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Spell Circles: a magic companion app with social features

Thomas Biesaart Code and Eng DK30 Fall 2023 6 5

Description

Spell Circles is a game tracker app for paper Magic: The Gathering with social features. It allows you to track your games and decks over time and keep a local leaderboard with your friends. During this DK30 I will be starting development and finish the MVP.

Spell Circles Logo

Recent Updates

Thomas Biesaart 2 years ago

Only a small update today. I’ve started work on the game listing. Allowing users to create a new game. Next up is allowing users to join existing games through a QR code scan.

Thomas Biesaart 2 years ago

Both Android and iOS now have test builds! This means I can distribute the app to testers.

I have also connected the app to the backend authentication allowing users to sign up and login in.

Next up: Creating and joining games!

Thomas Biesaart 2 years ago

Today I set up some code repositories and hosting in preparation of this project so I can get started on developing the app.

I also “created” a logo with some help from AI. I was looking for something playful that symbolized both duality and unity. I think I got that from this fire & ice emblem.

Next up: Publishing the app to TestFlight for iOS and adding login / registration. Do we care about “forgot password” yet?..

Estimated Timeframe

Nov 14th - Dec 14th

Week 1 Goal

Branding & Project Setup

This week I will focus on getting the branding and style of the app going, as well as set up all infrastructure needed to develop the app.

  1. ✅ Design a Logo & brand style
  2. ✅ Set up testing tracks for both app stores
  3. ✅ Setup and deploy the backend
  4. ✅ First feature: Simple Authentication & signup

Week 2 Goal

Match Tracking

Now let’s get started on the core application! Life Tracking.

  1. ✅ Allow players/guests to create games
  2. ⏲️ Allow players/guests to join games
  3. Set up the game state synchronization & display
  4. Add counters for a bunch of common stats (life, commander damage, poison counters, etc…)
  5. ⭐ (bonus) Add formats to set common game rules

Week 3 Goal

Sumit to stores

Submission and approval is probably going to take a while so let’s start it on time. By now we should be able to submit to the stores. To do this we need a few more things:

  1. Set up a basic website
  2. Add a privacy policy & terms of use to website
  3. Start review process

Week 4 Goal

Game Tracking & Customization

After this milestone registered players will be able to see a list of the games they participated in with their stats.

They will also be able to set an avatar and deck art which will show up on each player’s screen during the game.

Tags

  • App
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Magic