iPhone: Dice Bag

[bryant]

rob_donoghue noted the existence of a dice roller app for the iPhone, and lo, it is true: there is Dice Bag. Here is a short review.

First, the interface is as follows.



Your die rolling options are literally what you see: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, 1d20, 1d100, 3d6, and 4d6 drop the highest. (I'm assuming. A better icon for that would have been to make the other dice showing fives, and cross out the die showing a six.) You press the screen at the die type you want, there's a dice rolling sound, and the result appears in the lower right corner.

The info button (i) gives you an info screen informing you that it's called Dice Bag and Jeff LaMarche wrote it.

So limited and bare bones. But it does roll dice, so it's gonna keep living on my iPhone. Also, I dig the icons considerably.

What would make this rock a lot: one tap = roll the dice. Double tap = bring up a little config screen, which provides configuration.

"I would like to roll 6d6, and please count the number of dice that beat a four. Sixes add and roll over."

"I would like to roll 5d10, and keep the three highest."

What do you have to cover? FUDGE, Hero, Shadowrun, a couple of flavors of World of Darkness, L5R, Cinematic Unisystem. Should be doable with some decent UI work.

Comments

[punkrockwarlord.livejournal.com]

I think it's 4d6 drop lowest, the D&D character generating scheme.

I'd like it to be configurable as well, and have optional dice clicking sounds (more with more dice), and show the numbers on the dice, and save some pre-sets (by name)...

Also, SotC dice and Champions dice patterns would be nice.

Mind you, all I ever play with Dice these days is Kobolds Ate My Baby!...

[punkrockwarlord.livejournal.com]

--Michael, logged into his gaming journal.

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

4d6 drop the highest? Isn't it usually drop the lowest, for above-average D&D stats?

Yeah, bare bones, it'll be surpassed soon, I hope! The old dicepro app for the Palm was awesome, I'd be happy to have that back.

[promethius.livejournal.com]

It is drop lowest. I just checked the download screen to be sure.

General response, to prevent posting an additional comment:

Configurable to give multi-dice results would be cool. Otherwise, generally, I just think it's neat to have a dice rolling app out there so far. I'm sure given a little time more evolved versions will bust out of the woodwork.

[bryant]

Durrr. I even meant to write drop lowest. Yeah, that's what it is.

[bryant]

Dice Pro! That's the one I was trying to remember. Yeah, I want that.

And yes. Drop lowest. Brain fart.

[bryant]

I think I'm gonna pretend I said drop highest on purpose to reflect the flawed icon. Yes.

But nah; it's cool as is.

[bryant]

Aha. Here's a detailed breakdown of PocketDice, which has about the right options:

http://www.amurgsval.org/weregamer/pocketdice.html

[kodi]

Is there no way, once you have the result, to see what dice you rolled to achieve that result? That seems kind of necessary.

[bdeakin.livejournal.com]

I'll check it out shortly. It should also have a screen of "Favorites" style rolls. In other words, you pre-configure certain rolls and just pick 'em from a screen.

[(Anonymous)]

I want this, but with these physics modeled.

http://gizmodo.com/5023627/iphone-dice-game-simulates-real-dice-rolling-using-sensors-and-physics

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Wow, for a v1.0 of an app, that's a *really* elegant UI! Hopefully all the customizable die pool functionality people are clamoring for will come out in v2.0.

[bryant]

I have that game. It is mega-awesome. I let the developers know they should do an RPG version. :)

[bryant]

Alas no. Also a flaw. I mean, if I'm rolling up a character I don't necessarily care if my 8 was a 6, 1, 1 as opposed to a 4, 3, 1, so not a major flaw, but still.

(Does anyone actually /do/ that any more?)

[bryant]

I must admit I reviewed it in hopes that more people would use it and comment and give the author some warm fuzzy and inspire him to do 2.0.

[kodi]

I'm more concerned about "I seem to have rolled a 4 on 3d6 - did I accidentally roll d20 instead?" I don't need to know what values each die rolled, but it's really handy to get feedback about what selection I made, since a 4 can come up on any of the available selections.

[bryant]

Ah! The color of the roll changes to match the color of the die.

[head58.livejournal.com]

For some games like Savage Worlds the individual rolls are actually what you look for, not the total. You'd need to work that out in your config screen, yeah.

[bryant]

I think it's better to collapse if possible. E.g., for Hero, you need to know how many dice rolled sixes and ones as well as the total value -- but you can collapse all that down to "34 damage, 6 killing."

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figured. That's why I wanted to chime in with warm fuzzy "that's great for a v1 freeware!" since I was seeing a lot of "yeah... BUT"s here. ;)

[head58.livejournal.com]

In Savage Worlds (which is on my mind because I've been listening to Agon podcasts) you need the highest die, and you also need to know if any of the other dice is the highest value possible, so that it might explode.

hmm, you'd also need to have mixed dice pools. Like 2d8 and 3d6 at the same time. And what I'm saying above is if you got an 8 on one of the d8s you'd also want to know if you got a 6 on the d6s, because that could explode and be higher than your 8 in the long run. That could get complex in the coding and need a special app just for SW dice.

Some things are, I think, just easier with small chunks of plastic.

[dcltdw]

While that is very pretty-looking, I feel like -me- rolling dice is half the fun. :)

[bryant]

Yeah; conceptually, though, you do that as:

1. Roll all dice.
2. Explode dice at max value.
3. Report the highest number (preferably with breakdowns, cause people get curious).

So 1d6 + 1d8:

Original roll: 6, 5
Reroll the 6, get a 4
New roll: 10, 5
Report: "10 (6 + 4)"

Check out the PocketDice link I posted -- it's pretty normal for die rollers to handle that kind of special casing. You gotta do "reroll max value rolls and add" for, oh... Feng Shui, Savage Worlds, and Shadowrun off the top of my head.

[sben.livejournal.com]

You all are missing the most important missing feature/UI element:

Once you've selected which dice to roll etc., you should shake the phone to roll the dice.

[zaratyst.livejournal.com]

I am SO putting this on my Ipod Touch. Weee