App: Magic The Gathering Life Counter

RickSchrader

I know several people were looking for a developer to get this started, so I put together a Magic The Gathering life counter app.

I don't play MTG, so any changes I make would need to be driven by community feedback.  

It shows one player's life count at the top and another's at the bottom, each starting at 20.  In the center, there is a timer that will count up seconds/minutes/hours when started.

Button functions:

Up - removes 1 life from the top player's counter

Up long press - adds 1 life to the top player's counter and continues to add life until the button is released

Down - removes 1 life from the bottom player's counter

Down long press - adds 1 life to the bottom player's counter and continues to add life until the button is released

Select - starts/resets (and stops) the timer

Select long press - resets both counters to 20

When the timer hits certain times, the watch will vibrate:

45 minutes - one long vibe

46, 47, 48, 49 minutes - one short vibe each

50 minutes - three short vibes

Links to download and view source are available on MyPebbleFaces: http://www.mypebblefaces.com/view?fID=2468

AdamCoomes

I love it! I think all it needs for now is some UI improvements. I'd take off the right hand UI element and increase the size of the numbers. That would be a solid start. I don't think it needs the MTG logo or anything.

I do like the format of this UI:

http://www.mypebblefaces.com/view?fID=1136&aName=ampos&pageTitle=Magic+Counter&auID=1212

But I think the arrows and reversed numbers is unnecessary. Just having the 2 white areas with black font and making the rest black would look real nice.

One little feature that could be worth adding is a timer (which counts up), and could sit in the middle between the 2 life totals. It would reset with the middle button. A timer would be nice so you know how much time you have in the round for tournament play.

That's about all I think this needs. It doesn't need to be overly fancy. It's already super functional!

RickSchrader

I'm glad it's helpful. I'll work on some of your suggestions as I have time this week.

AdamCoomes

You're seriously awesome Rick!

RickSchrader

I added an app icon, removed the right hand button label icons, set up the two white areas, and increased the font size today. 

AdamCoomes

Rick - this is PERFECT! It's now the top app on my watch. I'm going to use it Friday night. You gotta get this on mypebblefaces.com so it gets more exposure. You're going to make a lot of people super happy!

Reach out to me any time http://twitter.com/adamcoomes and let me know if there's ever anything I can do for you in return. And, I'd love to stay in touch!

RickSchrader

I've added the counter in the center and updated github and MyPebbleFaces.

Dan10

This is a great app, the only trouble is that it is challenging to increase life while it is very easy to decrease life. Is there someway to make increasing life easy? Could you make it so that if you long press either the down or up buttons it increases life one point after another with just one press? 

RickSchrader

That was requested over on MyPebbleFaces too. I'll work on that next.

AlexAltman

I was actually thinking of making one of these myself, but decided to check if one already existed. Good thing too.

My idea was slightly different, in that it only tracked one player, and also kept track of poison counters. However, this still works.

Up/Down arrow, followed by Select: select a player.

Up/Down arrow, followed by Select: select either life or poison.

Up/Down arrow: increase or decrease counter.

Select when no player/counter is selected: start/stop timer.

Long select: reset life totals to 20, poison counters to 0, and timer to 50.

Back: back out of the selection you made.

Might make it slightly more complex with the poison counter tracking as well, though. I was inspired by the Magic Life Counter app on the Play store, which tracks all of this, but also has (to me) unnecessary extra counters for stuff.

RickSchrader

@Alex - thanks for the comment. I can't take any credit for the ideas in my version. Those came from ampos (http://www.mypebblefaces.com/view?fID=1136&aName=ampos&pageTitle=Magic+Counter&auID=1212) and Adam Coomes. 

I don't think it's possible right now to change the behavior of the back button, so your control ideas would need to be tweaked a bit. However, I think we might be able to collaborate a bit to fit the poison counter tracking into this version. What if we kept the controls as they are (it seems like fewer button presses to get things done this way), but allowed a double-click of the select button to switch between adjusting life and poison? We would just need some way to indicate which is currently being adjusted (icons or something). I'll be happy to work on it if we can come up with a good way to do it. Thoughts? 

Edit after some conversation in the comments on MyPebbleFaces: The consensus of a couple other users seems to be that poison counters might not provide much value and could over-complicate the app.  Given that, I am not going to consider this feature as a high priority for now.

RickSchrader

I just uploaded version 1.3 to MyPebbleFaces (http://www.mypebblefaces.com/view?fID=2468).  This version allows you to continuously add life while the up or down button is held.  Hopefully, this makes adding life take less time.  

RickSchrader

Version 1.4 is now available on MyPebbleFaces (http://www.mypebblefaces.com/view?fID=2468).  Based on user feedback, it separates the counter reset from the timer reset.  The button functions have been updated in the text above and on MyPebbleFaces.

RickSchrader

Version 1.6 is now available on MyPebbleFaces (http://www.mypebblefaces.com/view?fID=2468).  It adds vibrations starting at 45 minutes on the timer and changes the amount of time the select button has to be held before triggering a score reset (it now matches that of the other two buttons).