Objective C: App Coding

Xith

I don't know if anyone has any knowledge in it, but I just nearly completed a tutorial in which I should have ended up with a functional to-do list. But either I messed something up or it's out-of-date.

The debugging points to this line being incorrect

 if (self.textField.text.length > 0) {

        self.toDoItem = [[ToDoItem alloc] init];

        self.toDoItem.itemName = self.textField.text;

        self.toDoItem.completed = NO;

    }

It's copied directly from the tutorial, so I assume that particular if statement is written correctly. That's my question though: is it?

My next step (after troubleshooting the tutorial) will be to try and make a database app for Achaea, with class skills and all of that. I think it's something that would help both new players and old, being able to look up class info, hunting areas, detailed abilities, etc. Will probably need the help of some graphic artists and, in the best-case scenario, people who know appmaking better than I.

Tael

I don't have an answer for your Objective C question, but...isn't what you're describing exactly what the wiki is supposed to be for?

Antonius

Yes, that's basically the entire point of having a Wiki. If you just want a project to practice building apps then okay, but if the intention is to release this as something that everybody can use, you'd be better off just updating the Wiki with whatever information you have since that won't be restricted by what mobile OS people have access to.

As for the question itself, I've never written any code in Objective C, but debugging is generally a pretty universal skill.

Does it give you an error while you're writing the code or when you try to run the app? Other than knowing the error is on that line, do you have an error message? If so, what does it say?

The syntax looks pretty standard for an if statement so I'll assume that's correct. Best guesses: old tutorial using outdated field names, causing compilation errors. You've mistyped something and are attempting to access a variable that doesn't exist, causing compilation errors. You're not declaring something when you should so it doesn't exist when that line of code executes, causing a runtime error.

Makarios

As an aside, if you're trying to get into IOS development currently (I'm not sure if that is what your intention is with the exercise), you're probably going to be much better served learning swift. While a grounding in objective C will definitely be useful, its going to be a skill with a definite shelflife (or at least, a skill that is only going to go down in desirability longterm in all probability) given that apple have made it pretty clear that swift is what they'll be focussing on in the future (and hence, what employers/companies/etc will likely be much more interested in when looking at someone without a considerable background in IOS development). Swift is also about ten times less hideous and much more pleasant to use.

Obviously, only applicable if you're not committed to objective c for your project for some other reason, but something to consider!

Xith

Yeah it seems well-intentioned but it's definitely ugly. I may try Swift.


RE: debugging
I have a feeling something isn't pointing right to one of the delegate files or whatever, cause when I first created them they were outside the project folder and I don't think just moving them in worked. May just try the whole build again and see if it still happens.

RE: wiki
Wouldn't mind contributing to that, but what I have in mind is a fancy companion app that's basically faster and prettier than a wiki page is. For context, the Champion Architect app for LoL, which makes things much easier to learn than combing through a wiki page, as far as combat methods and class strengths go.
The big benefit is that you don't have to be near a computer to study up on your Achaean afflictions, nor rely on mobile data speeds, cause the app loads its data from screen to screen in like 1 second guaranteed.

Tael

Given the size of the playerbase and the much-smaller size of the contributorbase, I really, really don't think that freedom from data transfer speeds is worth splitting the pool of contributors between an app and the wiki. There already aren't even enough people working on the wiki to keep it up to date.

I don't know how the wiki is licensed (and a quick look at the site doesn't really reveal the answer readily), but given that it's user-contributed, it's possible that it might be okay to pull content from the wiki to make your app. At least that way there's some reduction in the duplication of effort.

Xith

The databases were going to include:

• artefacts
• classes (skills, summary, gameplay, lore)
• races (specs, lore)
• Cities (rules)
• Denizens
• Item types
• Traits
• Hunting areas (and whether they're allied/defended)
• Non-class skills
• Ships
• Housing
• Gods
• Orgs
• Maps(?)
• Entities

The big focus would be on classes: types of damage they can deal, 1-10 rating on damage, hindering, affliction, prep, benefit from balance vs EQ, benefits from str/dex/con/int, that sort of thing. And then the ability to cross-reference with other classes for compatibility.

It'd be more stat oriented and less text than a Wiki.

Jules

Achaea has the best wiki (because of Krypton, I am guessing)  That said, it does still look awfully light on useful mechanical information, but I'm guessing that is more a cultural issue than a coding one, although people are far more open about that sort of thing than they once were.  Maybe the wiki just hasn't caught up (due to so few contributors).  As for the table type stuff, even a non-database table (a fake table!) would be nice (and probably a lot easier to make).  Like, a table of afflictions and cures that includes whether tree or focus cures it, etc... would be amazing, and fun to study on a Friday night, just as an example.

Sarathai

Jules said:

That said, it does still look awfully light on useful mechanical information, but I'm guessing that is more a cultural issue than a coding one, although people are far more open about that sort of thing than they once were.

I wouldn't mind seeing the full text of the various AB files included. For example, what you see for Metamorphosis or Necromancy as opposed to Reclamation and Occultism (although the pages could probably do with some updates). It's not as if people haven't thrown them up in a pastebin from time to time as it is.

Xith

Yeah a list with the number of lessons next to each skill would be nice also.

That Metamorphosis entry is exactly what I was thinking, but not such an eyesore chromatically. I think the Champion Architect app is free if anyone wants to see what I mean

Tael

It would honestly be nice if all the mechanical information were available - if the ab files were more like, say, LoL tooltips that actually spell out pretty much every mechanical detail (or better yet, like the LoL wiki, which has all of that and additional information about each one). I remember someone asking for something like that pretty recently, and while Sarapis indicated it was probably never happening in-game, he did suggest that people could add it to the wiki.

One of the problems I think though is that the people best oriented to put that information into the wiki are those least likely to do so. And I'm not totally sure that's a bad thing - there's probably something to be said for the fact that part of being good at combat in the game comes from knowing little mechanical details that other people don't.

Jules

Well, no one's going to share their super secret amazing strategy (that would be silly/unfair) but people also aren't ridiculous about telling some poor guy who wants to know what some of his abilities really do (or another class' abilities) to "find out in game" (because you know, every player in online around 12-16 hours a day and has plenty of time to do that :P ).  I mean, that truly was the attitude, and it's really changed (thank god).  Our players are grownups with jobs... etc... and they can relate to people not wanting to painstakingly rediscover every mechanical detail in the game - probably at least in part because that stuff keeps changing and they'd have to do it too.  There's a lot available already on the forums.  If you're really looking for something, and have at least some inkling of how to look, you can often find it.  It's just not compiled (and compiling all of it would probably be too ambitious).  But it would really just take someone like Xith sifting through forums posts and perhaps making some "in progress" pages for the forums to tear apart for accuracy to make something probably pretty useful to a lot of people.    

EDIT:  also, just a note, I absolutely love reading that kind of stuff on Wikis.  It's just so much nicer/more fun (and obviously some of it sinks in).  

Tael

I don't just mean strategy - there are some mechanics that people are still unwilling to share too. For most things, people are a lot more willing now than they used to be, but for particularly complicated or weird mechanics, that's not always true.

The last few times people asked about the specifics of how scytherus works, for instance, most of the answers were very evasive.

There are still some more-complicated mechanics in the game that are not as widely known and consequently are more valuable for people to keep close to the chest.

Jules

Ahhhh, yes.  I mean, fine.  Just having well-formatted, detailed information on some of the more overarching stuff would be amazing (and a lot of that stuff does seem to be out there for the mining).  It would be a big step up and what a great place to go poke around if you are a newbie or crusty oldie.  

Xith

Is there a wiki project clan in game or did I dream that?
We need some kind of checklist of topics that people can volunteer to complete. Like a scytherus page, etc. 

Jules

I really would ask Krypton if no one mentions someone else.  He mainly does lore and denizens and beasts, but he seems like he's almost the core wiki guy as things stand. 

Tael

Xith said:

Is there a wiki project clan in game or did I dream that?
We need some kind of checklist of topics that people can volunteer to complete. Like a scytherus page, etc. 

Chroniclers would be the clan. I think it's almost completely dead though (if it even still exists - I worked on the wiki for a while, but quit to reclaim the clan slot since the clan wasn't doing anything useful).

Nexes

If textField is a UITextField then that code looks fine. It would help if you could explain what the issue is: what behavior you are seeing as opposed to want to see? If it doesn't compile, then showing the compile error would help, for example.