Wolkenkopf

Wolkenkopf

Hello, this is my prototype of a friendship bracelet pattern generator for a study project. 

Browser Restrictions

Some functions are not yet available in the browser. 

You can not load images or save and load patterns. There is no new thread for pattern making so there will be no loading screen while creating patterns.

How to use

Click the play button above to have a quick look at the browser version.

You can also download the APK and use it on Android for more features.

Process

The idea for this app came about because I was looking for an option online where you could convert the pictorial pattern for a friendship bracelet to knotting instructions, but couldn't find one.

The idea somehow stuck with me until I finally had to implement it myself.

This picture shows a mockup that I painted in advance to see which style direction the tool should take.

In the following picture you can see my work process for the flow of the tool. First, I have subdivided the steps and identified important functions. During the process of development I have marked any missing functions or changes in red.

The most interesting part: Pattern generation algorithm

My approach to developing core algorithms is to identify the smallest possible options and encode them suitably. In this case, there are four knot variants. You can have the thread left or right as a visible color and the threads can either swap places after the node or keep them. This results in the following encoding: (Left thread = 0 or Right thread = 1 / Keep position = 0 or Change position = 1).

In the following picture you can see my development process and some sketches of the algorithm before I started coding it.

For the algorithm, I opted for a depth-first search (DFS).

I was already familiar with the algorithm from various programming problems.

Documentation

If you're interested in detailed documentation on this project, you're in luck! I have 18 pages of documentation from ideation to code review. If you're interested, just send me an email and I will send it to you. However, since this is a school project, it is written in German.