After a weekend of toil with GRPC, ProGuard, dex, Netty, Maven, Gradle and IntelliJ, I finally managed to build a release APK of the first public version of the Bigcanvas app.
Core to the idea of Bigcanvas is that it’s a shared space, where everyone can draw at the same time. Much as it would on a real canvas, this means people can interfere with each other.
How does one store the contents of an infinite canvas into a computer’s finite memory? One cheats. In this case, by taking advantage of the fact that the canvas may be infinite, but people’s drawings are quite finite.
Remember Bigcanvas? The infinite online canvas that anyone can draw on, which I launched in 2013? I didn’t do anything with it since, but the idea has always been at the back of my mind, biding its time.
Ladies and gentlemen, Frozen Fractal presents… Bigcanvas! It’s an infinite online canvas that anyone can draw on. The ‘why’ is described within the app itself, so have a look!