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Sole Developer:
   

- Systems Design

- Content Design

- UI/UX Designer

- Mobile Design

- VFX & Animations

- Visual Design

Wild Magic is a wonderful thing. It allows for randomness to occur and spice up combats. Sadly, The official Wild Magic result table, for lack of a better term, stinks. It is only 50 results long, far too predictable. Some people have attempted to resolve this with custom lists, but the longer a list gets, the more tedious finding out what happens becomes. That is where Wild Walrus comes in!

 

Wild Walrus is, technically not a game. Rather it is a tool to help people who love Randomness in D&D, use Wild Magic quickly and easily. It allows users to write, curate, and generate Wild Magic results in a fraction of the time. Additionally, it comes with over 10,000 possible results

pre-built into it!

Project Description

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Wild Walrus

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Development

I created Wild Walrus after an intensely heavy homebrew D&D session. I was a Wild Magic Sorceror (who happened to be a walrus) and was using a 10,000 result long table. While this made every result feel different, it had a serious drawback. Every time I needed to generate a result, I had to spend 1-2 minutes finding the result listed. This was far too long and killed the flow of the game. So, I set out to make Wild Walrus, to help others avoid this.

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Wild Walrus was original a very complex project, involving not only basic results, but also adding range settings, a custom result inputter, and giving every result a unique Bane & Boon modifier. This would make it, so if users got the same result, it would at least spice things up. Sadly, development stopped when I realized that I completely mistook how to save files worked and instead made a nightmare of code hidden behind a walrus mask. 

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So with that, Wild Walrus went from an ambitious project to nothing more than a proof of concept.

Spring - 2019:

  • Create a custom demo list of 100 results

  • Create an easy result generating button

  • Allow users to set what level of good/bad results appear

  • Create a Bane & Boon result modifier

  • Allow users to adjust rates of bonus Banes & Boons

  • Allow users to set a favorites and dislikes list

  • Allow users to use advanced settings (targets, ranges, etc.)

  • Make a visually pleasing App

  • Allow users to create their own content

  • Allow users to save their own settings

  • Put the thing on a phone.

My Original Goals:

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I left Wild Walrus to sit for about a year and returned to it after Graduating. Using the skills I learned, I revamped the project and expanded on it.​

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I made sure all my previous work was functional: Generate items, ranged settings, Banes & Boons, etc. Then, I took the time to do what I failed before.

 

I started by giving users three separate custom lists, as I saw many DMs liked to have special side lists for specific conditions. This also gave me the opportunity to add IAPs, but I decided to make it all free instead (I didn't want to bother managing the money).

 

I then added a function for uses to generate and scan QR codes to share their custom results with one another. However, due to the madness that is Androids Privacy policy, I had to abandon this feature due to not having the legal budget.

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2020 - 2023:

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  • Create an easy result generation

  • Allow users to set what level of          good/bad results appear

  • Add Settings for D&D or Pathfinder

  • Allow users to create their own         custom lists (x3)

  • Add system settings

  • Add animations and SFX

  • Put the thing on a phone.

Goals Accomplished:

Goals Underway:

  • Create a custom demo list of 3,000 results

Removed / Abandoned Content:

  • Bane & Boon settings

  • Advanced settings (Targets, Ranges, Etc.)

  • Send entire custom lists to servers

  • Allow users to download entire lists through servers and QR code scans.

  • IAP to unlock custom lists.

Most of these features were removed due to being unnecessary. The QR code feature however was removed due to the massive legal headache launching it would entail.

Continuing Development:

Wild Walrus is functionally complete. All that is left to do is finish the included list of results and publish it for everyone to download.

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Finish the Result Table

Simply selling a Wild Magic app without anything pre-built would be boring. I intend to keep my promise and launch with a robust 3,000 result large table!

If you have any suggestions for Wild Magic results, please send them through the contact section of the home-page

2,000 more to go!

<-- Greg, my imaginary unpaid intern.

On Reflection:

Wild Walrus has been a joy and torture to work. The actual coding and art with pleasure, while making the custom list has thus far been agonizing as to avoid repeating me. However, the early stages of development were writhed with problems. Still, it was thanks to these issues I was able to learn so much.

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- Text files ARE NOT a good method of saving data

- Consider the necessity of a feature before building too far on it

- If you can get your user base to create content for you, DO IT!

- Avoid any and all unnecessary legal paperwork

- Walruses are hard to draw

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While the early stages of Wild Walrus were a complete failure, I was able to revisit it after learning more advanced tools. As such, I view this project as one of my best digital works thus far.

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