ThunderPop

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

• 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

• Mitigated technical issues as they arose

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