Hello from an iPad geek!

[booticus]

Hi gang!

I've been quietly lurking on the sidelines for a long while, viewing a lot of posts from you guys with pleasure! I've always been interested in terrain generation apps, and that's what originally brought me here a year or so ago. I see a lot of talent, and appreciate the respect and candor shown folks when they post their maps asking for critiques and advice.

The community seems really great!

You folks have encouraged me to grab the ProFantasy software for dungeon design and try my hand at making simple combat encounter areas with a simple RPG system. Profantasy are great since they allow you to use their graphics in a finished commercial app. I haven't published anything just yet, but cartographersguild.com has given me a lot encouragement!

I've been coding on the iPad a lot, and have been working on a nice turn-based space combat simulator for the last couple months but suddenly, without any warning, I really, really started to think about dungeon combat on simple static battle maps on the iPad at just a humble 1024x768 pixels; and to that end, I'm making a simple dungeon combat app for the iPad. It started out by seeing Jon Robert's "Ugly Harpy Inn" map over at his site. I made a great (well, I thought it was great) physics demo with the furniture being 'blow-uppable', bouncing off the walls and such where the user taps. It was great fun!

Then here, so many folks have published beautiful maps to inspire me! I'm thinking of asking in the Map Request forum here if I could commission a couple of very simple test maps to try my hand at fleshing out these ideas of mine.

Well, this turned out to be an incredibly rambling introduction. Apologies.

I'm looking forward to conversing with folks here, and would love some feedback on my ideas if you'd have any.

I'm also building in functionality for folks to import their own battlemap images onto the ipad and to make cool battles with their own maps. There's really nothing quite as neat as seeing your own map on the ipad with some....meh I've babbled long enough.


Take care, and hope to talk to you all very soon.

Best regards,
Mario

PS Ummmm...what would be the proper forum to post in about my idea? I hope that I don't come off sounding cheeky. I'd like to really get anyone in the community involved with this because you folks have such and incredible pool of talent to draw upon.

/end gushing

[Redrobes]

Hi Mario and good luck with the iPad app. I think the software section is about as good as any to put in a post. If your going to be able to play the game with the map you create then the virtual table top section is probably better. The iPad would be an excellent device for writing a virtual table top. That is an application which allows you to play pen and paper roll playing games digitally over the net using the net connection to allow multiple users to get map updates as the party move across the map. There are a number of these about but I don't think I know of any for the iPad since it wont run Java or flash so that rules out MapTool and BattlegroundsRPG. Mine is for windows only at the mo and I don't have any plans to port to the iPad. I recall seeing a post about VTT's on iPads over at EnWorld so might want to have a look there too. I would invest in some time to check out the popular VTTs and have a play with some of the demos and read about what people like about each of them. Imitate and then innovate as they say.

[booticus]

Hey Redrobes! Thanks for the info! I'm not aiming for a full blown VTT per se, just a single player 'casual-esque' battle that one could pick up and bust out in a 10-20 minute engagement. Course now that you mention it.....

I DID see Dungeon Mapp (yes, two p's) for the ipad, and that seemed an entire campaign management system, way more than I was after.

I'll get to posting in the Software area as not to clutter up the intro forum.

Thanks again!

BTW, are you the author of ViewingDale? Perhaps you and I should speak directly via email then. You might have some good pointers!

[RecklessEnthusiasm]

There is also RPG Cartographer which me and another Cartographer's Guild artist worked on long, long ago. I believe it is on the Itunes App store and has pretty great reviews. It seems to be a popular idea--I vote you go for it!

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!

[NeonKnight]

Welcome to the Guild!

[Dexamalion]

I DID see Dungeon Mapp (yes, two p's) for the ipad, and that seemed an entire campaign management system, way more than I was after.

Hi Guys, I'm Derek, the creator of Dungeon Mapp. I did not design Dungeon Mapp to be an entire campaign management system, it's just a mapping tool. With the recent update to version 1.2 I have introduced many more tools, an Initiative roller and tracker, more decal and tile art, better menu system and UI, the ability to save Mapps to your hard drive and email them about, animated decals and much more. However, it's still really not a campaign management system. The free version will be up on the iTunes store soon, so please check it out.

Dex