Tell an engineer what's broken. Get a plan in writing, then the fix.
Custom software for businesses: web apps, backends, real-time systems and the infrastructure under them. Built and maintained by professionals that run their own software.
- Where
- Knoxville, TN, working anywhere in the US
- Coding
- Since 2018, 8 years
- Studio
- Fopull LLC, founded 2024
- Reply
- Within one business day
How working with Fopull goes
-
A scope call
Thirty minutes on what you are trying to do and what is in the way. Not a sales call: if it is not a fit, you hear that on the call.
-
A written plan you can take anywhere
Short paid discovery, then a document: what gets built, in what order, what it costs, what it runs on, what could go wrong. It is yours whether or not Fopull builds it.
-
Built in milestones you sign off on
Fixed-bid where the scope is clear, hourly where it cannot be. The running system is visible from the first milestone, not the last.
-
Handed over with a runbook
Source, infrastructure, documentation and the operating notes, so another engineer can run it. A retainer if you would rather Fopull did.
Ty Johnston does the work. Subcontractors on larger projects, under the same standard, and you know who is touching the code. There is no account manager between you and the engineer.
Things Fopull has built, by kind
Each of these is a page written for one kind of problem, with a real system from our own production as the worked example.
- Custom web applications Laravel, a server-rendered frontend, real authentication. Production systems handed over with a runbook.
- Backends, APIs and integrations Server-authoritative APIs, OAuth and PKCE, webhooks that survive replay. Integrations that do not fail at 3am.
- HIPAA-adjacent systems Audit-logged, encrypted, hardened. Built like the data matters, under your security officer's controls.
- Game backends and real-time systems Server-authoritative saves, OAuth for a Unity client, matchmaking over websockets, a managed multiplayer relay. The whole loop.
- Self-hosted infrastructure Your stack on your own metal, or ours. Set up, hardened, backed up, and handed over with the keys and a runbook.
Proof
Software Fopull ships and runs in public. Each one is a different stack, and each one is how the studio proves it can build yours.
-
Open-source game engineFloptle
A game engine written from scratch in Rust: carvable volumetric worlds, a built-in editor, Lua scripting, and multiplayer in one line of code.
- Rust
- wgpu
- SDF terrain
- Lua
- Windows, macOS, Linux
v0.116.1 187 releases, MIT or Apache-2.0
Managed multiplayer hostingFloptle Cloud
Players join by a six-character code, whoever is hosting. A managed relay, dedicated servers on our own Linux boxes, and a control plane that owns the lobby code.
- Relay in Ashburn
- QUIC
- Laravel control plane
- Stripe
100 players free tier, across every game on the account, no card
Lobby code U3Z458The whole join step. A laptop or a dedicated server, the same six characters.
100 at oncefree$60 a month500 players, four serversus-eastlive region -
Trading card game, in the browser
Foduel
Designed, illustrated and engineered end to end: a deckbuilder, packs, ranked duels over websockets, bot opponents, and a separate rules engine so a duel is fair on every device.
- Laravel
- Reverb websockets
- .NET rules engine
- PostgreSQL
78 cards live duels, a free starter deck for every new player
-
Disk-usage treemap for LinuxStorage Sifter
A GPU-drawn treemap of a whole filesystem with safe-to-delete verdicts and the cleanup command for your distro. The WinDirStat that Linux did not have.
- Rust
- wgpu, Vulkan
- egui
- AppImage
Linux open source, MIT
-
Digital audio workstationFontelle
A DAW that works with what you already have: SoundFonts with every parameter editable, CLAP, LV2 and VST plugins. Windows, macOS and Linux, one small binary, all in Rust.
- Rust
- wgpu, vello
- CLAP and LV2
- SoundFont
v0.27.2 Linux, Windows, macOS
-
Community platform
Foverse
Identity, payments, realtime and a marketplace behind one account, self-hosted on our own hardware. The reference build for every platform Fopull delivers.
- Laravel
- OAuth 2.0, PKCE
- Stripe
- Reverb
- PostgreSQL
Self-hosted identity, payments, realtime, on hardware in the room
Recently, in production
From the engineering log: what broke, what was measured, what changed. Dated, with the numbers.
-
I took the relay down for forty seconds, and the pre-flight test had proved nothing
Putting a real TLS certificate on the Floptle Cloud relay crash-looped it on a permissions error that a test under sudo could not have caught.
-
The relay's ceiling was a 208 KB socket buffer, not the link
A load test on the Floptle Cloud relay found packet drops at around 100 players, using under 1% of the link. Three counters agreed on why.
-
One field in a control-plane response restarted a live game server every 21 seconds
Adding lobby_code to the fleet's desired-state endpoint created a feedback loop with a server whose engine did not understand the flag. Systemd ended it.
Talk to Ty
Bring the problem as it is, rough notes are fine. You get a reply from the engineer within one business day, and a scope call if it looks like a fit.