It is very likely that if you are an iPhone owner and a D&D player there is one app that you have been longing for ever since you picked up the device from the store – a native application to store your D&D character on that understood the game. There have been other ways to store your character – pdf’s, spreadsheets, word documents, google docs, etc – but to have an actual app that assisted in the game – that was the holy grail. And now it is here – i4e.

Continue reading Finally, an iPhone app for keeping your D&D characters on: i4e

I have discovered a quick and easy way to get Facebook Notifications on your iPhone without having to wait for version 3.1 of the Facebook App to deliver the feature natively (which is still might not do either). While this system doesn’t automatically drop you into the Facebook App, it will send you push notifications to your iPhone.

Continue reading Getting Facebook iPhone push notifications without waiting for Facebook App 3.1

Always keen to give a zombie game a go, we were excited to try out Game of da Dead by Moyo studios in Sweden. The premise is fairly straight forward – planets are being taken over by zombies and you are the guy in the shooty tower attempting to defend the little dudes till they reach you and safety.

Everything about this game is geared towards the casual player. The controls took me seconds to work out, the play is fairly straight forward and there is enough going on to keep you interested. In fact, the developer promises over 100 maps to play. We haven’t got that far yet, but there is certainly a feeling of having just scratched the surface after playing 20-30 of them.

Continue reading Game of da Dead – A simple and very playable zombie Tower Defence

One of the more exciting features of the iPhone’s new OS 3 was the ability to use your device as a modem for your computer. Unfortunately, companies like Optus in Australia and AT&T in the US have seen this as an opportunity to further gauge their customers out of their hard earned cash.

Continue reading iPhone tethering in Australia – which carrier to choose [Updated - 3 Mobile]

Its no secret that Microsoft (Bill Gates in particular) has not been a big fan of Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ad campaign. Their solution to the problem was to hire Jerry Seinfeld for $10 million dollars and get him to appear in a ad or two with Bill Gates. The first of these ads has been released. The ad may be a little, well, subtle. Maybe the only thing the marketing company they hired could think of was “Maybe if we get them thinking about our ads, they might stop thinking about our products…” I suppose we’ll have to wait and see if the advertising strategy works…

Update: The situation has improved immensely since this post was written.

While I don’t think that dice rollers on your phone will ever replace the tactile awesomeness of rolling a handful of dice, I have investigated the growing number of dice roller’s available in the App Store. By and large they have been either free or only a dollar or two, which is, in most cases, too much. Of all the things that you would think would be easy to get right, an application that actually rolls the dice how you would on a games night would be one of them, surely.

Problem One: Crappy graphics…

This is almost universal amongst all of them. Only one as come close to getting it right and it has blatently stolen the graphics from the Chessex website (see our blogroll…). Others show squares that have numbers in them (regardless of the die you actually rolled), and yet others just show text (probably not the worst option in all honesty…). A simple UI that does what you’d expect, and not require obscure gestures just to use the accelerometer and which doesn’t steal from your favourite dice manufacturer would be a basic assumption for something you pay for…

Problem Two: Crappy features…

This is something that I have found most frustrating… You really want the following:

• Ability to roll multiples of one die type
• Ability to add a modifier to that die type
• Ability to roll multiple die types
• Ability to save your favourite combination of die types, multipliers and modifiers

Only one is apparently coming close to this is the D20 Dice Bag Pro ($2.99 USD/$3.99 AUD). They are the only ones who have added features to a point where it is usable (they also stole the graphics from Chessex…).

The Reviews…

After spending nearly $10 what follows is my opinion on what’s currently on offer…

D20 Dice Bag Pro

Top of the list is the D20 Dice Bag Pro. This is the only dice roller that allows you do roll multiple die types and add modifiers. It has probably the nicest UI as well. One thing that was a little annoying was the way that you add multiples of things – it wasn’t as intuitive as I would have hoped. Probably the best thing about this app is that the developer is releasing an update almost weekly, and the future features that he is promising sound quite good (like the ability to keep/drop dice from a roll, and then re-roll).

D20 Dice Bag also comes in a ‘lite’ version which doesn’t allow you to add modifiers or roll multiple die types, but is free at least. (Check out the Chessex dice set Veronica for a remarkable likeness to their images however…)

Dice Bag

This free app is really easy to use, has crappy plastic dice for images (you know, the type you have to ‘beef up’ your collection). You click on the die type you want to roll, and hey-presto, you get a number. The nice thing about this app is that it has included 3d6 and 4d6 drop lowest in the standard list of rolls.

The best part about this app is that it is free…

DiceDaemon

This app is a complete waste of money. Complete waste. The only thing that this app has on the FREE app Dice Bag is that it has ‘borrowed’ a nicer set of images from the Chessex website. That’s it. It might look pretty, but not $2.99 USD ($3.99 AUD) pretty. I don’t know how they expect to sell many copies of this app. Even for a dollar, it would be too much in my opinion.

I will give them an extra point for spelling Daemon properly though…

(Check out the Chessex dice set Translucent Purple for a remarkable likeness to their images…)

THAC0

Honestly… I don’t really know what to say about this app. They had the right idea, but it really hasn’t come together… It really hasn’t. Its difficult to use and annoying, and painful, and well… it just sucks at the moment. Its been updated recently, but still… it… well… The worst part is they charged me a dollar for it… bastards…

Anyway… check out the gallery of screenshots of the various apps in action below.