I just looked up from my code and realized that I haven’t updated you guys in a while about the state of DM’s Tracker. For that, I apologize.

In a nutshell, Apple rejected the most recent set of updates recently. The rep from the App Store was very clear about what they needed and wanted and frankly we totally agree with what they have pointed out. I will say that I wish it didn’t take them so long to let us know, but regardless, we now have a very clear direction for getting in the changes that Apple needs and that you guys have been asking for.

We took a few days off from DM’s Tracker updates and cranked out a silly little random name generator. If you guys like it we’ll be happy to put more time into it. We are likely to expand the name database a little. Anyway, we hope you like it – we had a blast making it!

The iphone is really fun to develop on and as I tweak the name database I think the our naming app will become better and better. We’re keeping the price at .99 on this one, but if there is enough interest I’m sure we’ll be happy to polish and add more to this one.

Take a look at it over at bit.ly/1VW7gR.

DM’s Tracker Six Minute Demo shows the inner working of DM’s Tracker. I might add in a voice over track later if it seems like we need to. The only thing to note here is that we are showing a few fixes and updates that aren’t out in the current version or in the update that is currently making its way upstream in the Apple approval queue.

Meanwhile, if you would like to add comments about the video feel free to do so.

This evening I finally got a chance to work on a D&D 4e tool that I’ve been meaning to jump on for a while. Basically we have an on-going house rule that you can spend an action point at the table to allow your most recent roll to become an automatic success. 1s are still failures, but everything else is fair game. I was talking this over with some other DM friends and one of them mentioned a system where they actually use Action Points to do a number of other things.

Here was the list he posted:

Energized: Gain one bonus action point

• Accurate: +1d6 to attack
• Powered Up: +1d6 to damage
• Lucky: Reduce the damage of an enemy hit (even a crit) by half, after damage is rolled
• Resilient: Turn a failed saving throw into a success
• Resourceful: Regain a used encounter power before the encounter is up
• Rescuer: Allow a downed ally to roll a 20 on their death save
• Quick: Move half your speed, but treat it as a shift, for one round
• Stalwart: Negate one push, pull, slide or knocked prone effect
• Sturdy: Gain a bonus healing surge, which you can use immediately, even if you have already used your second wind, or save for later as a standard healing surge

So, with that in mind I’ve created these “power cards” to accommodate. If you like them, feel free to check them out. Let me know what you think of them or if you have any suggestions for making them better.

DM’s Tracker went live in the App Store on Aug 6. We are starting to get enough feedback that we’re able to see what people want, and what we need to do next.

We are through the Apple approval process and are live in the App Store with DM’s Tracker. I could not be more proud of what we’ve done there. Basically if you a) play D&D 4th edition and b) are a Dungeon Master that wants an easier way to track initiative then you should check it out.

In related news I sent out download codes to some of the bigger D&D sites with high hopes that they will be willing and able to give me feedback. Having community leaders step up and help us make the app even better is pretty exciting stuff.

Artcharts 2009 v1.5.1 is now available in the iTunes App Store. Feel free to head on over and pick it up. It fixes a bug where single action events were not showing up correctly. Now you’ll be able to see all those Void of Course moons and Mercury Retrogrades.

Whew! For the past few months… five months to be exact I’ve been heads down coding up a storm. So much of what I’ve been doing is just getting my head around the iPhone SDK and Objective-C. Also, setting up Provisioning Profiles is no small feat.

So now I’m starting to talk up the app and let people know what we’re up to and what we are doing. In a nut shell I’m going to continue focusing on the D&D side of things and my wife, Angela, is going to be looking into the Astrology side of things. She’s already become my personal Astrologer with suggestions around launch times and so on. If she has more thoughts around this all I’m sure you’ll be seeing them here.

So now I get to start using this blog to talk about all sorts of things, but mostly it’s going to be about D&D 4e and iPhone applications that make that world flow easier. Our very first app was born from my personal frustration with tracking all the various things that needed to be tracked in your average D&D combat session. Not just initiative, hit points and defenses but also conditions and effects. Combat in 4e is complicated and I’ve seen a lot of elegant solutions for keeping track of who’s marked and when effects end or cause damage. I started out with a spreadsheet but it quickly grew more and more complicated. Suddenly I found myself mis-marking damage or not advancing a character’s turn properly. So I decided to really put my head down and fix the problem, with an iPhone.

As the application has moved along I’ve grown to really love and appreciate the D&D combat system. I’ve learned a lot about how it flows and works and places where it bogs down. During our play test sessions while using the app I’ve sadly discovered that we made some design assumptions that turned out to just not be true. So we needed to scrap a line of development that was painful to lose, but totally worth it. The new way we are doing things makes much more sense to me and as we add features it will scale much better.

Every time I use DM’s Tracker I can’t help but smile. I get a chance to see all the characters involved in combat on the screen with a basic overview. A tiny heart icon pops up when they are bloodied and a little sad face when they are dying. It’s just adorable, oops – did I say that out loud? DM sadism aside, it’s a very fun and useful tool and I’m totally committed to expanding it out and growing it into something really amazing.

The next big project is going to be working on the PC Tracker. That’s right, the ability to track the things that are most important to you around your character. Right now there is only one app in the D&D iPhone app market that does something even close to it and it’s a great little app. If you don’t know it already, check out iplay4e.com to see what’s there. You can upload a character data set from the Character Builder and have your character right there. But for as much as I love it, I want it to do something just a little different. I need somethings more often than others and I want to UI to work with me a little better. There is plenty of room in the market for two apps like this, so I’m excited to be stepping up to the plate. We are likely to take a very different approach on this one and release early and often, once we figure out which direction we are going. We are still trying to decide if it needs to be Character Builder data driven or not. We need to figure out if it is more useful to have your entire character sheet in your iPhone or just the parts that change often. Plus, since there is only so much data we can push up there before we run into copyright issues, we have to figure out a way to work with that.

Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment to come out of my shell and say howdy and let you guys know what’s coming down the road. Some really great things lie ahead.

We are waiting on advertising asset permission from Apple, but otherwise are live and selling our very first iphone application.

If you want to go check it out jump on in (will launch itunes store).

I still feel like I’m catching my breath here, but needless to say this is incredibly inspiring and exciting. For me it was a gentle reminder that every ending is just the a new beginning, even if we can’t see it yet.

here is where you pick you events

Detail Screen

Ok, I feel a little more free to talk about our first application now.

So we’ve released a little app called “Artcharts Astrology 2009″ out into the wild. We have no idea how long it will take Apple to get back to us with approval on our billing information or our app approval. So let’s talk about the application itsself. It is a very basic daily “what’s up in the sky” app. It pulls in local data from some xml files and shows you what’s currently happening in the sky. Then it allows you to drill down into an interpretation to see what those bits mean for you and yours.

Up the road we want to add in some search functionality and listen closely to feed back from our users. We decided to take the launch early and launch often approach to this first development project.

I’ve been working on a few different apps since November of 2008 and today was a huge milestone for us both. We could not be prouder of where we are today. Plus we can’t wait to show you what’s next. If you are a RPG’er who enjoys using electronic tools to get your geek on at the table then you are going to be very pleased with what’s next.