This update has some important fixes and features, but the biggest part of it is all the new dice shapes so lets get into it!

Spinners

I think most people my age and older used to make spinners when they didn't have dice on hand. Just cut out a cardboard disc, write some numbers around it, stick a pencil through the middle. tbh it's fun and I recommend doing it, but NOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO!

Teetotums

Of course, historically, people have put more effort than that into their spinning dice. Teetotums are a fascinating topic that I recommend checking out if you are a dice nerd. I've included two types in the app, what I consider the 'standard' teetotum, and a 'fall-flat' teetotum (which you'll be familiar with if you've ever seen a dreidel - apologies to all the Hanukkah-celebrating dice fans that it took me so long to include this shape!)

Weighted-Void Spheres

Okay so these are COOL. On the outside, it's just a ball with numbers on it, but when you roll it you'll see it come to rest exactly on one number. And it's fair! In real life, these work by having an empty void in the middle of the sphere, and a weight that rolls around within. The shape of the void has just the right number of points for the weight to rest in for the number die you want. I've only ever seen d6 sphere dice IRL (which have an octahedron void inside), but theoretically a bunch more fair sphere shapes are possible, so I included them!

Prisms

Okay so now we're REALLY getting into the weeds... Many people have tackled the problem of fair prism/cylinder dice (which is simply summarised like this: if a tall shape is more likely to land on a side, and a flat shape is more likely to land on its top or bottom, what is the in-between point where it is equally likely to land on any side?). I had always been convinced that such things can never be ideally fair dice... but for a while this year I became uncertain! I spent a lot of time looking into it and doing a bunch of tests to get a better grasp of the problem and the conclusion I have come to is that they are not fair after all... but they are also not-not fair! This category of shape has a fairness type that I'm calling "conditionally fair" - that is, they are fair but only under very specific circumstances. If you change the circumstances, these dice stop being fair. Realistically, there are no circumstances where you can expect one of these dice to be completely fair (the same is true for ALL physical dice, but the unfairness is much more pronounced with prisms/cylinders)
Anyway, sorry if you read all that. It was a lot to say, I couldn't find completely fair prism shapes so I just eyeballed it and then added them to the app. They will roll fair here so long as you don't enable the "realistic bias" option (and even then, most aren't so bad)

Other Shapes

Okay so I find most of these interesting but if you've gotten this far you've already endured enough of an info dump, here's the rest of the dice that were added in 1.6:

New Features

There are a couple of features worth pointing out, both have been some of the largest requests I've gotten since launching the app. One is being able to spawn multiple dice to your hand before you roll any of them. Whenever you are dragging dice, you can now add more dice the the pool by right-clicking them on the hotbar or pressing the hotkeys for those dice (reminder: You can set hotkeys for your dice when you edit them!) The other remarkable feature is being able to copy your roll results in text. I know this is small consolation for people that want online-multiplayer for this app (sorry, I'm no closer on that front!) but it can be used to quickly get the roll result into your group chat with proper formatting. To copy the result you can press a shortcut or right-click the result in the roll history. You can change the copy formatting by going to Settings>Results if it doesn't suit your group chat. A minor feature that was only ever requested once, but I added because it was easy to do and I thought it was cool: go to Settings>Dice and change the Time Rate. You'll be able to roll lots of dice much quicker (if you're looking to save time) or roll dice in slow motion (if you want to increase the tension!)

Other Stuff

This update also has a few new face image options (including tally marks from 1-10), and some fixes to issues that have bothered me and a few of you until now, in particular the issue with testing the stats of newly made dice is gone. No need to restart the app whenever you're evaluating probabilities for your game's custom dice! That's pretty much it for now! I'm sorry it's been so long since the last update, I have very little control where I put what little focus I have, so finishing any single project can be really tricky. I'm super happy to get this one to you though, hopefully you enjoy it! Thanks for the support, I love you, and I wish you happy rolling!

[ 2024-11-06 15:25:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! I (Sophie) will be live-streaming a tour of my dice rolling application (Sophie's Dice), and also answering any questions you have about dice to the best of my ability. The Tour: Sophie's Dice does A LOT, and has many ways to roll and customise your dice. So I'll be taking some time to go over all the things you can do. If you have had any issues trying to make something work in the app, or you're curious if Sophie's Dice can do what you need or not, I'll be happy to talk you through it! Questions: I am a huge dice nerd, so if you have any questions about dice at all, I'll answer them as best I can. Be careful though; on some topics I can start talking and won't stop for a long time! Bonus - Rolling a Character: If there is time after the tour, I'll be creating a 5e D&D character, and making some cool custom dice to suit the character. Drop by and talk about dice with me!

[ 2021-10-19 21:02:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update is pretty substantial but the first thing I should say is what isn't included in it - online play. I have said that I would aim for it to be included in v1.5, but I haven't managed to make that happen. I've updated this thread with more info if you want details. So, here's what is in v1.5!

Lots of New Dice Shapes!

It's a dice update from me so OF COURSE there are new dice shapes! By my count there are 30 new ones for you to choose from, some are silly (new d1 shapes!), some are there so you have more options when making your polyhedral dice sets (You want to play D&D but you want your dice to be unique!), and some are just inherently cool geometry (Like the pyramihedra, or the new fidgie, or tbh those d1s I mentioned!).
This brings the total number of dice models you can customise up to 385, which is more than um, any dice set or app available ever. Okay tbh I haven't checked that but the odds that I'm wrong are very low - trust me, I know dice so I know my odds ;)

New Graphics Options

This update makes the app PRETTIER THAN EVER. I would especially like to draw your attention to the new "environment" setting in the "Settings>Environment" menu. There are now five lighting options (instead of none) and each can show off your dice in a whole new light (pun INTENDED!)
Also added are the new graphics settings for Ambient Occlusion and Motion Blur. These are enabled by default (because they make stuff look way better) but you might want to disable them if your computer begins to struggle with such things.

Glitter

Another new thing that makes everything nicer to look at is my new Glitter shader, it replaces the old one (which is now called the "Foil" shader, so you can switch back to that if you prefer). This has a much more accurate glitter effect and a new option to specify how fine the glitter 'grain' is. (Heads-up, very fine glitter can appear noisy/pixelly)

New Included Examples and Images

There are new included images, mostly so I can include example dice in "ancient" pipped d6 style (btw have you ever searched online for images of ancient dice? It's a good time and I recommend it),
and also so I can add slot machine dice (including an example roll condition that spawns various amounts of coins when you get specific patterns.)
(Also Just to be clear; real slot machines are an evil trap! Don't ever gamble unless you know the odds, they are in your favour, and you can afford to lose!) Oh I've also added a couple of new example roll expressions to demonstrate comparison functions.

Roll Condition Parameters

The most nerdy part of the update post is here! I've given the values that you can use in Roll Conditions a HUGE overhaul. So now instead of something like "d6!{<3}" (roll d6, explode on less than three), you could say;

• !{<=3} (explode on less than or equal to three)
• !{3..5} (explode on numbers from 3 to 5)
• !{X} (explode on values of X, where X could be a named result, sheet value, or preset variable

And you can even mix and match; "!{X..7,>=Y}" would explode on numbers from X's value to 7, and numbers greater than or equal to Y's value.
For more details, check the Roll Condition Parameters section of the Dice Notation Documentation.

Fixes

Look I know it's not glamorous to talk about fixes but there are a lot for this version, and when I do a lot of work I'm going to brag about it. There are a lot of fixes. I did a lot of work. Feel free to praise me <3 In all seriousness many of them are fixing problems that nobody but me ever notices because they are really obscure. I'd like to think that means that overall the app is working pretty well (since the stuff that does break doesn't stand out), but every new update is a chance for me to break something else so if you do come across problems then let me know! Anyway, that is it for this update, if you want to see the full list of changes you can check the changelog as ever. If you read this far, thanks! I know some of you are still using this app fairly frequently for your online RPGs and stuff, and I just want you to know I love you! Thanks so much for your support! <3

[ 2021-10-10 18:42:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

I've been preparing to add network play for a future update, and though that isn't ready now - the work did enable a few cool new features, and because I am me I've included some new dice shapes too!

Expression Sampling & Statistics

So one of the first feature requests was that the app have a way to output probabilities for various rolls, and I ruled it out pretty early on - the app wasn't made for that and it would be a lot of work. Anyway I've added it because I've been doing a lot of work anyway ;)
It works by sampling many rolls of whichever expressions you give it and going over those results, so the probabilities won't be exact but will become more accurate the more rolls you allow it to make (Check the Expression Testing settings to increase that, or set it to '0' to let it roll forever). Not specifically related to the app, but if you want perfectly accurate roll probabilities calculated, I recommend the website anydice.com - no affiliation, I just use it a fair bit myself and like it :)

New Dice Shapes & Examples

I wasn't going to add any new dice shapes but... then I remembered who I am, so I added a bunch of new dice shapes.
There's also a couple of new example dice, the loveMeNot and deck54. If you want these and they aren't in your examples folder, make a new dice bag and toggle the 'examples' checkbox.

New Roll Condition: "Redefine"

So making sets of dice for every character can be pretty time consuming, right? I tried to speed up the process by making it possible to copy/paste dice styles but this new roll condition should speed things up considerably: You can now roll any die as if it was any other die!
This way you only need to make one die in the style you want, eg "myDie" and then use this roll condition to turn it into any other dice at all. myDie_8 for a d8, myDie_24 for a d24, myDie_ability, myDie_coin... it should all work!

Other New Expression Things

I've added a new function check() that you can use to compare a roll to a DC - if the first parameter beats the second, it will add a "pass" result, otherwise it adds a "fail" result. (There is also a compare() function which works the same, but has different default outputs: "Greater", "Less Than", or "Equal").
There are also shortened rounding functions (rdown(), rup(), reven(), rodd()), operator die generation, and improvements to existing roll conditions: Drop can now drop string values, Keep Middle can now keep the upper middle).

Fixes

This version also has a lot of fixes and optimisations/improvements, in fact working on the code for this version has been the majority of the work since I want it all ready for me to start adding networking functionality to it. Much of that won't be visible but it definitely resulted in me catching a few things I had missed before. Anyway, that is it for this update, if you want to see the full list of changes you can check the changelog as ever. To finish I'd just like to thank you for your support again, working on this app takes a lot out of me but I'm always glad to hear people appreciate it <3

[ 2021-03-03 10:18:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Not a big update this time, but there is definitely cool stuff!

Image Import

On windows and linux versions (but not macOS for now, sorry!) you can now import images directly from the image-select menu. Just hit the '+' button in the top-right! You can also delete images by right-clicking or long-pressing them and selecting the trash icon that pops up.

New Dice Shapes and Examples

I've added two d100 shapes (one spherical, one bipyramidal), and a d69.
Also included in the examples is a "Wild Magic" die in the "examples/RPG/5e" dice bag. This is a ~seriously~ customised dice which approximates the entire Wild Magic roll table from the 5e PHB. Sorcerers rejoice (and then turn into a sheep!). If you're looking to create dice that immitate complex roll tables, this one is worth examining. Also ALSO included as part of the examples are a full set of "Tutorial Expressions", so you can explore all the kinds of rolling you can do when using dice notation. For more detailed descriptions of that stuff you can, as ever, check the documentation.

Roll Expressions

Speaking of expressions, the bulk of this update's new additions relate to them. There are the new roll conditions; Text (converts numeric values to text) and Keep Middle (to disregard all but the middle X dice in a pool), as well as cosmetic conditions: Paint (color your dice using notation!) and Scale (to roll tiny dice or huge dice).
There are also a wide range of new functions including some specific to various game systems (so you can quickly convert an ability score to an ability modifier) and a LOT of rounding functions, so whatever rounding rules your game uses - your expressions will behave properly. There are a few more things I won't detail here, but feel free to check the full change log if you're interested. Thanks for all the support, hope you're getting some good rolls - and some terrible ones too, I try to make the dice fair after all ;)

[ 2021-01-15 17:18:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Not as huge as the v1.3 update, but there is a bunch of cool new stuff I'm sure you'll appreciate!

Hotbar Drag & Drop

Now you can spawn dice without immediately rolling them by dragging them from the hotbar, and you can remove dice by dropping them onto the hotbar (or the bottom of the window). These might seem like minor things but they make the app much more streamlined and pleasant to use.

Dice Spindown

You can now deliberately turn dice to show whatever value you want!
... Hey OK wait a second put your pitchforks away, this allows you to use dice as counters - so any dice can become Spindown dice. Dice which have had their value set deliberately are counted seperately by default, and are always marked with the spindown icon. It's always clear if a result has been tampered with.
To spindown a die, click it to bring up its control menu, then click the result for a dropdown that shows all the values you can turn it to.

New Dice Shapes, Images, and Examples

There are 14 new dice shapes included, bringing the grand total to 340 dice shapes for you to customise. The main highlights this time are the Sphericon shapes (which roll in a really funky way), and partially tapered/rounded cubes and tetrahedra (which appear and roll more similar to the way real d4s and d6s are, given imperfect manufacture - they still roll fairly of course!)
Of the new images, the ones of most interest are probably the zodiac signs, as well as a dragon. Can you believe it has taken me this long to include a drag image for your dice faces? Sorry about that! There are of course a few new example dice and rolls too, most notable this time being seperated d% dice (both 0-9 and 00-90 d10s), and some dice and rolls to play Fighting Fantasy with (These are a set that I've been playing with for a time myself, but others requested them so now they are included!)

Better Menus

I've actually organised the menus! Roll History, User Values, and Settings are now accessed from the same place, and the settings menu categories each have their own 'page' now, so you're not overwhelmed by all the settings.
I've also done a little pass to make the editing interfaces a little easier to use, and also added a new color selection UI which has swatches (though you can switch to using sliders whenever you want).

Roll Expression Improvements

OK if you've read this far you've earned the real nerdy stuff! First up, in the last update I made it so you could specify the number of dice in a pool with a user value (eg, "strengthD6" would roll a number of d6 determined by your 'strength'), but now you can also use user values to specify which dice are rolled in a pool. (eg, "4Dstrength" will roll 4 dice, each with a number of sides determined by 'strength'). Next, there are a BUNCH of new functions that you can use in your expressions, including multi-parameter functions like clamp(,,), min(,), and max(,). A particularly fun new function is rnd(,) which will give a random real number between two specified values. so an expression like "round(rnd(1,20))" is essentially like rolling a d20, but it won't roll any dice... I'm not sure this counts as a "feature" but it's just an example of how robust the roll expression system has become :)

More!

There are also a lot of improvements and fixes. As always, check the changelog for full details of them. ~ That's all for now, if you're curious about what I'll be working on next - it's going to be online play, so you can roll dice with your friends. That is probably going to take a while, so I hope this update has everything you need in the meantime. Happy rolling! - Sophie

[ 2020-12-27 17:01:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

OK so this one took a while because WOW there is a lot of stuff in it!

More/Better Dice

There are 157 new dice shapes, bringing the total to 326.
The bulk of the new shapes are anisohedral (some faces are different to other faces) - these shapes don't make for fair dice when rolled in real life, but as long as you have "Perfect Fairness" enabled then I can assure you of their fairness within the app :)
It's not just new shapes either - all of the dice models have been improved, with every shape having a sharp-edged and a rounded-edged model.

New Customisation Options

The dice material system has been completely rebuilt, giving you greater control over each die's shader, metalicity, gloss, surface texture, and way the colours marble on the dice surfaces.
You can add a great deal of detail and personality to a die without even changing its shape, faces, or colours. Something I'd been wanting to add since the beginning is now included: visual effects! You can select an effect for each face individually from the face's 'VFX' dropdown. There's only a handful for now, but there should be enough to highlight your criticals :)
There are also new included fonts, but you are no longer limited to the fonts included in the app - you can add TTF format fonts to your custom dice folder, or enable 'System Fonts' in the settings to load even more fonts.
I know setting up the appearance for a die to juuuuuust how you want it can take a while, especially with all the new options, so I've made it quicker to apply a style to a whole set. When you edit or create a new dice bag, you can apply a copied style to all of the dice you generate (also, you can generate sets compatible with Dungeon Crawl Classics now!)
Another cool customisation option is now, any image can be 'pipped'. Just check 'Pips' and it will lay out pips in the proper pattern to match the face's number value - no matter whether it is 1, 6, 16, or 76.
And because it's important to roll in a dice tray that matches your character/setting; there are new environment backgrounds, and you can change their colours too.

Spoken Results

When enabled, results can be spoken aloud by yours-truly. You can adjust the speed they are read too, if you want to hear me count numbers with a squeaky voice.

Roll Expression Improvements

You can now roll expressions with multiple results; just split up your expression with commas, or name the results with an '='.
named results can be treated as dice pools subsequent parts of the expression, even allowing you to perform maths and apply some roll conditions (though not any roll conditions that would change the original result)
Another new thing is being able to specify dice pool size by user values just put the value name before (no spaces!) the dice name and it will work :)
There are also a few other changes/improvements to roll expressions, including a new 'Keep' condition. Check the updated Dice Notation documentation for full information.

There's a lot more too!

New images, fonts, and example dice. A MUCH smaller app size. You can have dice rotate after they settle to be easier to read. A low camera motion option for those who get queasy. A double-click shortcut for individual dice. The hotbar & camera are now saved between sessions. The hotbar icons now use their actual dice materials. There are MANY other improvements and fixes too. You can check the full changelog if you're interested in reading an absurdly long list. To summarise though; Dice look and feel better, and you have more control to roll how you want. ~ That's all for now - I hope you have a dice day, and good rolls! - Sophie

[ 2020-10-08 10:27:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's time for an update! Version 1.2 is mostly fixes, but there are a couple of cool new things that might interest you!

User Value Sets

Create and manage sets of values to be used in roll expressions. Put simply, this is where you can enter the stats from your RPG character sheets! Want to roll "d20+str"? A user value is what you use to define what "str" is, and when characters level up you can adjust their values accordingly.
A bonus is that naming the values in your roll expressions means when you save them, you don't forget what they were for! "But Sophie, why are user values in sets? Why not just one list of values?" I'm glad you asked, imaginary person! Each set can have its own name, colour, and can be toggled on/off - this way you can have stats for different characters, games, mechs, beast shapes, etc - and just disable them when they are not in use!
Value sets can be colour coded, to make it a little easier to know which values are being used in an expression

Copy/Paste/Randomise Dice Style

Up until now it has been a real pain to create dice sets with a matching style, so now you can copy and paste a style between dice easily! And as a bonus, you can try randomly generated styles too!
I click the random button a few times before I edit a die now, to find a starting point I like

New Example Dice and Rolls

Not so many new Dice this time (after all, I trust you can make whatever you need!) but my current nerdy obsessions made it into this version: a BUNCH of Lancer dice (and saved Rolls as examples for expressions with difficulty/accuracy), and also some cricket dice.
Most of the Lancer dice are not going to be useful in play very often, but the lore is fun so I made a few for some of it!

Disable String Stacking

A minor feature for most probably, but a few people have been making poetry dice with the app so I've added this option so you can have string results listed completely in the order their dice were rolled, without repeat strings stacking up.
This is a useful feature for whenever the *order* of results is important. (keep in mind the order is determined by which dice are rolled first, not which settle first)

Fixes & Improvements

There have been a lot of fixes. This isn't a new feature but wow did you know this app was really broken before? Like WOW it was broken. Most of the bugs weren't ever found by anyone but me, but wow... it was so broken you have no idea. It's much better now! ~ That's all the notable updates this time, I hope you have a dice day :) - Sophie

[ 2020-01-25 10:41:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, so who wants a huge update for the ultimate dice roller? Here's the highlights of this update:

New dice included:

The included example dice now have A LOT more variety, are better looking, and oh right, there are 16 new dice shapes to make new dice with. Also, if you're looking to make dice pretty there are new materials and other options, as well as several new included face images.
There are many new example dice included

Dice Bags:

The hotbar has been totally rebuilt, combining dice and saved roll expressions into one place, and adding dice bags. Dice bags are essentially folders you can use to keep your dice organised, so if you have custom dice for different games/characters you can put all the relevant dice into different bags. (Roll expressions will try to find dice in your current dice bag before looking elsewhere for dice to roll)
Dice bags appear first on the hotbar, and can be edited/cloned/moved/deleted just like dice and saved roll expressions.

Improved Roll Expressions:

Hey, ever want to roll a d20 and have it explode into 4d8 but have the value of the '3' faces on those d8s to be 10d6, only the d6's '1' faces should have a value of -5? No problem, you can now roll expressions that conditionally roll whole other roll expressions (that can roll others, etc etc).
There is now support for rolling expressions with much more complex rules. You can also create dice that will roll specified expressions when certain faces come up. Just type the expression into a string value in between square brackets ("[" and "]"). And as a bonus, you can now use some maths functions in your roll expressions, including useful ones for some games like rounding up (eg: "ceiling(d6/2)") or rounding down (eg: "floor(d6/2)"). For full details on what you can do with roll expressions see the documentation's page on Dice Notation.

Dice can now be less fair:

OK, so this new feature is 100% opt-in, but here's the deal: My dice are VERY fair. Honestly, sometimes they feel too fair. I worked REALLY hard to find and eliminate every source of bias for my dice and the result is that (so long as you're not using novelty shapes) I can guarantee you random numbers that are more fair than pretty much any real dice. Which if you want a perfectly fair dice app? Great! Buuuuuuut let's be honest - some of the fun of dice is that they can have character. There might be a dice that is usually your best buddy but once in a while is will totaly betray you! When that kind of thing happens at a critical point in a game it makes things much more interesting and dramatic! The truth is if you roll perfectly fair dice all the time then you can lose out on having experiences like that, on having relationships with and stories about your dice. So here's what I've done - there is now a "Dice Character" option, you can toggle it per die (or for all dice) between "Perfect Fairness" (the default), and "Realistic Bias".which will move the center of mass ever so slightly away from the center of the die, in a direction determined (secretly!) by the die's settings - change the dice settings and the bias will change in unpredictable ways (so don't go thinking you can load your dice this way).
Enabling realistic bias will italicise the results display, so you (and anyone who sees your screen) will know. This setting will not have a large pronounced effect, and you would need to roll your dice quite a few times to have any idea what the bias actually is (sometimes it's almost nothing at all) so I would still consider these dice rolls "fair", but once enabled you can consider all your dice superstitions as plausible as with real dice. :)

And a bunch of other stuff:

There have also been a bunch of fixes (sick of trying to roll a d0 and instead it rolls a d1? I fixed that!), improvements (loading times should be a bit faster, UI better to use especially on touch screen), and just cool new additions (numerically balanced face layouts! new dice tray materials!). For the full changelog, check this page from the documentation.

A quick note on macOS Catalina:

Apple have made their operating system a lot more closed and unwelcoming for developers like me with their newest version. Right now, Sophie's Dice is not compatible with Catalina and I'll need to make further changes so that it can be validated and signed in a way that won't break after the first run. I intend to fix this, but frankly it's a bunch of work I could do without. I'll be focussing on finishing this release as-is (which includes getting an iOS version released) and then I'll look into it more. For now, Sophie's Dice should work just as reliably on older versions of macOS as before. ~ That's all for now, keep on rolling <3 - Sophie

[ 2019-10-29 17:56:55 CET ] [ Original post ]