Welcome!

Welcome to the developer blog for the LCARS Interface for Windows 8!

Thank you for your interest in this app and I look forward to hearing from you about ways I can improve upon it. This blog is here for you to see what is in development for this app and to give your feedback (good and bad) about your experiences with it. I will start with a little background about my vision for this app and my thoughts on its development.

LCARS-style apps have been around almost as long as LCARS has been seen in Star Trek. Everyone wants to pretend they are on the bridge of the Enterprise interacting with 24th century computers. I am no exception to this, and that's why I decided to build this app. There are some great apps out there for Android as well as Apple's iPhone and iPad and I highly suggest you check them all out and support their development.

My intent is not to copy the functionality of those apps, but to provide an app that can be used alongside those apps to create your full LCARS experience. Some functionality of those may overlap in that we are all trying to emulate the same experience to some extent, but there are certain things that don't make sense to use on one platform or another. For example, a Windows 8 LCARS app doesn't make much sense to pretend to be a tricorder, as no Windows 8 device provides an appropriate form factor, just like a phone does not work well for a tactical station which this one could do very well.

I do have an interesting challenge in that Windows 8 and Windows RT apps can be run on a desktop computer/laptop or a tablet. Supporting those 2 potentially very different form factors seems like it might be difficult. I don't want to disable functionality on a tablet that may not be ideal, but things like the tactical station above may just not work well on it. I will see where that goes with each new module I develop though. It may just require some creativity, because in Star Trek they do sometimes control larger functions with a mobile device. That's part of the fun here, since the computers in the shows don't actually DO anything. They only pretend to. This app will actually be functional. there will be two types of things that eventually end up in here. Modules that perform typical 21st century functionality as you can currently see, and it will also eventually support things to simulate 24th century functions. If you need to divert power to the warp drive, I want to let you do it! There are a TON of LCARS panels made in Flash and other things, but most of the time they are not very interactive beyond a couple button presses. My goal is to make something you can carry out a full role playing scenario with. And for that I need to do a lot of research (by watching the shows over and over, no less) to figure out what situations you may be faced with in using these functions.

I also intend to reproduce pretty much everything in regards to animations on my own, which means some things may take some time to get implemented. I am constantly working on building new LCARS controls which are the building blocks of this program. Very little of this app is purely visual. Each piece is made to function and that takes time. I'm having a lot of fun building this app from the ground up for a new platform and I hope you are as excited as I am to see where it goes!

I have too many ideas and desires for things I want to add. I NEED your help to prioritize, because while I am doing this for my own enjoyment as well, you are ultimately the customers and I will make you happy first! Features will be added much more quickly if I get requests than if I have to decide what to add next on my own, because I have quite a few pieces in progress at any given time.