Starbase for iPad - dev blog video 1

[simonh]

Turns out you can do screen recordings from you iPad, directly on an attached Mac. Cool!

http://youtu.be/Bn0_Ez5_BsI

My first ever Youtube video! I considered re-recording it, but it's hilarious (for me anyway). Listen out for my wife sneezing ,and also her sister skyping us from China half way through.

Anyway, it's still a decent overview of the state of the app so far.

Simon Hibbs

 

[DickNervous]

Very cool!

 

[Enoff]

Looks very cool Simon! I meant to checkout your windows starbase, looks very interesting!

I thought the video was fine, especially compared to a lot I've watched on youtube. Makes a fun video diary of your development

 

[simonh]

Thanks for the comments.

I'm very proud of StarBase on the desktop, but while it has a lot of functionality, I don't think it's ever achieved it's potential. I bit off more than I could chew. Trying to make it generic and highly customisable introduced a lot of complexity that never really offered sufficient advantages to make it worthwhile. Also continuing further development isn't an option as I have too many other priorities for my time at home.

Developing on the iPad though means I can make productive use of time that I'd otherwise spend reading or playing games. For the iPad version I'm going to aim for dedicated Traveller functionality and a plain SEC file format, for Travellermap.com compatibility. I may eventually do a version for another system, such as Stars Without Number, but it would be a separate app.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Golan2072]

Wow! excellent. It might probably also be relatively easy to port to Android as well (IIRC there is a Python shell for Android as well).

 

[simonh]

Wow! excellent. It might probably also be relatively easy to port to Android as well (IIRC there is a Python shell for Android as well).

I'm completely open to the idea, and can provide a copy of the source to anyone who wants to have a go.

Simon Hibbs

 

[aramis]

Wow! excellent. It might probably also be relatively easy to port to Android as well (IIRC there is a Python shell for Android as well).

SL4A has a python module available. It's S-L-O-W.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Sweet.

So, will this bad boy work with iOS 5.1?

I ask since that is the OS I have and I don't see an upgrade anywhere in my near future but I sure would like to have and use this app.

 

[simonh]

So, will this bad boy work with iOS 5.1?

I'm afraid not.

The current version of Pythonista is iOS 7 or later. While it's possible I may have a useable version of this by the end of the year, that would be after the release of the next version of iOS and also possibly a few versions of Pythonista down the line as well, so it would depend on the situation then.

If you can't upgrade your current device, I'm sure the new hardware in the autumn will be nice and shiny!

Simon Hibbs

 

[simonh]

SL4A has a python module available. It's S-L-O-W.

Kivy looks like a possible alternative:

http://kivy.org/#home

It's also app-store compatible:

http://kivy.org/docs/guide/packaging-ios.html

The problem for me is you have to do the developnment on a desktop, there's no option to develop driectly on an iPad. That's the real advantage of Pythonista for me, in fact it's what makes this project even possible at all.

It might be possible to port to Kivy later, but it's a completely separate UI toolkit. No idea how hard that would be. I'll have a look if I get the time, but it's not a high priority I'm afraid.

Simon Hibbs