This is a personal side project to build an inofficial digital character sheet for the Pen and Paper Cypher System by "Monte Cook Games, LLC".
I am developing this in a personal capacity and best effort basis. Consider it a fun learning project for myself to support a game I enjoy and hopefully learn flutter on the way. The project is not related to my professional work in any way and provided free of charge and royalties under an open license.
Check this album for a few screenshots of the app.
The general idea behind this app is to provide a relatively simple interface for playing a character in a Cypher System game.
There is an intentional lack in "logic" that would automate parts of game play. The app is not intended to provide any dice roll mechanic or active helpers for interacting with the world. It is a character sheet.
Some logic is still fine, where it reduces toil and interaction complexity. For example, increasing the recovery bonus when gaining a tier.
The idea is to follow the Cypher Systems general flair of leaving the players in control of their game.
From a UI perspective the app is also built on top of flutter material widgets, but trying to keep it's own flair and simple interface. This is partially for style, but also for learning flutter on my part.
All data stored by the app is by default offline. The project is using protobuf to persist and potentially transfer data.
The main piece of information handled by the app is Characters. While that includes other types of objects connected to a Character (Cyphers, Items, etc.) everything starts with a Character.
The app is using the application data on its local platform (Android, Windows) and creates a folder for each Character. The folder is named after a unique ID assigned to each Character.
Inside that folder the app persists "Revisions" or versions of that character
in a strictly incremental order.
So if a Character is created it is stored in a file with the name 0. When it
is updated a new file is created named 1 with the new version of that
Character.
The files are encoded using protobuf and contain a full snapshot of a character at this point in time.
This way there is a ongoing history for every Character. The protobuf protocol also allows to keep Characters safe between updates of the app, as it helps to make changes in a backwards compatible way.
In case anything during an upgrade goes wrong, this mode for persistence allows to export and backup Characters in other means. Even sharing them across devices is technically possible and planned for the future.
Every change to a character, no matter how small will result in a new revision. Increase a pool, level up, get a new item, everything is a new revision that can be saved and eventually reverted to. At some point there may be the need for an automated cleanup mechanism, but so far Characters are still fairly small in my tests.
Due to the underlying storage mechanism used right now, web is not supported out of the box. While web support is planned, it requires a service behind it that does all the necessary authentication and storage of characters.
One idea behind the persistence design is that a (not yet implemented) server can be used by players to also send any changes to it. This way syncing a player would just be an additional way of saving a Character. Data would still remain offline first, but if a player lost their device or wants to share access to a Character they could pull their remote save.
That same service is also intended to be used for other useful game play features.
For example, if a player wants to give an item to another Character, they could use this server and share it that way. And as everything is protobuf messages passing things between apps, servers, etc. becomes really simple.
Even shared inventories (like storage in a player base) is possible that way.
In theory players can even share items, cyphers etc. via files and their favorite messaging service.
Again the idea is to develop a very open and flexible platform that allows people to run what they need and want.
Similar to the sharing and syncing idea, a GM could have a catalog of items, cyphers and abilities they want to make available to their group. The app is open to that and can allow access to a sort of database that players can exchange things with.
While this is meant for smaller groups to share their internal creations, a game creator could leverage the same idea and open license of this project to provide access to content for their game right inside the app.
First and foremost this project is meant to be used by players. If you are running or participating in a cypher compatible game, please feel free to try this out.
I'd love to get feedback and hear about your experience. Feel free to open issues here on GitHub with any bugs you will find and someone (including me) may be able to address them.
If you are a game creator and would like to use this project, the license generally allows you to do so. Feel free to reach out if that is of interest and if that results in the project growing and improving I'd love to see it happen.
Right now the app is not published on any app store and binaries still need to be made available outside the internal testing system (#7). But I'm happy to talk about options here.
Please keep in mind that this project is under active development. While a large effort already went into making sure character changes are safe, problems can still happen.
While using the app for real characters, please regularly export them as backups.
To do so:
- Go to the character list
- Click the edit icon on your character
- Click the share icon in the top right corner of the screen
- Select
Share Latest Revision - This will give you a file that can be shared and save however you like (for example in your Google Drive/Dropbox etc.)
To restore a backup from file:
- Go to the character list
- Click the developer icon in the top right corner
- Click
Import Character - Click
Import Revision File - This should give you a file browser to select your backup
- The imported revision will be added to your existing character, with the same ID, as a new revision
- If the character does not exist it is created
The primary goal of this project is to provide a fun solution for a game between a group of friends. But there may be other people out there willing to use and contribute.
I'd be happy to collaborate with anyone interested in contributing and would especially love support from people with more experience in flutter and UI/UX design.
If you are interested in contributing, please reach out in the form of issues or via Discord: Finch#7490
The project and its code are licensed under the MIT License attached in LICENSE.
This project is about the Pen and Paper RPG Cypher System by Monte Cook Games, LLC. It is following the Cypher System Open License.
Numenera, the Cypher System, No Thank You, Evil!, Invisible Sun, and their respective logos are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. All Monte Cook Games characters and character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC. Content derived from Monte Cook Games publications is © 2013-2022 Monte Cook Games, LLC.
