Character Planner for the iPAD

[amykins3]

Ron, i'm new to the forum, but i wanted to first thank you for the planner. it's awesome, and i literally use it daily. To that point i was wondering if you had ever been approached to port it to the iPAD? i am just getting into programming, and purchased my dev account for apple. I was looking for a project that I could work on, and i'd love to do this if you would let me.

[RonHiler]

Yeah, this has come up from time to time.

If you want, I can give you access to the codebase. I don't know how much it will help if you want to do a port (it's very windows specific). But you are welcome to it. I've now given it out to several people who wanted to port it to one device or another, and it has not happened yet. I don't know if that's a comment on my coding practices or what

Just let me know if you want access to the repository. There are a few hoops to jump through to get it all set up.

[amykins3]

so, i will probably be in the same boat as the others that have asked before, and this will be my first project. probably a little big for a first time project, i would imagine, but i will give it a shot at least.

so what do i need to do?

[RonHiler]

Start with this thread:

http://www.rjcyberware.com/forums/showthread.php?228

[amykins3]

Hey Ron i didnt want you to think I was a total flake. (just a partial one is ok, but total ain't happening).

I dug more into what it would take to do the iPad app and I learned two things:

1. clearly there was a reason why no-one has done this before AND
2. i'm a big dummy for not checking into it before I asked you for access to the code.

I defiantely wouldnt want to do this as a first project. ill keep at it and when i learn the basics ill probably come back to you.

thanks for you time.

[Strike]

I haven't looked into making iPad apps before either; mind sharing some details of why this is such a Huge Project?

Or is it just a big initial investment to get the iPad SDK?

[Pix]

Distributing it would involve paying a developer license fee to apple. I don't know how you can get apps onto an ios device without going through the app store--I don't think ios supports sideloading the way Android does. In addition the entire codebase would have to be ported from whatever it is in now (I assume C++) to ObjectiveC. Also, if it uses DirectX, it would have to be converted to use OpenGL. None of these are likely to be simple.

[RonHiler]

I don't know ObjC, so I have no idea what the porting would be like. There is no DX in the planner. It uses straight up GDI style windows stuff for drawing (although that in itself would require some porting I would imagine).

As far as the coding goes, the planner is very complicated. People don't realize what a complex program it is, in that it has a huge number of moving parts. Any number you (as a user) change affects a whole mess of other numbers, each of which affects other stuff, and so on. It is right up there along the complexity of writing the script for an entire game.

So yeah, even using my code as a starting point, you have a lot of work ahead of you to port it to another platform. That's why it's not been done. AFAIK, there is a relatively simple web based planner, but that's about it. There really isn't anything else that exists for DDO that has the thoroughness (and thus complexity) of ours. Because it's hard That's nothing against Amy, she just took on more than she realized. She's hardly the first to ask for this, and she won't be the last.

That being said, there are some major changes coming down the pike for DDO. And I have no idea where I am going to find the time to deal with them. I have too much on my plate as it is, and I'm more focused on the game right now (and I don't intend for that to change). It may well be I'm going to have to find a successor pretty soon, either to take over the planner code (thus allowing me to step down my involvement in that project), or to write a new one from scratch.