App ideas (Aug 2023) (2 Viewers)

[Joe Harris]

I got laid off from my software engineering job on June 16th. That position I had accepted under duress - it was at the height of the pandemic and I was panicking a bit. Unfortunately, the job market in software right now is pretty bad for new opportunities. In addition to the wild job market, I'm trying to be more selective so I don't recreate old mistakes. All this means it could be a while before I find a job.

Instead of just spending all this 'free time' drinking gin or playing video games from 2003, I decided to spend it building apps, maybe the occasional SaaS. I have a list of about two dozen ideas, from which I selected three.

I added a poll to this thread, please vote on which idea you would prefer to see made. Alternatively, if you have any ideas, feel free to post them in this thread (or PM me). I just published a new version of the Poker Tournament Forge, so I'll be starting the next idea this week.

 

[TheOffalo]

I was thinking about seeing if I could teach myself how to make an app that would contain different mixed game cards, with ability to filter for different aspects (max players, draw, stud, discards, etc.) and then also be able to randomize based on various criteria.

 

[Tonysquander]

Circus game app would be fantastic.

 

[BGinGA]

What kind of circus game app are you envisioning? Playable game? Or just a reference & searchable? Or a strategy/odds calculator?

I could/would use all of 'em, tbh.

 

[Joe Harris]

What kind of circus game app are you envisioning? Playable game? Or just a reference & searchable? Or a strategy/odds calculator?

I could/would use all of 'em, tbh.

My primary focus would be a reference app. Search & filtering would be core features.

An odds calculator would be a nice bonus feature. I'd probably have to study up on my statistics to be confident in correctness, but I'll keep it in mind. That could be a nice extension for the "AI hand analyzer" concept as well.

An app supporting playable circus games is on my 'ideas' list, but probably not as part of this product. I actually already have an iOS library which can ingest the 'schema' for a circus game and determine the winner(s), but making that into a playable app requires a bunch of server infrastructure, security considerations, and so on (not to mention an android clone of that library). So it's probably better as a standalone offering.

 

[TheOffalo]

Value added would be an easy way to construct a new circus game card. I make my own manually in graphic design software, but it would be cool to have an app that can generate them based on the specifications/criteria of the games.

 

[Joe Harris]

Value added would be an easy way to construct a new circus game card. I make my own manually in graphic design software, but it would be cool to have an app that can generate them based on the specifications/criteria of the games.

That's a good idea and something I definitely want to add. Do you make them to print them off, or just have an easy reference on your phone/tablet?

 

[TheOffalo]

That's a good idea and something I definitely want to add. Do you make them to print them off, or just have an easy reference on your phone/tablet?

For both, I can keep them as images on my phone or print them onto cardstock and then use a Cricut to cut out the shapes. Here's two I recently made:



Obviously, especially with the Burning Buckshot, a template system wouldn't be able to account for all kinds of variations, but something where you can specify number of hole cards, how many individual or board cars, bets, etc, would be a big step for people to create their own game cards without having to know how to design it themselves.

 

[Joe Harris]

Looks like the circus game app is a clear winner. I started messing around with a web version of this idea a few years ago, so I'm not starting completely from scratch. That said, I'm still going to approach the mobile app from ground zero. There's a concept on Twitter called #buildinpublic, I thought it could be fun to try something along those lines with this project.

Step one is to brainstorm a list of possible features, and then decide which should be in the 'minimum viable product'. Here's my list so far. Let me know if I'm missing an idea.

Minimum viable product features​

• Render a game card
• Search
• Filtering
• iOS and Android

somewhere between "nice to have" and "theoretically interesting"​

• Game lists
  • Local create/etc
  • Pre-made lists for common mixes (8-game, etc)
  • Share and view lists from others
• Create a game on-device
  • New game UI (with walkthrough? messy UX)
  • Share a custom game
• Extended core features
  • Favorite game (or rate a game?)
  • See the favorited games and/or average rating
  • Comments on games (use case?)
  • OS X/Windows/Web app
• Multi-table room assist
  • Create/etc a room (x number of tables, etc)
  • 'what game is table x playing'
  • Maybe use bluetooth for nearby tables? or LAN? or QR code?
  • See stats for games played (per table/room)
• UX enhancements
  • Print a game card
  • Broadcast to nearby chromecast/etc
• Features requiring additional UI
  • odds calculator
  • customize color scheme of game cards
  • customize layout of game cards

 

[kk405]

A poker app that would combine the best features of Poker Mavens and Pokerrrr2 ... or alternatively, an app that would bring Poker Mavens out of the world of MS-DOS and Internet Explorer interface

 

[improviseallday]

Sorry to hear about the layoff, hope you find something that's a great fit soon.

Following along here because building is fun!

Are you planning to build two native apps or use something like Flutter?

 

[Joe Harris]

Are you planning to build two native apps or use something like Flutter?

I'm thinking I'll use React Native. I was an iOS developer for a decade, so am well versed in mobile apps from that side. I learned ReactJS to build the Tournament Forge, and React Native just adds mobile device integrations on top of that. As a bonus there are about 100x as many jobs in React Native than in native iOS (or Android), so maybe that'll lead somewhere interesting.

 

[Joe Harris]

Bit of a #buildinpublic #buildOnPCF update.

Lost some time yesterday and today to job search minuta. That said, I did decide on a name for the app: CircusPokerGuide. Clever app names are fun, but tend to imply extreme quality UI designs, and the visual arts are a bit of a mystery to me. Anyway, I am pretty happy with this name for the app.

On the subject of visual arts, I spent two hours today doing some Midjourney prompt engineering. No way in hell I can afford a real designer, so AI is the next best solution. Since my month of Midjourney subscription runs out in a few weeks I wanted to get something made before that happens. So there's a name, and I also have this prototype logo:

I asked a designer friend to make a few minor tweaks to it, but that's what I'm working with, and I think it's pretty nice.

As far as code, I got my dev environment set up for the new codebase and framework. Lot of figuring out details, React Native is a lot more complicated than ReactJS. The normal process for app development is a wireframe step to plan out the UI. That's great, but not the sort of planning I excel at..again, not an artist. Instead, I focused on learning how to implement the code so that it is well supported for both phones and tablets, both iOS and Android, and also started baking in support for other mobile OS nice-to-haves. If your device is configured for dark mode, I'll have you covered.

In short, things are progressing.... but you can't really tell at a glance. Here's what the app looks like at this moment.

In the next couple of days, I'll be adding more standard game elements, figuring out a database approach, and stealing as much code as possible from the web prototype I abandoned ~18 months ago.

 

[ngmcs8203]

A poker app that would combine the best features of Poker Mavens and Pokerrrr2 ... or alternatively, an app that would bring Poker Mavens out of the world of MS-DOS and Internet Explorer interface

Pokerrr2 is the strangest interface for poker I’ve ever experienced. Like they over designed what should be a straightforward product with all of the gestures.

 

[Al Azouri]

Pokerrr2 is the strangest interface for poker I’ve ever experienced. Like they over designed what should be a straightforward product with all of the gestures.

I think that's a hold over from what they were originally trying to accomplish which was to eliminate the physical cards and chips from a live game. In that scenario you'd sit around a table with an iPad in the middle. Each player would see their hole cards on their personal device and the flop, turn and River would come out on the iPad.

I believe you can still configure it like that today - though I don't know anyone who actually uses it that way.

It was a cool idea, but handling chips and cards is one of my favorite aspects of live play.

 

[ngmcs8203]

I think that's a hold over from what they were originally trying to accomplish which was to eliminate the physical cards and chips from a live game. In that scenario you'd sit around a table with an iPad in the middle. Each player would see their hole cards on their personal device and the flop, turn and River would come out on the iPad.

I believe you can still configure it like that today - though I don't know anyone who actually uses it that way.

It was a cool idea, but handling chips and cards is one of my favorite aspects of live play.

Wait that makes it even stranger and more expensive. It’s like the company that tried to make a device that schools could distribute so that students had access to digital books. You could only read the digital books on this device and it even had a folding aspect to it to make it seem more like a book.

 

[improviseallday]

Wait that makes it even stranger and more expensive.

It's cheaper if you don't have to pay for a dealer.

 

[ngmcs8203]

It's cheaper if you don't have to pay for a dealer.

Oh this was a casino app?

 

[improviseallday]

Oh this was a casino app?

Not sure, sounds like it was home game oriented now that I've reread the post. But I'm starting to see a lot of dealerless table games at casinos.

 

[Joe Harris]

Another #buildOnPCF update..

I made quite a few improvements to the code rendering the game structure, so now it supports all the basic elements as well as scales itself to the size of the screen. Lot of remaining work todo on that screen, but it's coming along. I think the next task will be to implement the bottom section. The goal there will be to outline the currently selected section, so it will involve animations and other fancy things. Should be fun.

Also invested multiple days on playing around with database solutions. Many of them are not really ideal for this app, either too complicated or too expensive (which is to say, not free). I'm still not completely happy with what I settled on, but I have it implemented to the point where it's easy to add new games. That makes development much easier. Will have to figure out a different approach eventually, but this will work for now.

Anyway, more could be said, but that's a pretty good synopsis for now. Not gonna make any progress for the next few days, I need to shift gears and do some interview prep. I'll post again when there's more to share.