I built a score keeping app for X-Wing, and it finally got approved last night for both mobile platforms. The app lets you enter both your and your opponents ships and point values, and track points scored as the game progresses.

Disclaimer: the app will let you do stupid things. You can add ships with a ton of points, you can add no ships or way to many. None of this should break the app, but it also won’t catch your mistakes (yet).

My goal with this app was to get a proof of concept out as quick as possible, so this is by no means a finished product. Depending on how much usage it gets I have plans to make it easier to add and save lists as well as add support for multiple languages.

This app was intended to improve information about game state for *both* players. The expectation is if you are using it you will have it open on the table for both players to view. Obviously I can’t enforce this.

It’s free on both app stores:

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jaxonevans.x_wing_score_keeper

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/highground-x-wing-scorekeeper/id1473741880

I am aware of a bug with the banners on the second page displaying wrong, it is fixed on Android and a fix has been submitted to Apple’s store - and should be available later today, possibly tomorrow.

As an ancillary feature, would you consider adding dice-results tracking? If it would help, I'd be glad to work on a flow-chart/UI suggestions.

Is this considered note taking? Because it should be allowed and would make everyone’s lives so much simpler. Just downloaded!

4 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

As an ancillary feature, would you consider adding dice-results tracking? If it would help, I'd be glad to work on a flow-chart/UI suggestions.

I'm not opposed to anything if there's a demand for it - however I don't think it's likely there will be demand for this. You would have to play hundreds of games to have any statistical significance, and it sounds like a pain to keep track of. I'm open to being proven wrong though, if there's enough people asking about it I can build it.

3 hours ago, Quack Shot said:

Is this considered note taking? Because it should be allowed and would make everyone’s lives so much simpler. Just downloaded!

From the Tournament Regulations:

Players cannot take notes or reference outside material or information during a tournament round. However, players may reference official rule documents or game components that do not contain hidden information at any time or ask a judge for clarification from official rules documents.

I would argue no. It isn't outside information. If this app is in violation of the rules, then so is using a timer on your phone, or using a calculator to add up the score. If you are using it but not sharing with your opponent, that probably becomes "hidden information" and would be against the rules.

There is a bit of gray area with the wording, but I don't think there is any argument that this app violates the intent of tournament regulations. That said, I am not a judge. Listen to and respect your TOs/Marshalls.

This seems really cool. Thank you for making this.

Just downloaded the app on IOS and so far it looks good. One suggestion, and please keep in mind that I know nothing about app development, would be to add support for the XWS format and also for the QR codes from FFG/LBN. This would make the book keeping function much easier than having to enter each ship for each player.

Other than that, it looks like you are off to a good start. Thanks for developing this!

Features I'd be way more interested in than manually tracking my dice:

- List saving, so I don't have to manually re-enter it when I change between lists.

- XWS import

- QR reader import

- Landscape display

- Player names

I am immediately making this legal for all events I run. Love it!

I like it Jaxon! One suggestion (in addition to some of the things other people have suggested): color code the scores (ie: red for first player, blue for second) and/or rearrange the screen to make it immediately obvious which score goes to which player.

Out of curiosity, Does the timer play a sound when it reaches 0? Also, you should probably make it so that the timer duration can be edited. Right now the standard is 75 minutes, but there are sometimes exceptions to that. Plus, Epic is coming soon and will have different times.

I look forward to see how you develop the app down the road.

just downloaded it, thanks so much for doing this!

Just used this yesterday at our x-wing casual sunday, was super easy to keep track of scores and time remaining. I love how easy it is to input lists, so long as each player can say how much each of their ships cost at the start of the game, no need to track every last upgrade.

I'm glad you guys like the app. It sounds like everyone agrees the app needs better ways to let you save/input/change lists, so I'll get to work on those first.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, keep it coming.

One other thing: shameless self promotion request - If people would share this app to their local groups that would be awesome. The more usage the app has the more time I'll be able to dedicate to working on it. Thanks again!

On 7/28/2019 at 5:05 PM, Herowannabe said:

I like it Jaxon! One suggestion (in addition to some of the things other people have suggested): color code the scores (ie: red for first player, blue for second) and/or rearrange the screen to make it immediately obvious which score goes to which player.

Out of curiosity, Does the timer play a sound when it reaches 0? Also, you should probably make it so that the timer duration can be edited. Right now the standard is 75 minutes, but there are sometimes exceptions to that. Plus, Epic is coming soon and will have different times.

I look forward to see how you develop the app down the road.

It doesn't make a sound when you hit 0 at the moment, although that is on the long list of things I would like to do. In my games I usually just leave the app open so that I can keep an eye on the timer and score as we play, but I recognize that having it alert you when the game is over would be ideal.

I like it. When I first started it up the bottom half of the scores were cut off. After fiddling a little bit I figured out it was because I had my “text size” larger under display preferences. I’m on iPhone. So maybe increase your window size for larger dynamic text.

12 hours ago, Chemical_Jedi said:

I like it. When I first started it up the bottom half of the scores were cut off. After fiddling a little bit I figured out it was because I had my “text size” larger under display preferences. I’m on iPhone. So maybe increase your window size for larger dynamic text.

Good catch, thanks. I'll include a fix in the next update.

Random thought... is it possible to generate a barcode from XWS information? If so it would make loading lists so much easier into these apps. (Though I see someone already suggested that earlier...)

I tried it in an actual game last night. I started the game and then slept my phone to save battery. When I opened it again to update the score ten minutes later, the clock was still at 74ish minutes.

First of all, great work. I will be using this in every game from now on

I believe that importing the list should not be a priority, but I agree that being able to save your own list would be a big quality of life upgrade.

I think the timer value needs to be flexible, so you can use in a final cut game (2 hours).

The layout could use some work, it isn't very clear which player has which score.

Hey all - I just published an update with a few bug fixes. Sorry for the delay, there was a bug with the timer that was incredibly difficult to figure out, as it was related to the different behaviors or the iOS and Android operating systems.

Changes:

- The timer now runs when you leave the app or close your phone (there is a limit here, if your phone removed the running app from memory, your game will still be lost, but that only seems to happen if the app is inactive for at least an hour)

- I removed ads. There were a few bugs being caused by the banner ads, and in addition when inspecting the performance of the app, almost half of the power that the app used was to run ads. One of my goals with the app was to make it as performant as possible so that it could be used throughout the course of a tournament and in conjunction with bugs the ads were causing, I decided they weren’t worth it.

In addition I created a Facebook page and Twitter account for those that want to keep track of the app’s updates/progress.

Facebook: fb.me/highgroundx

Twitter: https://Twitter.com/highgroundx

Next on my to do list is to (as some have suggested) allow player 1 to reload the last list they used. After that I’ll get to work on more features to make it easier to share/input lists.

On 7/31/2019 at 10:21 AM, Samriis said:

Random thought... is it possible to generate a barcode from XWS information? If so it would make loading lists so much easier into these apps. (Though I see someone already suggested that earlier...)

I’m planning on something similar - encoding it to a QR code and letting the app read that code so that users can quickly share their list.

The idea is pretty simple, but the implementation will take some work so it will take some time for it to be figured it out.

I've been using the app for a couple weeks, its super great!

A nice feature would be to display the total list value. It would just make it easier at the start of the game when choosing first player.

22 hours ago, RedSquadBW said:

I've been using the app for a couple weeks, its super great!

A nice feature would be to display the total list value. It would just make it easier at the start of the game when choosing first player.

Totally agreed, I'll add it to my list.

On 7/28/2019 at 6:05 PM, Herowannabe said:

color code the scores (ie: red for first player, blue for second) and/or rearrange the screen to make it immediately obvious which score goes to which player.

Just a comment on using color as a sole indicator: color blindness can make distinguishing things based on just color difficult. An easy way to avoid that is to add a symbol along with the color or go with color combinations that can be easily distinguished by those with or without color vision deficiency.

17 hours ago, Nspace said:

Just a comment on using color as a sole indicator: color blindness can make distinguishing things based on just color difficult. An easy way to avoid that is to add a symbol along with the color or go with color combinations that can be easily distinguished by those with or without color vision deficiency.

Thanks for this - it wouldn't have crossed my mind. I'm playing with using color to distinguish the different scores, but I haven't found a design I like yet. If I do go that way I'll make sure to check how the app would look on a colorblind scale. Thanks!