Mach Dice: Roll for iPhone initiative

This $.99 dice app will auto-tabulate totals and supports up to 100d100 dice, as well as impossible dice like the luminous holy seven-sided.

Program Page [Phobos.Apple.com (iTunes)]

1. [Anonymous]

   This does put the kybosh on flinging your dice across the room after a poor result. Or not. I guess it’s up to you.

2. [vellon]

   7 sided dice aren’t impossible

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagonal_prism

3. [themindfantastic]

   Okay Im a sucker for dice programs, play a game of champions or shadowrun, and it can get VERY dice heavy, a quick way to randomly roll a bunch is always a nice way to handle the situation, if I had an iPhone this would be ideal. Yes it could just give a result as most die roller programs do… but this has that look and feel of real dice though I wonder what it shows for the graphic of a d7? It shows d4, d6, and d20′s pretty good but what about those d7s? Im curious now…

4. [mgfarrelly]

   Purchased. I picked up “Dicebag” last week, but this is far nicer and more fun with the accelerometer.

5. [Jake0748]

   Very cool. But couldn’t they have made a video that was in focus?

6. [Metostopholes]

   How does it display a d7? It doesn’t.

   From the iTunes Store page:
   “4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20 sided dice are available”

7. [Bugs]

   @1

   That doesn’t look like it would roll evenly. I’ve never tried though, so who knows?

   I think a better solution would be a long septagonal prism, which you’d roll along its long axis, like a pencil.

   Still given that they’ll mostly be used by geeks, I feel sure that there’s alrady a widely-agreed algorithm for simulating a d7 roll using a few d6s and some maths.

8. [dculberson]

   Yeah, Vellon, the problem isn’t making a 7-sided shape, it’s making a 7-sided shape where the odds aren’t heavily stacked for two of the sides.

9. [pduggie]

   Does that work with an Ipod touch too? Because then I’m getting my Ipod touch.

10. [bardfinn]

    There is no regular septagonal prism. There /may/ be a /fair/ septagonal prismatic die. The easiest fair septagonal die is what Bugs alluded to: a long nonagonal prism with a septagonal cross-section.

11. [dghenke]

    Kids these days, with your fancy accelero-meters and animated graphics and eye-phone stores.

    Back in the day, we had a PalmOS version that was all business. And it was open source, and cost a nickel^H^H was totally free, and the binary was 17K uncompressed, and that’s the way it was and we liked it.

    Self-plug: http://kharendaen.dyndns.org/~henke/public/diceutil/

    Now get off my lawn (and go roll some twenties).

12. [Djinn PAWN]

    You can make pretty much an ANY sided die (within reason and practicality)…

    One is a play on the pencil idea, but instead think of a football shape, with tapered ends… d5, d7, or d13? No problem! They may not be attractive, but you can make them with as many sides as you like.

    Or you can just make a top out of card and a pencil. Cut out whatever-sided shape you want, number the sides, stab it with a pencil and spin! (as an upside it can be used to joust for the last Mountain Dew, or to attack the darkness later on)

13. [ZekeSulastin]

    I have memories of an entire character sheet program – to include infinitely variable dice rolling – I used to have on my Palm m105 and Sony Clie SJ-33. It was just as free as the dice program mentioned by Dghenke.

    Then again, this is aimed at the same audience who <3's DRM'd iTunes music, so I guess it's understandable.

14. [certron]

    I was pondering why a 7-sided die wouldn’t be possible, and while I do understand (basically) the platonic solids and other regular polyhedrons, I was thinking that maybe a regular polyhedron could be formed with 7 as one of the factors of the number of faces, with contiguous polygon faces colored or numbered to match. Alternately, small bumps on some of the smaller faces to encourage the die to land on a larger, numbered face. (Although, thinking about it again, this is effectively simplifying a more complex solid into a simpler one with less faces.)

    The next idea, after my brief journey through decimation and enhancement of regular polyhedra, is the tapered prism ‘football’ idea that has been mentioned by other posters.

    While I lack a background in mathematical topology, what is the problem with making arbitrarily-’sided’ solids out of tessellated angular spiral-ish designs and then just duplicating the pattern on the opposite hemisphere? Perhaps they could intermesh at the equator, similar to the icosohedron (d20). Perhaps this is an area to explore.

    Also, using the accelerometer to roll is totally awesome. Dicebag is a better name, too. (I am assuming that all dice-rolling programs will have some base functionality in common…)

15. [Djinn PAWN]

    Building on Certron’s idea: For this app they could make a d7 much like a d10. The d10 has 5 faces on each hemisphere, and if they expand that to 7 and duplicate the numbers on each side, then Bob’s your uncle.

    Now if only it came with a customizable set of colours. All-white-dice does not a gamer make!

    Also, I would love to see what the d100 looked like on this app. I’m so used to seeing 2d10 that I may miss that all-too-familiar visual.

16. [kayteegee]

    Crazy dice math mumbo-jumbo aside, I just like how he goes “doo doo” as he tilts the iphone 1 second before the video stops.

17. [Bugs]

    Hmm. How about a d14 with each face used twice?

    I like Centron’s idea, although can’t be bothered to work out whether it would actually work.

    I have memories of an entire character sheet program – to include infinitely variable dice rolling – I used to have on my Palm m105 and Sony Clie SJ-33. It was just as free as the dice program mentioned by Dghenke.

    Then again, this is aimed at the same audience who

    …vanish suddenly into the night?
    …vote for Obama?
    …suffer narcolepsy?
    (hey, this is fun!)

18. [dculberson]

    …build me a rocket ship?
    …give me a million dollars?

19. [MachWerx]

    Hey! I’m the guy who wrote Mach Dice and I’m flattered to be mentioned on Boing Boing. Some interesting ideas here. It’s funny, my app has been mentioned on a few sites but this has the most technical discussion, by far. Some replies:

    * My camera doesn’t focus closer than a certain distance, but I’ll try to use zoom next time.
    * d7 (and any other non-standard dice) are currently represented by an icosahedron marked with question marks.
    * I considered doing prisms, but they get pretty hard to read past 10 sides.
    * It works on the iPod Touch!
    * I wrote a free dice roller for PalmOS back in the day, too! Hopefully, the 3D graphics, physics simulation, and virtual 3D display make it worth a buck for some people.
    * Thanks for the comment on the “doo doo”. =)

20. [Nelson.C]

    Machwerx @18: Love the app! Totally worth the chump change. Two suggestions: a coin for d2s, and an option to set the start-up dice configuration, or even just remember the last configuration used. (I play GURPS, so 3D6 is perfect for me, but the option sems like a useful thing to have.)

    Oh, and a funky idea: use a hyperdimensional solid for unusual dice. The hyperdice will appear to change shape as they roll, and the sides will be uncountable to our merely three-dimensional senses.

21. [eustace]

    Dicebox is a better name than Dicebag, I think.
    The graphic you use to represent a die is separate from the code you use to generate odds, so why not arbitrary-number sided dice that change shape as they roll? (Easy to say if you don’t have to code it!)

22. [Unseelie23]

    Machwerx: Nice application. Mathematical functions other than plus would be nice. That would allow for things like 1d6-1 for stun modifier in Champs, and 1d3-2, which would let you do Fudge Dice (range of -1, 0, 1)

23. [Anonymous]

    This looks pretty sweet, but unfortunately I don’t have the money for an iPhone. Is there an equally pretty dice roller for a tablet PC or pocket PC?

24. [Anonymous]

    Seven sided dice aren’t impossible. I have two. Imagine a pentagon with height. Sorry don’t know the words for this. The top and the bottom are “6″ and “7″, and if the dice lands on one of the pentagon sides, you read the resulting number spread over the top two sides.

25. [ZenKai]

    Really, what the whole seven-sided thing breaks down to is a seven-sided REGULAR polyhedron. All this means is that all facets are the same, which is flat-out undoable with 7 sides.

    The “two sevens stacked”, while totally fair, are actually a Heptagonal trapezohedron (14-sided die). I actually have one of those myself (whose sides, those bigger than 7, have both numbers listed: 1/8, 2/9, 3/10, etc.), on the off chance I need a D14, I suppose.

    I’ve seen the cylindricals too. These are the most common for the odd-numbered ones, as each facet is a simple rectangle with a (convex) polygon on each cap (heptagon for a seven-sider). They make almost any count, for games like IEInc where your weapon damage is flat but is rolled on the corresponding die (i.e. I have a 24-damage axe. I roll 1d24 for variant damage, or a 100-sided for percentile damage).

    I have a one-sided die (yes, it’s a sphere with a big ol’ one on it) sitting on my desk right now.