Grid: Build With Emojis

Grid was a social 2D game app for iOS, where users would be represented by dots on a grid, and create worlds collaboratively using emojis.

My very first experiment with iOS development turned out to be one of my biggest projects. The app had a client based on SpriteKit technology, multi-player mode, voice chat, accounts, friends, world creation and server synchronization of all these features.

Building Grid

In Grid, players would be able to add, relocate, and delete “emoji drops” within worlds. Real-time syncing of changes to a world and movement of the player took place through the use of WebSockets; WebRTC was used for voice chat.

It was one of the biggest challenges to ensure responsiveness on the mobile platform. In worlds, there could be a lot of drops, as well as several players who would need to be rendered and updated without hurting performance or overheating your phone.

In addition to developing the game itself, I have developed many other systems to transform Grid into a real product, such as user accounts, profiles, friends, notifications, moderation, subscriptions, and everything else around the app.

What Happened?

Having spent several months on it, I realized that at some point I'd have to stop working on Grid.

This project has shown me much more than I have anticipated at the beginning, mostly in terms of iOS development, real-time networking, backend development, performance optimization, and differences between creating a prototype and a finished product.

Unfortunately, Grid was shutdown and will not be coming back, but the code written for it and the experience developing it will forever influence me.

Read about why I stopped building Grid