12/01/2009

War Builder

So after my bemoaning the fact that GW doesnt make software for Mac for building armies (in this post) I felt that i should "put my money where my mouth is".

As some of you may know, by day i am a software engineer (I write music software), so i figured that i could write this as a little side project. And thus "War Builder" was born! At the moment its not quite ready to go (I'm still fighting a few small issues), but its all basically there.

War Builder lets you build 40K army lists, in a classic Mac OS style (i.e single window, lots of drag and drop etc). Its written in pure objective-c / cocoa, so unfortunately it will only work on OSX, but im sure there are lots of OSX users out there who would be interested in this application.

I intend to release War Builder (once finished) for free on this blog.

But at the moment one of my big problems is my lack of design skills! So im asking for help from the OSX wargaming / design community. What i need is a talented individual to draw me some icons for War Builder! There are a couple of limitations to this - I need the icons to be in the same style as other OS X applications (ie ultra glossy, hi definition etc) and they have to use no IP of Games Workshop (so no using the GW logos for Troops / HQ / Elites etc...). Once someone has stepped forward, i can give them a full list of all the icons needed. For a few examples of the types of icons that i would like, take a look at any of the Apple 'iApp' icons (such as iCal, iTunes etc), Firefox, Netnewswire etc...

I would also be interested if any budding authors out there would like to help me with designing some documentation (again, leave a comment on this post, and if possible a link to other technical documents that you have written).

I cant pay for this work (free application, coded in spare time == no budget!), but you would get a full credit in the about box, and a warm fuzzy feeling from contributing to the greater good!

If it sounds like something you would be interested in, leave me a comment on this post and ill be in contact (if possible please also post a link to some of your design work. I have a very specific vision for the graphics for this project, so apologies in advance if i turn someone down because their work doesnt match what im after)

And just to tease a little bit, here is a screen shot of War Builder running on my dev machine

PS - Just in case any one was wondering, no this wont replace your codex. War Builder (for obvious reasons) will not ship with any codex data - YOU WILL STILL NEED YOUR PAPER CODEX. Nor do i have any intention of providing this codex data, again for the obvious reasons. Everything within War Builder was created by myself and contains no IP from anyone else, I'd like to keep it that way!

PPS - If anyone would like to help me to test this, leave me a comment along with a system spec. Please note that War Builder needs Leopard to work properly. As far as i know it will work on a PPC machine (its built universal), but i dont have a PPC machine any more to test on, so its currently unknown as to if it will work properly...

8 comments:

Dave D. said...

Love the idea, as a Mac addict I would love this. As it happens I am a >novice at Illustrator (have CS3 version) and would be willing to help out if you provided a list of stuff you want (as well as image size requirements, etc.)

Paul Chana said...

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the offer! The main thing that i need at the moment is an icon for the application.
If you can drop me an email (paul [att] expdigital {dot} co 'dot' uk) I can send you more info :)
(ps - sorry for the email addy being all split up, helps me to avoid even more spam )

Unknown said...

Hello,
I love your idea to make a WarBuilder for Mac users. I'm searching for one for some weeks now and I finally found your blog.
Did you manage to have a more final version ? Do you need some beta user to help you in this tool design and devs ?
In any case, I will follow your work.

Good chance for this tool writing.
Best Regards from France.
Yannick.

Matt said...

I am also interested in giving this program a test drive! I'd looked at a similar product for XP, but honestly don't want to shell out $40 for something that I'll likely only use a few times.

I have a Macbook Pro running 10.5.6 on a 2.2 ghz Core 2 Duo platform. Please shoot me an e-mail at mjohnson13 (at) gmail dot com.

Thanks!

Paul Chana said...

Yannick, please drop me an email if you want to beta test, my email is in a comment above...

Unknown said...

Loving the idea of this as I would like to beta test it as I been searching for one for some time, I always been trapped by Windows, but something like this is going to be awesome as half of my time or all of my time is on a mac.

Unknown said...

Hi, i like so much the idea of this program!!!
If it is possible, i'd like to test War builder!!!
I've macbook, 2.4ghz core 2 Duo, 4gb ddr2, running osx 10.5.7

Guglielmo

Olterman said...

I am desperate for a software to keep my army lists in. I am running a macbook pro, the newest model with snow leopard 10.6.1.

Get in touch with me if you are interested in another tester