on my lunch break....

[Wanderer999]

Hey CiananBrage, I finally have the app on my ipad thanks to you making it compatible to older iOS! However now that I can really have the freedom to try everything out instead of using my friend's iphone, I couldn't find the place to custom my own Special Rule. How do you do that? I wish to add more special rules but cannot find them.

Also regarding our previous topic on bonding armies in the generator, I tried to tweak the existing special rules as much as possible and got some satisfactory results, but still no 'perfect' drafts generated. Can I suggest that you add the ultimate feature of allowing configuration of pre-saving groups into the system?

Example: A user pre-configs the following groups into the app.
Marro Drones X 4, Hive x 1 = Group 1.
Q9, Raelin, Deathreavers x 3 = Group 2.
Kato, Ashigaru Yari x 2, Ashigaru Harq x 2 = Group 3.
Etc.
Etc...

Then when we run the generator, it simply randomly picks one from the different groups that we already saved. This is the BEST way we can generate armies for different styled players.

P.S: Empress Kiova's special rule coding for Kyrie is wrongly input under Size 1 instead of Species 1.

[CiananBrage]

Originally Posted by Wanderer999

Hey CiananBrage, I finally have the app on my ipad thanks to you making it compatible to older iOS! However now that I can really have the freedom to try everything out instead of using my friend's iphone, I couldn't find the place to custom my own Special Rule. How do you do that? I wish to add more special rules but cannot find them.

Also regarding our previous topic on bonding armies in the generator, I tried to tweak the existing special rules as much as possible and got some satisfactory results, but still no 'perfect' drafts generated. Can I suggest that you add the ultimate feature of allowing configuration of pre-saving groups into the system?

Example: A user pre-configs the following groups into the app.
Marro Drones X 4, Hive x 1 = Group 1.
Q9, Raelin, Deathreavers x 3 = Group 2.
Kato, Ashigaru Yari x 2, Ashigaru Harq x 2 = Group 3.
Etc.
Etc...

Then when we run the generator, it simply randomly picks one from the different groups that we already saved. This is the BEST way we can generate armies for different styled players.

P.S: Empress Kiova's special rule coding for Kyrie is wrongly input under Size 1 instead of Species 1.

Special Rules must be attached to units, and currently can only be created for Custom Units.
--For data integrity the official untis are part of the core data for the app and aren't editable.

I definitely think there are some points where the Rules can use some more tweaking, especially for duplication of squads where you want massive quantities like the Drones.

The generator rules were never intended for creating power armies like Q9, Raelin, Deathreavers but simply armies where the units were related by bonding, auras, etc. The generator was also intended to simply help ensure that units saw playtime whether they were A+ power or not, while hopefully putting them with units to make them useful. All depends on what is available in your collection also though.

As far as saving your favorite group that would make more sense as part of the Save/Load Army feature. It'd be an extra option for loading a random army. Combined with a lock/unlock all non-zero units this would allow for the grabbing of any group then using the generator to fill out any remaining points.

Beyond that its definitely possible to add in more rules or split some rules like the Hive into multiple rules to help it get more traction (More rules means more chances to activate). Let me know if unit relationships for a group seem too weak.
--A good note for getting an army based around a specific character like the hive is to simply lock the Hive into your army before generating and let its rules create the army.

The new Rule Strength and Rule Preservation can help with this. If you lock the Hive and have Strength 100% and Preservation 100% you will get nothing but compatible units. Maybe not a group of maximum power and efficiency, but compatible.
--Of course if you want a 100% random army you can set strength to 0% and rules will have no effect at all.

And if you want to heavily customize the rules to generate a specific type of army remember that the rules for each Player slot are saved separately. So Palyer1 can be tailored for making Marro armies, while Player2 can be more suited for Elves, and so on. Of course setting the Valkyrie sliders is still necessary since these values return to default between sessions.

Good catch on the Empress Kiova import issue... could signal a deeper data issue with rules and the imports. I'll look into it. ...

Well trying the example of Marro Have with Str 100% Pres 100% I'm definitely not seeing the expected results. Looks like some of the Rules still need to be balanced out some more. Of course one of the issues with this is that Rules can chain together to cause a flow like: Hive -> Drones -> Tul-Bak-Ra -> Ornak -> Gruts ... which has totally derailed the attempted army. While I can strengthen the Hive Rules and Duplication Rules for Squads it will still partially become a user action to weaken the rules for a unit like Ornak to avoid getting unwanted units if they want a Hive Army. This is also part of the reason for generating 5 armies and allowing easy repeat generation attempts (any unlocked units are tossed and settings are preserved). Note: When checking for rule activation units are queried at random from the army. And Duplication is always attempted only after all units in the army have had a chance to activate their rules, which is why units like the Drones have rules to increase their duplications. (Note: Putting the duplication attempt before rule activation leads to uncommon/common heroes to have excessive duplication.)
-->Will likely also split the duplication rule into separate versions for Squads/Heroes and Common/Uncommon to make it more controllable. Looks like a version 1.2.x is required to tweak some of these issues. I'll see what I can do.

[Schulzy]

I might suggest making the text field for inputting a custom's ability text bigger. I find it hard to go back and fix an error without deleting a whole bunch of stuff.

[CiananBrage]

Originally Posted by Schulzy

I might suggest making the text field for inputting a custom's ability text bigger. I find it hard to go back and fix an error without deleting a whole bunch of stuff.

Both the Custom Bio and Ability text currently use TextFields which unfortunately don't have the best behavior for editing.
I'm looking into switching these over to TextViews, which will improve editing drastically. This will be another 1.3 feature most likely unless I work into the 1.2.x build.