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[Chaithi]

Hello all!

As an exercise to teach me how to learn Android development and because my g/f bought me Dominion + every expansion, I decided to program a randomizer program that will allow you to choose all the expansions you own and then will give you a random set of 10 (and add in various non-Kingdom cards you need based on the selections). It also lets you choose to not play with Attack cards or to require at least one reaction card if you do get an attack.

It's in the beta phase right now and if anyone wants to beta test the application and provide feature requests, just let me know here! I'm happy to listen and learn more about developing.

[AdamH]

I've been wanting to learn how to develop Android apps for quite a while now, and I've tried it a couple of times. Each time I was unable to get a development environment set up. Since you said you're in beta I imagine you've got this set up -- did you use a tutorial? If so, could you link it? I may end up giving this another shot soon.

If it doesn't require me to successfully set up a development environment and/or I end up getting mine to work I'd be happy to help you beta test. I've got plenty of feature requests (the app I'm using now doesn't have all of them and I'd totally use yours if it had all the right features). I'd even be willing to help you implement them if that ends up being possible.

[Chaithi]

Hi AdamH,

I used the Android Studio, which is a modified Eclipse Java environment: http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

To begin beta testing, I just need to know your Google+ email to add you to the beta testing community on Google+. Once added, you go to the community and the link is there.

Go ahead and PM that to me and I'll get you added.

I tried it out last night on a game and turned out pretty fun.

[AdamH]

PM sent.

My ideal Dominion randomizer app would do the following:

Allow me to enable/ban any particular expansion or promo, or any particular card.

Allow me to specify a minimum or maximum number of cards to be used from any of the following sets:

any expansion
attacks
reactions
villages
trashers
draw cards
treasures
Alt VP cards
cards of a particular cost
(I'm sure I'm missing categories here, but you get the idea; each card will belong to any set of these categories, you know)

^^ most Dominion apps out there will do all of these things already, particularly Dominion Shuffle which is the one I use right now. The features that you can't find out there that I think would be useful are:

allow me to select any number of kingdom cards! All of the apps make me pick exactly ten cards (if you could Young Witch+Bane as one card, which you should), but I don't always want to do that! What if I want to play in veto mode, I'll want the app to give me 12 cards (or 13 or more if there are more players). What if I want to playtest a fan card (or a few fan cards)? I'll want the app to give me only 9 cards (or less if I want to playtest a few).

The display: Hermit and Madman should be on the same line, not appear as two separate kingdom cards. Same with Urchin/Mercenary (in fact if it was me, I'd just store those at the names of the cards and be done with it).

If there are Shelters, Colonies, Ruins, Spoils, Potion, etc. put a nice little reminder of that somewhere like the other apps do, but don't mix them with the kingdom cards. I don't know of anyone that stores their Potions with the P cards.

[Chaithi]

The app already allows you to turn on/off specific expansions/promo cards.

It also does check to see if you need the potion card, spoils, and determine if you should use Hovel/Overgrown Estate, etc and the Platinum/Colony card.

I already have the code in place for differing number of cards, would just need to implement an option for the user to decide number of cards.

[AdamH]

OK, I got that Android Studio installed. Is there a way you can share the project with me? I got this thing on Google+ about someone putting me in their circle, but I don't actually use my Google+ so I don't know what to do with it. I don't even know if that was you.

Wow, I sound pretty technologically illiterate there. 

[Chaithi]

Hi Adam,

Yeah, that was me. Android uses Google+ communities for the beta testing. I've gone ahead and pushed the app live, so you should be able to download it from the store sometime this afternoon. The name is "Dominion Randomizer"

I've begun work on adding some of those features you've suggested.

[werothegreat]

Wow, I sound pretty technologically illiterate there. 

It's okay.  No one uses Google+.

[jsh357]

Checked out the app a second ago, looks pretty clean, though obv. not as robust as Dominion Shuffle just yet.

Don't forget to add Prince to the list of promos!

Also, if you were to add the ability to add fan cards, that would be amazing since none of the randomizers I'm aware of have that.  Maybe just have them save to an xml or something, though I'm not sure how you've coded this so it may not be so simple.

Another feature that I sometimes find myself wanting in randomizers: the ability to select fewer card, e.g. generate only 5 Kingdom cards.  What can I say, I play variants IRL sometimes.

[ConMan]

There's one function that I don't think I've seen in Dominion Shuffle that would be nice - a Black Market generator. My absolute preference for how it would work would be something like this:

1. Generate a Kingdom
2. If Black Market is in the Kingdom, have a button next to it or a menu option to generate the market
3. Pick through a few basic options - maybe "Same restrictions as Kingdom", "All sets", "Saved rules"
4. App generates a Black Market consisting of cards not already in the Kingdom that meet the settings in step 3, and either lists them, or shows them three at a time letting you indicate whether you buy one and then place the remainder at the bottom

There would be various ways to fine tune step 4 (e.g. letting you choose the order you put them back), but just being able to generate the list would be good.

[AdamH]

All right, I joined the beta testers group and put the app on my phone. I'll work on trying to break it and I'll keep my eyes open for features that get added.

I'm wondering if there's anything else I can do to help out with development or is that not worth it? I think I have the development environment ready but it would be easier to test it with a project.

Also, when displaying the cards used, it would be helpful to be able to sort them alphabetically as well as by expansion. Not sure if that was mentioned yet.

[Chaithi]

Thanks all. I've updated to v1.2 and included the ability to choose whether you want truly random or a smooth cost spread. Also, per popular demand, let you select how many cards you want from 1 to 20.

[Chaithi]

Also, when displaying the cards used, it would be helpful to be able to sort them alphabetically as well as by expansion. Not sure if that was mentioned yet.

Right now it sorts by expansion first and then alphabetically. I need to work on a whole preference screen

[LibraryAdventurer]

I also wrote myself a little Dominion randomizer. Except I'm not much of a programmer and what I do know is bits and pieces of obsolete language like C. So I took an open source game written in C (Angband), and built my Dominion randomizer off of it. I describe it as a parasite who infested the game code and killed it while feeding off of its organs to grow into something completely different.