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Redrix - Destiny 2 PVP Companion App

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Grant Skinner and I have released a new iOS and Android app for Destiny 2. Redrix is a Destiny 2 PVP companion app which gives you information and stats when playing Crucible mode in Destiny 2.

The response from the community has been overwhelming. The app made the front page of Reddit (2), and has had a couple of articles and reviews posted online.

We are using Bungie’s Destiny 2 API, which really gives a ton of information about what is going on in game. I honestly think its one of the best ways a company can support and build a community, and Bungie has really knocked it out of the park.

We built the app using Google’s Flutter and Dart. We have been really impressed with Flutter, both development time, speed and performance, and especially its ability to compile across platforms (we target iOS iPhone and iPad, and Android phones). If you are building a custom UI and want to target multiple platforms, I would really give Flutter a look (I am really excited about some of the work the team is doing to bring Flutter apps to the desktop).

Note, we are using Redux for Flutter for state management. It has a lot of boilerplate code, but really eased development, and in particular, made it easy for Grant and I to work together, and focus on our areas of code (Grant UI / experience, me on the middleware and backend).

I spent most of my development time in Dart, and I have to say it is quickly becoming one of my favorite languages. Coming from an ActionScript / JavaScript background it feels really familiar, and has a lot of modern touches that really ease development. In particular, working with asynchronous code and threads is super simple, and dramatically simplifies the code. Main downside though is that the community is not as large as Flash’s was, or JavaScript’s is, so library support is not as strong as I would like (i.e. no actively maintained SQLite library). However, the tooling for Dart / Flutter via Visual Studio Code is really strong (has become my default IDE).

Shout out to Grant for all of the app and website design also. The community has called out how great the design is, and its really a testament to the impact and importance of the design and user experience.

We are having a lot of fun working on the app, and plan to keep building on it. You can find more information, including how to download at redrix.io.

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