Rethinking what a “dice roller” program is and can be.
Bones has been a modest success, yet I never envisioned it as anything more than a test-bed for interface ideas as well as a way to scratch my old role-playing game itches. The primary intention of the program was to allow for greater ease of use in manipulating large sets of dice, while trying to maintain some flavor of physical dice rolling. Finding that bridge between the best of the physical and virtual dice was a challenge, and seems to have been well-received.
Many have written with suggestions over the years and these typically revolve around three main needs:
- to roll a great number of dice, sometimes hundreds
- to add modifiers to individual dice and sets
- to make dice rolls dependent upon the outcome of other dice rolls. For example, only if the total of these five dice is greater than 25 should an additional die be rolled.
Personally, I’ve always wanted to be able to roll the dice in physical configurations (i.e. – to be able to physically arrange the dice into patterns) and to allow the creation of custom dice with custom roll values and perhaps even custom art assets. Is it possible to satisfy EVERY game need from AD&D to White Wolf games to Boggle to Poker Dice? This is what I hope to tackle with bones_2.
bones_2 development is scheduled to begin later this year after file_wrangler_2 and a yet-unannounced project. Be sure to monitor this blog in the future for the latest news on bones_2, or to just get a glimpse inside my development process as I tackle design and coding issues.