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First post here!
I remember the old TSR monster cards that came out with 1st edition, I think. They had the creature pictures on the front and the stats on the Back. I was looking at my ipod earlier and was struck at how much it card-like it appears.
I started musing about an official Paizo product that would have pictures of monsters on a parchment or plain background smiliar to what is in the Bestiary. The images could be either landscape or vertical depending on the dimensions of the creature. I could then pass the image around the table during a game or just flash it at players, touching the screen to flip to necessary statistics.
I suppose something similiar could be done by using the laptop hooked to the HDTV or a tablet PC. I dunno, I am addicted the iTouch idea though due to the card sized screen. Just seems like too perfect an idea to waste. I'd start making it myself, but I wouldn't know what art to use, but I could code something with HTML or PDF. I nothing else even having a Photoshopped picture of all the critters could be used even without the attached stats, just not as cool
I know I saw a post on official monster cards as an upcoming product, has anyone at Paizo thought of making a digital version as well?
Input?
Considering that there hasn't been a digtial adaptation of the GameMastery item cards I would not expect digital monster cards. I also would not expect them to commit to a particular mobile OS with an in-house product.
I'm not sure you could pull it off well with HTML or PDF on the iPhoneOS. From my experiance it isn't easy to load and use locally hosted HTML files, and many PDFs need a 3rd party readier (of which there are many of many qualites).
I'm not saying mobile gaming apps are bad, I'm getting addicted to my touch as well, and am looking forward to this years up comming cycle of pocket projectors. May actually
be worth a darn if the brightness figures of CES were right. Were closer to digitally augmented table top, but still I fear about 5 years out from it being even moderatly practical for a majorty of hobby market. (not just us techie gamers)
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I use a full screen browser (H Browser) for the stubborn pages, the GoodRead PDF reader and Stanza. There is little that I can read on my laptop that I can't read on the iPod and that list gets smaller every day.
Here's a mockup of what I was talking about:
I fully know that image is copyrighted and I am only posting it here as an example. If I could arrange artists for a project like this, I would (just didn't have one available today). Really, I'd be more than happy to have someone else release this, if not I'll do something homebrew for my own games. I know I can just scroll around a pdf on iTouch, but with text in the way it kinda throws off the mystery, plus its kinda cool having the stats regularly available and formatted so they conform to the screen!
That was kinda my point. I have not seen H Browser, and I mainly use Aji Annotater for PDFs (including many MB of Paizo and other party digital gaming products). A well linked up and formatted PDF could work... but in the past there have sometimes been problems with using Paizo PDFs in Preview, and without some kind of base line standard for iPhoneOS (unless you count the integrated PDF viewer used for web-hosted files or email attachments) it will likely run into glitches.
It is still an interesting idea, just difficult.
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I just purchased a CSS template for Safari that will make the coding easier, so no worries about those difficulties. I should be able to get the page to reformat with orientation or indeed display an alternate version if the iPhone is turned. I'm planning on just includng those bottom two buttons for Description and Statistics of each creator unless someone comes up with a better idea.
The artwork is kinda the main purpose for this exercise. If I upload a few images to test things out, they are not going to be the copywritten images of Paizo. The pictures are kinda bothering me, though, because I have no idea of where to find creative commons pictures for each of those entries. So until I'm given some direction, I will just be using placeholder graphics.
I don't want pages of people telling me I can't use the Paizo images, I realize they are not part of the OGL and are licensed. I would not host something like that online. If they ever gave their blessings, I'd be glad to turn over the code and even resize every image to optimize for iPhone/iTouch viewing for the pages to exist in a Paizo approved area.
Any artists interested in contributing to a project like this. I don't plan on packaging it as an actual iTunes app. I don't have the Mac, the SDK or the ability to do that. It would simply be a webpage optimized for iPhone viewing and would only live hosted with alternate images or with Paizo's blessing.
I have yet to do any real work on this project. I purchased the CSS templates because I thought it would be a great way of getting my feet wet with iPhone optimization. So it is no harm or foul if someone official tells me this is a bad idea or that a similiar porject is being worked on in house.