Writing a Pony iOS/Android collection cataloguing app! (WARNING: PIC HEAVY!)

[RAMChYLD]

*squee* looks awesome... can't wait to see the finished product. can you post screenies of completed entries when the database is finished for iOS? I'm seriously additional memory shopping in preparation for this app... I'm a bit of an app junkie already lol..... can't wait for the android version, there's already pony pics on my phone for when I'm shopping, lol, this will make things a million times easier!

Sure. But I don't think it will be finished so soon. Took me almost a week just to get the UI working and even then there's still some stuff to do (note the lack of icons in the section selector). Also, I've yet to create the other stuff like the date selector and various selectors for some of the entry fields.

[Stormness_1]

oh believe me I know how time consuming this stuff is.. I'm not a dev or anything, but I do know a few, hell even dated a couple back in the day before hubby came along. I just got my tax refund, so I'm all like, I'll buy this stuff now, because I'll be totally broke when it comes out, and memory cards are so freakin expensive here! So tempted to get on ebay, but you never know with quality on there, and sadly my phone just eats the crappy ones (freezes up and wipes them, takes me days to recover all my data).

[hathorcat]

Impressive work so far!

[xdartfrogx]

Just a thought:
Since this will be a track your collection app, and all info entered  by the user is stored on the individual phone, will this app allow use when one is not able to get wifi? I ask this b/c I use an ipod touch. I only get wifi when I'm at home or near a hotspot. I would purchase this app soley to compare ponies I have with ones I come across at flea markets/thrift stores and wifi is never available when I'm out hunting I have a ton of ponies and it's hard to remember which ones are already in my possession- especially G3s  I have bought a lot of games that I can't use when there's no wifi, not knowing that it was required to have in order to play. Makes it a bummer when on the road. Just my 2¢though. Either way, sounds like an awesome app is underway! 

[MLPlyte]

I'm pretty sure they already stated they want this to be an offline app. So I don't think you'll have any problems with your touch.

I think this app is a great idea. I've wanted to do something similar myself, but I don't have the knowledge yet to really implement it. I'm on an iPhone, btw. I look forward to trying this out once it's finished, and I think your ideas so far are awesome. A lot of the categories I probably won't use, but I know others will find them useful. Thank you for putting your effort into this - I know I'm not the only collector who has been dying for something like this for ages!

Also, can you release apps through Cydia without going through Apple? For those of us who jailbreak our phone... I know that would lower your market a bit, but if it's possible it might be a good way to get some feedback on a beta version. Just a thought.

[RAMChYLD]

I'm pretty sure they already stated they want this to be an offline app. So I don't think you'll have any problems with your touch.

Also, can you release apps through Cydia without going through Apple? For those of us who jailbreak our phone... I know that would lower your market a bit, but if it's possible it might be a good way to get some feedback on a beta version. Just a thought.

Yep, will be fully usable offline. In fact, using the free version offline means that you won't see any ads, probably, so there's an incentive to stay unconnected

As for Cydia, I will look into it.

[Dragonbait]

I'd love an app like this. I wouldn't mind ads if the app was free to download. I would have to wait until you made an android version though.

One thing, please make sure when you do the Android version that you let the app be moved to the SD card! A lot of the older Android phones don't come with a lot of internal space. I look forward to seeing this in action!

[munchy]

I'm so excited for this! I have a question about adding pictures. Will the pictures of ponies be stored in the app itself or will I have to keep the photos on my phone in order for them to show up in the app? Like, can you take a picture, upload it to the app, and then delete it off your phone? Sorry if this is a stupid/obvious question haha! I'm not the most tech savvy person

[keikokukien]

Has anyone suggested adding 'custom ' to the drop down menu for "generation"? I would LOVE a categorizing app for my android if you manage to make this operational in the future. It's super generous what you are doing here! Good luck with your work.

[RAMChYLD]

One thing, please make sure when you do the Android version that you let the app be moved to the SD card! A lot of the older Android phones don't come with a lot of internal space. I look forward to seeing this in action!

Definitely. I feel your pain on this one. Mine only has 160MB(!), and it came out last year, not 10 years ago! Whoever at HTC came up with the decision that 160MB is enough by 2011 standards should be fired.

I'm so excited for this! I have a question about adding pictures. Will the pictures of ponies be stored in the app itself or will I have to keep the photos on my phone in order for them to show up in the app? Like, can you take a picture, upload it to the app, and then delete it off your phone? Sorry if this is a stupid/obvious question haha! I'm not the most tech savvy person

I'm going to try make it store pictures in the app itself. So once the image is inducted into the app, you can delete it from the gallery/photos screen.

Has anyone suggested adding 'custom ' to the drop down menu for "generation"? I would LOVE a categorizing app for my android if you manage to make this operational in the future. It's super generous what you are doing here! Good luck with your work.

Will look into it once I get the app to start storing data

[scarletjul]

Ooh, I think it looks awesome so far! 

I have nothing to add in terms of suggestion, but I really like the idea of a free version and a paid version.  If it is an app I end up using a lot, Zi'm willing to pay to $10.

(and my iPad has a camera, so I like being able to take pics of my phones.).

[Juri]

I think this sounds like a great idea! Maybe a paid version of the app and a free 'test' version so that people could see what they were buying?

I far prefer no ads, but thats just because I dont want my phone to fill up with accidental bloatware.

Also if an app like this included some way to add nirvanas or variants or something that would be amazing - also petites and dream beauties!

I would be willing to pay up to $12 or so, as long as the app was easy to use, and wasnt laggy.

[RAMChYLD]

Bump!

Ok, sorry I went silent for so long. Lots of things happening to me at once and confusing the heck out of me and causing both my depression and euphoria to creep in and out like madness (on the good side, I got BBC Entertainment back and am happily getting my daily dose of Doctor Who again. On the bad side, some job issues and personal insecurity (whose net result is triggering my depression) crept up).

Firstly, I'm proud to announce that I've made a lot of progress with the "add new pony" part of the app over the week. That's the good news. The bad news is, that's only one-fifth of the app

There's still some things that need to be done before it's even a quarter complete. I admit it's my fault for slacking off (if not my depression draining my mood to code). First of all I intend to make several item chooser wheels user-extensible. This means that you'll be able to add new generations, new pony types, etc without needing to wait for me to push out an update. Currently they're hand-coded and can't be altered. Secondly, icons on the section bar at the bottom of the screen (and perhaps other beautification like soft, lightly visible image on the app's background). Thirdly, changing the text on the switches from On/Off to Yes/No. And lastly (and most importantly), to get the app to actually save. I have a prototype of the save command cooked up, but it's not tested yet as I'm not sure if it's correctly written.

Aside from that, I need to create the code to recall the information and allow people to view and alter the recorded pony profiles. After all, it's no point if you can record your ponies but can't recall what you recorded   . I guess after that, the first version of the app will be finally ready.

---
Okay, photos. This time, of the app really in action.
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Remember the blank box on the early prototype? They now work as intended. Tap the button on the lower right of the image to set image. It brings up the familiar gallery chooser if your iDevice has no camera. If it does have a camera, it should ask if you want to take a picture or choose from the gallery instead. However that part is untested because as it stands, the emulator doesn't emulate a camera, and my iPad is a first-gen camera-less clunker.

Addenum: I forgot to mention- I ditched my original plan, the app now stores images in it's original size. The good news is, I've also implemented zoom and pan on the image display, meaning you can now store ultra-high-def images of the pony and then zoom in and move about to see their imperfections perfectly. The bad news, well, now it's up to you to manage the image size before inducting it into the app to ensure that your iDevice memory doesn't fill up too fast

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Generation and type selector wheels! They took quite some time to figure out as well, and I actually spent time optimizing their code to the point. And I was just done squishing the final bugs on them a while ago. And I'm still not really done with them.

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Second page. A so soft technically doesn't have a tail

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Third page. Now repurposed to mostly deal with cutie marks. Because Cutie Marks are just that complicated

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Yeah, you get to select the species with a wheel too. No zebra here, but it's been added just moments ago- I realized I forgot about it
And then there's the pose. Which is also so far incomplete.

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Set and present condition information. I've implemented a calendar wheel to make it easier to enter the date. And the condition of the pony is also picked from a wheel too.

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The second last page, seller information, didn't change much. But scrollers have been implemented and works.

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On the notes screen, the Features entry has been moved here because the Cutie Marks page got too complicated.

On the side note, I'm preparing to start coding an Android version of the app. And it's going to be just as tough, I had no idea how much Java changed in the 5 years I did not code for it.

[gabumon]

Excellent!  How Exciting!

[hathorcat]

Wow! Great work!