Awesome idea. I would love to see an iPhone app.

1) Back when I was travelling heavily for work, I would've been willing to pay $20 or so for this.
2) Messaging, map, ability to make moves - that pretty much covers it. Order history might be nice as well.
3) I'm in Southern California (strong Verizon territory) and dislike Apple in general, so my next phone is almost certainly going to be a Droid.

Also, I believe a lot of people are using the site now without an app on their phones. I used to be able to do this from my Motorola Q9m until all the Javascript stuff was added to the site, but it was a real pain in the rear end.

Personally I would be happy to pay $5 for an app. But if you made it $1 more people would install it. It would probably attract new players who are not even aware of this site.

When I was a frequent traveller I dropped out of at least one game because I kept missing deadlines, so I am certainly interested.

With my iPhone I can see status of game, basic situation on map, even post orders, etc. but chat becomes impossible because I cannot scroll down a chatbox. So I mostly access this site with a full size computer.

Bear in mind that many players, myself included, are in Europe where once you travel outside home country 3G roaming and internet access charges get pretty high which might limit appeal.

I would probably pay $5 for this, especially knowing that it is probably a small market and the developer needs to make a return.

You can scroll through in-game messages using the iPhone, but you need to use two fingers. Alternatively if you use Opera Mini you can see a full page of messages.

In all honesty, I personally would pay $20, but I would feel morally compelled to match the sum with a donation to Kestas. More than happy to do that too.

Badge notifications would be essential of course. I'd also be happy if it went up at a $4.99 price point, but perhaps had an introductory rate or, better yet, a free demo version -- perhaps one that let you join just one game at a time, or stopped working after you completed your first game -- (as mentioned, attracting new players is a very useful effect).

I have a Blackberry and someone on this site turned me on to the Bolt browser. I see everything and can chat. It works perfectly for me.

I spend more time on my iPhone than I do my computer. It's just so convenient. I,ll get an ipad at some point.

Better forum navigation would be nice. It's hard to press the tiny little arrows if you want to scroll a thread back one page.

I have no problems playing or using the forum on my iPhone, so I don't know what an app would offer me that an iPhone doesn't.

Though having a 'D' app would be cool. Right now, its just a bookmark on the main screen, a very small picture of the site.

@Spyman: thanks, I will try two finger scrolling.

@bbdaniels: badge notifications is a really good idea.

I'd definitely have to say some sort of split of the income with Kestas would be appropriate - and the price should take that into consideration.

A free demo is definitely a good idea to bring in fresh meat.

I have a blackberry, so just back sure it works on there, lol.

Cool, thanks for the feedback everyone! Next step is talking to the admins of the major dip sites and seeing if they'd be willing to add a branch of php to their system for communication with the app.

If all works out and I go ahead with this, I'll post some user interface layouts for people on here and get feedback before I implement them. The more feedback from people on here the better the chance of success.

Thanks and please keep giving feedback / ideas on here if you think of any!

Rich, you should check the webdiplomacy dev forum:
http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/index.php

Note, that Apple will likely refuse your App, due to copyright issues. So, take a platform where you don't need approval.

I'd pay 5$ for it for sure.

I would use it. I have a Blackberry with Verizon. I would pay whatever reasonable price point the market dictates.

I'd kill for a Blackberry one. Blackberry on Sprint, not that it matters as long as it is in the RIM Blackberry store and doesn't use any functions disabled by the service provider.

well get kestas to approve. then the app can run on apple. i doubt its that easy though

Ah, very valid point lkruijsw. I didn't think of that. Diplomacy is owned by Hasbro / Avalon Hill. I've been talking with Kestas about all this already, I'll see what he thinks.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I really appreciate it.

Do you think Hasbro are aware of this site?

I think you might be okay with copywright. There are clones of risk as iPhone apps.

For inspiration you can look at PalmPolitik:

http://www.westeindeweb.nl/palmdip/

I can help with programming a fully correct adjudicator:

http://www.diplom.org/Zine/S2009M/Kruijswijk/DipMath_Chp1.htm

Lucas

I'd be extremely supportive of this idea if the app community was conjoined to this one! I know a lot of people here already access this site from their phones, despite it not really being optimized for such. It would be great to expand this community rather than creating another competitor for quality players, though I suppose the more people that play Diplomacy in general the better.

I do think copyright will be an issue, especially if your app is to have any significant amount of success. The only reason Hasbro hasn't come after this site is probably just because it's too small and it goes completely under their radar, though I'd argue that this site increases their board game sale revenues. Hasbro did go after Scrabulous, a very successful facebook implementation of Scrabble, so I think it has more to do with visibility than anything.

In the United States, there is no copyright in the rules of games. Scrabulous got in trouble because of the similarity of its name to Scrabble, and the identical choices of colors of the board.

I do like the idea of having the app as an interface to this site, so one could switch devices while playing the same games.

I suggest you take a look at Uniwar, which is a pretty successful, cross-platform multiplayer strategy-game app.

That's a good point, Aurens, but I still feel like Hasbro's lawyers could cook up a lawsuit if they saw fit to. I don't know what arguments they'd use, but I do think that they could come up with one. It still seems like visibility and success is the issue.

I was assuming from the start of this thread that the App would just be a portal to the games hosted by webdiplomacy.net. Is that not the case?

Does anybody know if there is a similar finger scrolling method for the Droid?

We could always create a mobile version of the page. Something thats very light and simple. I'd be interested in working on that if people were interested in making it happen.

Making a mobile friendly site is certainly an option, and it would be less work, but there are a few problems with that idea. Kestas covers his costs on here with a distributed processing java applet that wouldn't be able to run on a mobile site, so unlike the site and an application, there would be absolutely no source of revenue to cover server costs. It also would serve nobody but the existing community, as opposed to an app which could introduce new people to the game.

Good points on the copyright issue everyone, that seems to be the main hurdle right now but not insurmountable. I'm going to send an email to Hasbro about this, I'll keep you all updated.

What if your email inspires Hasbro to take charge of their copyright here? Oh noes...

Don't worry, I'm consulting Kestas before I send anything to Hasbro. If he's concerned there's a risk then I'll just avoid mentioning the websites altogether and just pitch it as a separate, independent app.

Are you sure that's a good idea?
As soon as you ask them you leave the realm of denial. Its one thing for them to consciously ignore something they may or may not know exists, its another to go shove it in their face and hope they're still happy!