Hi voidstate, great to see you throw your 2 cents in!

JSON is great for human readability, but I don't know that you will be able to fit an epic squad in JSON in a reasonably sized QR code. But maybe a character limit of ~6 per pilot would alleviate this. Going to keep thinking about this...

It would be nice if the QR code contained all the JSON data, so the TO can scan the QR code at the event to directly read in the squad details.

Hi voidstate, great to see you throw your 2 cents in!

JSON is great for human readability, but I don't know that you will be able to fit an epic squad in JSON in a reasonably sized QR code. But maybe a character limit of ~6 per pilot would alleviate this. Going to keep thinking about this...

I think JSON is just fine for transferring between programs, but having something that is simple enough to type into a field manually it fails. Same thing with XML.

Hi voidstate, great to see you throw your 2 cents in!

JSON is great for human readability, but I don't know that you will be able to fit an epic squad in JSON in a reasonably sized QR code. But maybe a character limit of ~6 per pilot would alleviate this. Going to keep thinking about this...

I think JSON is just fine for transferring between programs, but having something that is simple enough to type into a field manually it fails. Same thing with XML.

For entering data manually, you would probably need to write an interpreter, so you could type it in like I have been recording it on the Regionals / Nationals threads:

Luke + R2-D2 + PtL + EU; Wedge + R7

The interpreter will need to have multiple mappings for the same target. I.e. "PtL" and "Push the Limit" both map to the same thing.

I just saw this topic just now. I've had similar discussions about making an app before and have caught flak from friends on why I haven't made one myself because I do development for iOS and Android for a living. There are a lot of great ideas that I had never even thought of that you guys have come up with. I have one that I thought would be handy and that is the rules and FAQ in the app.

BUT, before you get too far you need to think about the legality of this. FFG, Lucasfilm and Disney own the rights here and if you don't have their expressed written permission then you are wasting your time. It's not just use of the name X-wing, it's all of the names, of the characters, ships, weapons etc.. If you submit this to Apple it will be rejected in their approval process without permission, and yes they will check. You could put it into the Google play store or another Android store and it would be up briefly, that is until they receive the cease and desist letter which will come quick.

I'm really not trying to rain on anyone's parade, I want this as much as the rest of you. But you really need to start with getting permission first, otherwise you might be wasting your time. Do we have any law professionals that can/will work on this?

I just saw this topic just now. I've had similar discussions about making an app before and have caught flak from friends on why I haven't made one myself because I do development for iOS and Android for a living. There are a lot of great ideas that I had never even thought of that you guys have come up with. I have one that I thought would be handy and that is the rules and FAQ in the app.

BUT, before you get too far you need to think about the legality of this. FFG, Lucasfilm and Disney own the rights here and if you don't have their expressed written permission then you are wasting your time. It's not just use of the name X-wing, it's all of the names, of the characters, ships, weapons etc.. If you submit this to Apple it will be rejected in their approval process without permission, and yes they will check. You could put it into the Google play store or another Android store and it would be up briefly, that is until they receive the cease and desist letter which will come quick.

I'm really not trying to rain on anyone's parade, I want this as much as the rest of you. But you really need to start with getting permission first, otherwise you might be wasting your time. Do we have any law professionals that can/will work on this?

I've spoken with the tournament operators for Fantasy Flight. The only thing that came up was that the logo Roy created for me had the FFG X-Wing logo as part of it. They asked me to remove it. Besides that, they said I was fine to keep doing what I was doing. This was before any talks of displaying card titles. I'll shoot them an email and see what they say.

Got a message back from FFG that we are allowed to use card titles. They did note that they do not speak on behalf of Disney in the event that a card title is also licensed property of Disney.

Got a message back from FFG that we are allowed to use card titles. They did note that they do not speak on behalf of Disney in the event that a card title is also licensed property of Disney.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1234809/netrunnerdb-cease-and-desist

This kinda hits close to home for this project...............interesting

Got a message back from FFG that we are allowed to use card titles. They did note that they do not speak on behalf of Disney in the event that a card title is also licensed property of Disney.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1234809/netrunnerdb-cease-and-desist

This kinda hits close to home for this project...............interesting

The images are copyrighted, can't really complain too much about it, although it is sad.

I have a document with a bunch of House Rules in it, and use the card images, but don't distribute it for that reason. I'll post a text-only version eventually here.

I would imagine that this project is fine as long as you just use the card titles, as FFG said.

Got a message back from FFG that we are allowed to use card titles. They did note that they do not speak on behalf of Disney in the event that a card title is also licensed property of Disney.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1234809/netrunnerdb-cease-and-desist

This kinda hits close to home for this project...............interesting

The images are copyrighted, can't really complain too much about it, although it is sad.

I have a document with a bunch of House Rules in it, and use the card images, but don't distribute it for that reason. I'll post a text-only version eventually here.

I would imagine that this project is fine as long as you just use the card titles, as FFG said.

Sounds like they are shutting them all down because FFG themselves has a deckbuilder. I wonder if they will try to shut down our squad builders once they put out theirs which I assume is coming. Hell, I kind of expect them to release some tournament software, but I don't think they can stop me from existing as I have no FFG content on my software.

We keep getting hung up on the QR code length. What's most important is coming up with a standard that everyone can not only agree to, but also can generate without mistakes. We can worry about encoding the format as a secondary issue.

Instead of trying to abbreviate pilot names or upgrades, just use the full title, ship and cost.

{
"Luke Skywalker" : {

"ship": ["Xwing"],

"cost":["28"],
"astromech droid" : [ "r2d2" ],
"elite pilot skill" : [ "push" ],
"modification" : [ "engine" ]
}

"Dagger Squadron": {

"ship":["Bwing"],

"cost":["24"],

}

"Tycho Celchu": {

"ship":["Awing"],

"cost":["26"],

"title":["Awing Test Pilot"],

"Elite Pilot Talent":["Push the Limit"],

"Elite Pilot Talent":["Predator"],

"missle":["Chardaan Refit"]

}

That's the ultimate in human/machine readability. The standard should allow for case insensitivity ("predator" and "Predator" should evaluate to the same result). We should also encode the cost for each upgrade into the standard. The biggest issue that I see with this is multilanguage support. "Push the Limit" in the US game is not called "Push the Limit" in the other languages of the game. But, then whatever software is being written to consume this JSON should be able to parse for multiple languages. If we try to come up with a way to abbreviate names, different squad builders will interpret the abbreviation standard differently and come up with two different encodings of some upgrades/pilots. The only way to have an abbreviated standard is to have a group that comes up with the standards and publishes them. That's a good bit of overhead. If we want to form the Xwing Miniatures Standards group, that's fine. But that group needs to be formed and a site needs to be maintained to publish the standards.

I also think that we need to include the ship and the cost for each pilot. At some point in the future FFG is going to release pilots in different ships, and may have different versions of existing crew members. The standard should not assume that Luke Skywalker is flying an Xwing, or that his cost is 28 points. FFG could come out with a 30 point Luke Skywalker in an Xwing with a different pilot ability.

I still think the ultimate goal should be to have a centralized Web App that can function as the TO software for just about everyone. If that is in place, it can take links from the different squad building web sites and import lists directly. The QR stuff is an intermediate step, IMHO. It's a lofty goal, but achievable, and whatever is determined now should be done to start the building blocks to achieve the big goal. Right?

Why are you opposed to coming up with a standard? Isn't that what we're doing now? Even deciding on JSON is choosing a standard or deciding between xwing or x-wing...so many standards. If we're just transferring data between programs then human readable is unnecessary except for debugging or manual generation purposes. Most of my work is making the life of a TO easier. Frankly I don't see how a JSON representation of a list is beneficial to a TO.

Sounds like they are shutting them all down because FFG themselves has a deckbuilder. I wonder if they will try to shut down our squad builders once they put out theirs which I assume is coming. Hell, I kind of expect them to release some tournament software, but I don't think they can stop me from existing as I have no FFG content on my software.

Yeah, FFG doesn't use Cryodex for their tournament software, which is unfortunate because it would have made running GenCon way smoother.

We keep getting hung up on the QR code length. What's most important is coming up with a standard that everyone can not only agree to, but also can generate without mistakes.

Length is important because there is a practical upper limit to the length. Encoding everything brute force will not work for epic squads, and possibly some 100 point squads. I covered this a couple pages back. Your example will not fit in a QR code when expanded to larger squads.

If you look at my proposed encoding method here , you will see that this method is 100% future proof. In this case there would be a new pilot appended to the existing list for that ship.

I still think the ultimate goal should be to have a centralized Web App that can function as the TO software for just about everyone. If that is in place, it can take links from the different squad building web sites and import lists directly. The QR stuff is an intermediate step, IMHO. It's a lofty goal, but achievable, and whatever is determined now should be done to start the building blocks to achieve the big goal. Right?

I keep tossing around this concept in my head. Web functionality would be nice eventually, but we need it to work with a single computer without internet first.

What we really need are a set of requirements. So, ideally the Tournament software needs to do the following:

1. Work on a single PC, with no internet access. Cryodex already does this.
2. Import player name and squad data by scanning a printed QR code.
3. The QR code itself needs to be defined as a standardized "squad interchange format". It should support 300-400 point Epic squads without breaking the practical scan able limit. Verbose JSON fundamentally will not work. There must be compressed encoding of some sort. So far the best suggestion is the one by Chris from Cryodex, which I further refined and started to define here .
4. There also needs to be a "scan QR code" capability to interface with a webcam to grab the QR code, built into the Cryodex software.
5. It needs to allow manual entry of player name and squad details. This needs to be as simple as possible; the JSON examples here with brackets, and nested parameters will not be a viable entry method in real-time at the tournament. You should enter it in the format that I have on my Regionals / Nationals Results thread, and let Cryodex parse it. Alternatively the TO should be able to enter details using the squad interchange format that the QR code adheres to.
6. Once the squad is entered in, either by QR code or by hand, the tournament software can display it in an easily readable manner. So the underlying encoding scheme shouldn't ever matter to the end-user.
7. It should implement Osoroshii's idea of "slips" where each player only has to mark which ships were destroyed. Then the software can auto-calculate MoV, which saves a ton of time and is more reliable.
8. The software should also report all of the details for each round. Ideally this will include the full data on each slip; i.e. which specific ships were destroyed. This can be output in a text file. Then I can write my own scripts (in Matlab, or Visual Basic, or whatever) to read all the data in and compile statistics with it. I could even have my script output the round-by-round details, in a text format that I can copy / paste into the forums here. So everybody can view the details. Eventually, it would be really cool to see the output here in xml / html format, complete with hyperlinks, so you can easily jump around between players and squads within a tournament.

I like MajorJuggler's proposal. It seems easy enough to integrate into an app, and for the TO to input manually if needed.

Though if we're going to give each card an ID anyways, I don't see much use for all prefixes.

Is this dead? Or did it just move off forum?

Jacob

The discussion on that is continuing. Voidstate just updated his application to produce a QR code that works with his application and is working on the standard to allow passing them between other programs that conform to that standard.

Personally, I've been busy working on the latest version of the Cryodex. Trying to make creation of tournaments more versatile to what kind of event you are running. I want this to be ready well before Worlds so maybe it will get used for that. Fat chance, but I'm giving it an effort. Once that is completed, I will be going hard at the ability to load squads in. I'm hoping to have it all 100% ready by new years. That will allow the whole 2015 event chain to be run on Cryodex and gather as many statistics as we can. I really hope it will get used a lot and get us some really cool data.

So to answer your question, the boulder is rolling down the hill but not rolling really fast. We're doing what we're doing and I'm sure it will pick up steam as our programs start gaining capabilities.

The discussion on that is continuing. Voidstate just updated his application to produce a QR code that works with his application and is working on the standard to allow passing them between other programs that conform to that standard.

Nifty. I'll have to try that later.

I was talking to Sean Dorcy (X-wing TO Man) the other day before recording for Nova Squadron episode 8. It really comes down to 2 aspects: front end list input, and back-end statistics. The front end is the hard part.

For right now, obviously, whatever you're working on for worlds is important. Will they be using your software at Worlds? I know they didn't at Nationals. I didn't think to ask Sean, he would know.

Sean Dorcy and I talk frequently on Facebook. We've been going back and forth on what updates to make and how to solidify some of the "clunky" portions of the software. FFG has not stated that they are going to use the Cryodex for worlds and I don't think they would in its current state. A big problem is the automatic duplicate game fixer, it's not perfect. You can do it manually just fine, but who wants to do that? He's been talking to the FFG people trying to convince them to use it. I really need to get a working copy out by the end of the week for it to even have a chance I think. Sean is an impressive tester and I need to give him enough time to be happy with it.

To be honest, I prefer they not use it because I'm always terrified something will go wrong and it will be my fault. That's just my massive paranoia. With Sean Dorcy at the helm I feel a bit better, he knows the ins and outs of my software almost as well as myself.

To be honest, I prefer they not use it because I'm always terrified something will go wrong and it will be my fault. That's just my massive paranoia. With Sean Dorcy at the helm I feel a bit better, he knows the ins and outs of my software almost as well as myself.

I feel your pain there. I got 60-70% of the way through writing my own TO web app but lost motivation in the end because of the pressure of messing up tournaments if I didn't make it good enough. Not that I think you should give up. It sounds like you have a solid idea of what you're creating and the game could really do with somethink to encourage more tournaments to be held.

Thanks guys, for your respective work, in both voidestate and Cryodex. You guys rock.

I'll have to check out the QR code later tonight, it it's up and running. I can't get all the functionality at work, so print option is broken. I'm curious what you're using for a QR code format. I'll have to make the most ridiculous epic squad I can think of, print it out, and see if my smartphone can read the QR code OK.

Is this dead? Or did it just move off forum?

Jacob

This is the reason for my absence on these forums as of late. I've been learning programming on the side and interacting with an IDE with my free time. Although not the quickest way to go about things, but I'm making progress.

Thanks guys, for your respective work, in both voidestate and Cryodex. You guys rock.

I'll have to check out the QR code later tonight, it it's up and running. I can't get all the functionality at work, so print option is broken. I'm curious what you're using for a QR code format. I'll have to make the most ridiculous epic squad I can think of, print it out, and see if my smartphone can read the QR code OK.

It does fail if the squadron's too big... but you can do 300 point squadrons OK (or at least all the ones I've tried).

Here's an example: http://xwing-builder.co.uk/xws/67802#view=qr

Cheers

vs

Thanks guys, for your respective work, in both voidestate and Cryodex. You guys rock.

I'll have to check out the QR code later tonight, it it's up and running. I can't get all the functionality at work, so print option is broken. I'm curious what you're using for a QR code format. I'll have to make the most ridiculous epic squad I can think of, print it out, and see if my smartphone can read the QR code OK.

It does fail if the squadron's too big... but you can do 300 point squadrons OK (or at least all the ones I've tried).

Here's an example: http://xwing-builder.co.uk/xws/67802#view=qr

Cheers

vs

Neat. Amazingly, my phone was able to capture that from the screen. Scanning from a physical printout might be slightly harder, might try printing it out at home for kicks. For 100 point squads you would be fine with any possible squad, I think.

Impressive, my phone read it just fine even with how huge that block is. My next concern is how a standard printer handles it, lol.

Here is a bit of what I've been up to and the reason for my silence on the forums:

Looks Realy nice!

Ok, Tournament App i have, but a Squadbuilder App i Like to see!

Hope we can Download it soon.