Day 1 Prototype

Dev Log: Challenges Creating the Idle Grid Prototype with React, Electron, and JavaScript

Hey everyone! Welcome to another dev log for Idle Grid! As I continue to develop this prototype, I wanted to take a moment to share some of the challenges I’ve faced in bringing this game to life using React, Electron, and JavaScript, especially when working with the tile-based system at the heart of the gameplay.

The Challenge: Building a Tile-Based System

One of the first hurdles I encountered was designing and implementing the tile-based system that drives the grid mechanics of the game. In Idle Grid, the core gameplay revolves around managing a grid of factories, power plants, and research facilities, which required a system that could dynamically handle grid-based placements, scaling, and interactions.

React and Dynamic Rendering: React’s declarative approach was both an advantage and a challenge here. The game needed to dynamically render tiles, update their state based on player actions (like building or upgrading), and reflect changes on the grid without causing performance issues. While React’s reactivity made it easier to handle state changes, rendering large numbers of interactive tiles led to performance bottlenecks, especially when trying to optimize for fluid grid updates.

To solve this, I used React’s virtual DOM effectively, but fine-tuning it for real-time grid updates was still tricky. I ended up having to manage some tiles outside React’s normal rendering cycle and used local component states for more immediate updates.

Integrating Electron for Desktop Functionality

Bringing the game to desktop through Electron added another layer of complexity. Electron’s integration of React isn’t as straightforward as just using React for web apps, mainly because you need to manage both the main process (Electron’s background script) and the renderer process (where React lives).

For the tile-based system, handling communication between the renderer (React) and the main process was crucial for things like saving the game state, managing progress, and ensuring the game ran efficiently offline. Getting this system to work smoothly and ensuring minimal delays while interacting with the grid was one of my biggest challenges.

JavaScript and Grid Interaction

On top of this, JavaScript itself posed some interesting challenges when it came to the actual grid mechanics. I had to design a system that could:

• Track tile positions.
• Ensure proper grid bounds and interactions (for example, tiles can’t be placed out of bounds or overlap).
• Support dynamic placement, removal, and upgrading of tiles as part of the gameplay loop.

A lot of this logic had to be manually coded, which required significant optimization and testing. Some of the biggest struggles were with managing the grid’s state consistency during interactions, especially when handling drag-and-drop functionality for placing tiles. The game’s state had to reflect every small change in the grid without causing glitches or lag, which meant iterating on the tile placement logic many times to get it just right.

Performance Optimization

As the game evolved, I realized that the tile-based system wasn’t just about managing the grid—it was also about ensuring smooth performance while keeping the gameplay experience immersive. When you have many interactive elements on screen, managing render cycles and state updates becomes incredibly important.

I had to dive into performance profiling within Electron and React, optimize my code, and ensure that each tile interaction didn’t slow down the entire app. This meant:

• Lazy loading tiles that weren’t visible.
• Optimizing tile state management so the UI wouldn’t freeze when the user interacted with the grid.
• And managing frame rates to avoid stuttering as players built their factories.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Building the Idle Grid prototype with React, Electron, and JavaScript was a great learning experience, but it definitely came with its share of challenges, especially around managing the tile-based grid system. As I continue to refine the game, there are still areas for improvement, such as balancing performance and adding more depth to the mechanics.

I’m excited to continue iterating on this prototype and would love to hear your feedback on how the grid-based system feels to play. The prototype is just the beginning, and I can’t wait to dive deeper into optimizing the gameplay, expanding features, and making the game more polished.

Stay tuned for more updates, and thanks for following the journey!