The Clan Lord Sentinel

I gave up on the stylized Picasso-esque thing. Just couldn't get it to look the way I liked scaled up while still being legible scaled down.

So, riffing on the original now:


Any strong opinions?

And as long as I'm posting, here's a little sneak preview of the new UI:



The little translucent black window with the point on it is for taking notes about people -- you can pop it up by double-clicking someone or hitting enter.

(Putting this in the PPD section so I can delete Cinnamon's posts.)

That is hot. Are the generic icons by player names editable, or do they reflect the character's in game icon? Or neither?

Generic icons are placeholders. At a minimum, they'll be the the default icon for the player's race and gender. I'd like them to be a little bit cooler but there's technical mumble mumble mumble.

Oh yeah, and iClan 2 fun fact: my signature is a screenshot. =D

Will this version work with growl?

Largo wrote:Will this version work with growl?

That's the plan.

Looks great! Love the new UI. And it looks to me like this would make a great iPhone app...

I've kind of been thinking in circles about an iPhone version.

You can't run background apps on an iPhone, so to make the 'has logged on' notification magic happen I'd need to use the new 'push notification' feature in iPhone OS 3. The problem there is that I'd need to run a server 24/7 and store everyone's friends list on it in order to make the actual pushing happen.

As cool as that'd be, it's a pretty hefty bit of work on my end both to code and play sysadmin, on top of the added expense to upgrade my hosting to a package that'll let me run a high-frequency cron job and open a raw TCP socket to Apple. It's hard for me to justify that to myself on either front, especially since there's no way iClan can ever be more than a labor of love -- there isn't exactly a huge market for add-ons to a free game.

(This isn't me begging for money and shouldn't be interpreted as such. The time and effort cost far outweighs the financial side of things. Even if I already had appropriate hosting available I'd probably still tend towards laziness.)

So without push, the most I could do is a nice-looking app displaying a list of players. And in practical terms, I'm not sure how much better that is than the Informer web site. And looking at CL players from an iPhone has a larger glaring problem either way -- how useful is it to know who's clanning when you don't have any way of logging in yourself?

Skirwan wrote:I've kind of been thinking in circles about an iPhone version.

You can't run background apps on an iPhone, so to make the 'has logged on' notification magic happen I'd need to use the new 'push notification' feature in iPhone OS 3. The problem there is that I'd need to run a server 24/7 and store everyone's friends list on it in order to make the actual pushing happen.

As cool as that'd be, it's a pretty hefty bit of work on my end both to code and play sysadmin, on top of the added expense to upgrade my hosting to a package that'll let me run a high-frequency cron job and open a raw TCP socket to Apple. It's hard for me to justify that to myself on either front, especially since there's no way iClan can ever be more than a labor of love -- there isn't exactly a huge market for add-ons to a free game.

(This isn't me begging for money and shouldn't be interpreted as such. The time and effort cost far outweighs the financial side of things. Even if I already had appropriate hosting available I'd probably still tend towards laziness.)

So without push, the most I could do is a nice-looking app displaying a list of players. And in practical terms, I'm not sure how much better that is than the Informer web site. And looking at CL players from an iPhone has a larger glaring problem either way -- how useful is it to know who's clanning when you don't have any way of logging in yourself?

I understand, but it might still be useful without push notification. You can check your iPhone/iPod Touch anywhere in the house (or outside in the summer) to see who's clanning and only go down in the basement to log on if people are around. I don't know the effort it takes to make an iPhone version though, might not be worth it.

I think it's gorgeous. I'm excited about the UI. Thanks so much for iClan, Skirwan. I use it every day.

Drablak wrote:I understand, but it might still be useful without push notification. [...] I don't know the effort it takes to make an iPhone version though, might not be worth it.

A notificationless version is definitely something I'm still actively thinking in circles about.

In part it comes down to whether I can come up with a UI design that's usable but unique enough to keep my interest. iClan doesn't really *do* much, when you get down to it -- the program is 99% UI -- and an iPhone app that just fetches the player list and shows it in a bog-standard table view is kind of boring.

So I guess what I'm saying is: if anyone wants an iPhone version, draw a really cool mockup and inspire me.

Skirwan wrote:

Drablak wrote:So I guess what I'm saying is: if anyone wants an iPhone version, draw a really cool mockup and inspire me.

Now there's a challenge! Go Phroon!

It looks really cool Skirwan

I don't have a mac(sorta....) or iphone, but i can appreciate the work you're putting into it.

Skirwan wrote:Oh yeah, and iClan 2 fun fact: my signature is a screenshot. =D

He's right, I've seen it.

Drablak wrote:

Skirwan wrote:So I guess what I'm saying is: if anyone wants an iPhone version, draw a really cool mockup and inspire me.

Now there's a challenge! Go Phroon!

I thought my job was to annoy Skirwan with bug reports.

Phroon wrote:

Drablak wrote:

Skirwan wrote:So I guess what I'm saying is: if anyone wants an iPhone version, draw a really cool mockup and inspire me.

Now there's a challenge! Go Phroon!

I thought my job was to annoy Skirwan with bug reports.

Well if he doesn't make an iPhone version you won't be able to report bugs on it, now will you?