What's all this LoB stuff? LoB is London on Board, a group that meets a few times a week in various venues around London to play board games. It operates a web-site where you can find more information. LoB is afiliated with a twice-yearly board gaming convention, LoBsterCon.
What's this app all about, then? Right now, it's an experiment, rather than a committed plan. The existing schemes for organising games at LoB meetings (sign-up via Meetup, game coordination via Meetup chat) and at LoBsterCon conventions (curated lists on Board Game Geek, accompanied by WhatsApp discussions) are inconvenient in various ways, and after discussion with the LoB admins I volunteered to implement an experimental app, to see whether a dedicated app might make things go more smoothly. After further experimentation and discussion, it might develop into an officially supported way to organise games at LoB.
So who exactly are you then? I'm Jim Chapman, a retired IT manager and freelance software developer. I attend some LoB meetings and LoBsterCon conventions, and I've developed this app as volunteer effort in the hope that it might be useful.
The website seems to belong to an outfit called Turnipsoft ... who are they? For an independent app developer, it's often helpful to operate a corporate entity. Turnipsoft Ltd is just the corporate vehicle that I use for app development purposes, to segregate the income, expenses and legal relationships involved in my app development business. It's not part of some shadowy corporate empire, and its corporate records don't conceal any nasty surprises.
Is this a sinister attempt to steal my data, or lock me into a bait-and-switch deal where I end up having to pay an annual subscription or something? No. The app needs to use some data about you (how else could it tell other people that you want to play a game?) but I won't give or sell this data to anyone else and you can always delete it if you want to (the Data Handling and Deletion policy explains the details). The app is free to download and free to use, and I'm telling you now that I'm not going to start charging for it in the future. If I did ever try to change that arrangement, it would always be possible for some more public-spirited person to download the source code and build the app themself, and publish it as free-to-use. That's because the code for the app is open-sourced (see the question below, about how the app works).
But operating the app does cost something, right? It does. Most of the costs (app developer programme registration, build/test environments, admin, ...) I'm covering myself as part of the general costs of running Turnipsoft. The app also incurs usage charges for cloud storage and compute, and these (if they come to a significant sum) may in the end be covered by corporate sponsorship, in which case you'll presently see a 'Sponsored by ...' link on the app. No matter what, I am not going to sell your data, and I'm never going to send you marketing communications (neither for myself, nor on behalf of someone else).
Who owns the trademarks and copyright? Good question. The copyright for the app belongs to me (but I've made the source code available under the GPL). I'm not making any claim for copyright or trademark rights over the app logo or its name; the trademarks London On Board, LoB, LoBsterCon and their associated imagery belong to LoB and LobsterCon. I'd recommend that you ask permission from an admin before using them in any way.
So how does it work, then? The LobsterConnect app is a thick client, running on Windows, iOS, MacOS and Android devices. It's built using Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition, and it uses the .NET MAUI Framework for cross-platform development. It relies on a cloud sync service, provided by an Azure Function application, LobsterConBackEnd. The app's durable state is persisted into a journal object; the app keeps a local copy of its journal in a file, and on startup it replays this file to set up the app content. The cloud sync service, implemented in LobsterConBackEnd, takes care of keeping the journals synchronised between all the devices running the LobsterConnect app. The source code is on GitHub (for the app, and the back-end). Note that the licence for both components is GPL; that means that anyone publishing the app (or an app derived from it) must always make their source code available free of charge. If you want more detailed explanations of how the app works, you can refer to the 'summary' comment in the app source file.
Yes, but how do I actually use the app? Right now, there aren't any handy HOW-TO guides and videos, and there isn't a nice manual. When first run (and any other time you pick [menu]>Support>Show First Run Message) the app will display a short explanation of how to use it, and the same information appears in the quick-start section of the app's web page. In due course, if it becomes an officially supported endeavour, better documentation will be produced.
If you have any questions not answered here, please feel free to contact us.