ThunderPop
- Platforms: Android and iOS
- Role: Lead Developer
- Technologies: Unity, Firebase, Photon Fusion 2, Edgegap
- Duration of my involvement: 10 Months – from basic idea to post-launch period (May 2025 – Feb 2026)
- 1 month – Discovery
- 7 months – Production until launch
- 1 month – Post-launch support and additional features
- Team: 2-4 Developers (2 developers joined later in the project), 2 Artists, Project Manager, Game Designer, Client
Company: Ingenious Studios
Game Features
- 2 to 4 player real-time 2D multiplayer gameplay
- Solo and Party Matchmaking
- 3D Animated Characters with different skins, accessories and animations
- Hero Shop with lots of customization items, daily rewards, and weekly featured items
- Daily and Weekly Quests
- In-App Purchases
My Contributions
During Discovery
- Created the first prototype for the initial validation of basic gameplay
- Researched and decided on the 3rd party options used for server hosting and matchmaking
- Created the developer estimates and participated in the roadmap creation, prioritizing technical unknowns
- Defined the project architecture, core systems and their relationships
During Production
- Led the developer team and made sure that the technical vision is executed
- Mitigated technical issues as they arose
- Implemented all of the multiplayer logic
- Organized and held the developer planning meetings when they were necessary
- Onboarded the newcoming developers
- Led the incremental developer estimates between milestones
Challenges and Solutions
- Out-of-the-box projectile movement using Physics 2D was not satisfactory and would not be enough for the needs of the game
- Implemented a custom movement logic for projectiles with working multiplayer client prediction
- Nobody on the team, including myself, worked with Photon Fusion before
- Learned the basics using online resources and advice from other colleagues
- Dedicated servers run on Linux, which Firebase libraries don’t support
- Implemented and tested all of the Firestore calls using the REST API on the server, instead of using the Unity Firestore libraries
- Early on, there were performance spikes in the moments when new projectiles were being spawned
- Implemented a generic pooling mechanism, which enabled fast and easy adding of different projectile types later with pooling built-in
- Potential data conflicts between server and client
- Planned out a simple solution for deciding when the server is the authority for the player data vs. when the client is the authority, and implemented it with the team
- A lot of the gameplay was not known yet at the start of the project
- Exposed game parameters for the game designer to tweak as needed; Prioritized keeping the gameplay code as simple as possible so that it could be changed later
- Party matchmaking was not supported by the matchmaking service
- Planned out a custom party matchmaking solution using Firestore and Cloud Functions and implemented it with the team
- The player inventory had to support buying and owning several different types of items: characters, skins, titles, accessories etc.
- Planned out and implement a simple inventory system which treats all of the items similarly and discerns them as needed
- The game needed to support 60FPS during gameplay on weak devices
- Checked the performance regularly on a weak Android device and made sure it stayed at 60FPS