Over the last few months I've been having a blast with Descent as my friends, family and I go through our campaigns. Over the time spent playing, I started to look into Descent apps on the iPhone and I couldn't find much, at least not an app that I wanted to use. So I took hold to an age-old goal of mine: write an iOS app, and I did. I would like to share what I built in the hopes that it helps someone else in finding the app they were looking for on the App Store.

Decent 2 Dice

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/descent-2-dice/id712862884?mt=8

Sweet! I love it! I would also like to see an app for record keeping and maybe a place for notes.

Thanks!

Congrats on finally writing an iOS app!

Unfortunately, it may be short lived. (The owners of the two other apps that were posted here both received take-down notices.)

Oh, yes. Thank you! I've been wanting to do this forever, but I just never got around to it.

Jee

Congrats on finally writing an iOS app!

Unfortunately, it may be short lived. (The owners of the two other apps that were posted here both received take-down notices.)

Thanks for the congrats. I hope they don't take it down, but I'd understand if they asked me to. I'm just excited that I was finally able to create something and it made it onto the App Store as it gives me inspiration to push myself further into app development.

I dug into if my app was at risk of a take down and I proactively reached out to Fantasy Flight Games and inquired about if my app was violating any of their licenses and they explained that it would. I respect Fantasy Flight Games request and I've elected to do what is right and remove my app from the App Store.

Thanks for all of your support. It's really exciting that I was able to get an app released. If the opportunity arises I'll create something else and share it.

Good luck on your future endeavors!

Next up: Generify your app. (This is good practice anyway)

Get it to work with a custom config file that defines the dice, their colors, their sides, and what properties each of the sides has. Allow it to be one of those apps that you can share documents with so you can load a custom file. Someone could then create a Descent 2e file if they wanted to and have it look the same as yours currently does. Or they could create a file for any other game that has non-standard dice (there are a number of them out there)

Start small. Support only features that are required for what you want. Then start adding more.

Here's an example in JSON of how I would define a D2E dice set for a theoretical app that doesn't exist yet. (only including the Blue attack die at the moment. You could also use XML, but I find it cumbersome / over-complicated.

dice-set: {
        name: "Descent 2e"
        symbols: {
                wound : { type: "image", image: "heart.png" }
                surge : { type: "image", image: "lightning.png" }
                range : { type: "number" }
                miss : { type: "text", text: "X" }
                defense : { type: "image", image: "shield.png" }
        }
        dice: [
                {
                        name: "Attack",
                        color: "Blue",
                        text-color: "White",
                        shape: "square",
                        max-count: 1,
                        sides: [
                                { miss : 1 },
                                { wound: 2, surge: 1, range: 2 }
                                { wound: 2, range: 3 }
                                { wound: 2, range: 4 }
                                { wound: 1, range: 5 }
                                { wound: 1, surge: 1, range: 6, preview: true }
                        ]
                },
                ...
        ]
}

(It's not perfect, and I would eventually add more stuff like scaling and positioning of the symbols, but it should give you a pretty good idea)

You could also look into how Vassal defines their dice. (Vassal modules are just zipped folders which include a couple XML files and a bunch of images)

After that, you add functionality to create the config file via a UI so that users don't have to actually edit or see the contents of the config file.

Chances are, you've got the framework for rolling and calculating already done, you just need to extract the data into a parse-able file and then NOT include the file with the app.

There is a IOS app called "Descent iDice" (is this the same one?) - they have used the images and haven't been taken down, so iI'd be surprised that yours was.

There is a IOS app called "Descent iDice" (is this the same one?) - they have used the images and haven't been taken down, so iI'd be surprised that yours was.

They may have not seen it yet, or maybe they have and are in the process of pursuing that. (It's possible they sent a letter and it was purposefully ignored, at which point they will probably be sending a couple other letters before they resort to contacting Apple directory / pursuing legal action, which, while it would leave the app up longer, would become a bigger pain for the Developer.

There is a IOS app called "Descent iDice" (is this the same one?) - they have used the images and haven't been taken down, so iI'd be surprised that yours was.

That one isn't mine. In my correspondence with Fantasy Flight, I didn't get the impression that they actively hunts down things to take down, but if they come across it they'll request it be taken down. It would make sense that apps posted on the Fantasy Flight forums are likely to get a take down notice. I reached out to them before I got one and pulled my app from the app store as it was never my intent to infringe on any licenses and I felt it was the right thing to do (and something I should have checked before release just in case, but now I know!)