Checkmate on Compose Part 2
Article Summary
Zsolt Kocsi discovered that Jetpack Compose's lack of shared element transitions wasn't a limitation. It was an opportunity to build something better.
Zsolt Kocsi built Chesso, a Jetpack Compose chess app with animated visualization layers. This second part of his series dives into the animation challenges and solutions he discovered while building complex board visualizations.
Key Takeaways
- Compose's offset modifier enables piece animations without shared element transitions
- Offset-based rendering made board flipping trivial with coordinate calculations
- LaunchedEffect with vararg keys prevents expensive recalculations during animations
- Extensible decoration interfaces allow stacking multiple visualization layers
- Analyzed million Lichess games to visualize checkmate probability heatmaps
Critical Insight
Compose's animation system and offset modifiers can handle complex chess piece animations and multiple visualization layers without performance penalties when properly memoized.
