To understand where we’re going, let’s start with where we’re coming from…
The journey up to 2024
We started building the online Repper app in 2017 and released it two years later.
The basics were in place, but it looked a little different than today:
Repper as released in 2019 — Try to spot all the differences with today!
In the last 5 years, we’ve massively extended the product:
- 20 more tilings
- New effects like the unique Metamorphosis
- 3D preview on 16 realistic products
- Collection management
- Vector support
- Dream mode
- Near infinite export (up to 1 GIGA-pixel)
- And much more…
I’m so proud of the app @Alexander and I (@Wouter) built, with the help of amazing people like @Michel_Repper and evangelist users like @MeyAroyo, @RozFruchtman, and many of you
Repper today — Our little pattern paradise
Rebuilding the pattern engine
So why rebuild?
The Repper app had grown organically and was in need of some cleaning up. Not just that, but there are new features we’re keen to develop that require a more robust foundation.
You can imagine the current app looking something like this under the hood:
That gets hard to build on, especially has we have some big plans! And so, @Alexander took on the massive task of rebuilding the pattern-generating core of the app.
Now the app is a lot more structured:
In essence, we have from bottom to top:
- Bottom layer: A lot of ingredients for making patterns (tilings, effects, parameters)
- Middle layer: One central engine for turning those ingredients into recipes
- Top layer: Different parts of the app use the engine to show all the patterny goodness.
.
After the rebuild: What the future may hold
All this effort means that, with this new setup, we can make new features faster and dream bigger
I realise this may all feel a bit abstract, but here’s the essence:
Before we had hard-coded pattern recipes; now we can generate them on-the-fly, and this opens up a whole new range of possibilities.
It’s still early days, but here are a few directions we’re exploring.
(Note: These are explorations and we cannot guarantee if or when they would be available )
#1 Much more advanced tilings
Tilings with repetitions on different levels, that create very intricate and totally unique patterns, never seen before.
#2 Create your own tilings
What if you could not just make your own patterns, but create the tilings (= recipes) themselves? We have built some prototypes and while we aren’t quite ready to show you, I for one am very excited about this whole new product area.
#2 Mandalas
Talking about whole new product categories! We’re also still in the early stages with this, but we hope to make designing mandalas super easy, the Repper way.
#3 Advanced style effects
Repper works with any source image, but sometimes it can be hard to find the right style or an image with enough resolution. With advanced style effects, we hope to address both those issues in one fell swoop.
.
.
Phew, that was a big story! I hope you got a better sense now of why we took on this massive rebuild this year! We are a small team and so these things take time, but we keep diligently working to offer you evermore pattern possibilities
Let us know in the comments what new features you’d be most excited to see