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.

Ty Johnston
Ty Johnston Founder and engineer. Writes the plan, builds the system, answers the phone.
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.

Who does the work
Ty Johnston
Ty Johnston On every project

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 engine

    Floptle

    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

    A stone ruin among hand-painted pines, rendered in Floptle's retro low-resolution mode A ship on an escape trajectory from a planet, with an orbit HUD A ship inside a glowing cavern carved into a planet Floptle's node-graph shader editor with a live preview Lua scripting inside the Floptle editor
    Managed multiplayer hosting

    Floptle 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 U3Z458

    The whole join step. A laptop or a dedicated server, the same six characters.

    100 at oncefree
    $60 a month500 players, four servers
    us-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

    Foduel card art
  • Disk-usage treemap for Linux

    Storage 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

    Storage Sifter drawing a Linux filesystem as a colour-coded squarified treemap Storage Sifter's safe-to-delete dialog: a verdict, the file's classification, its path and size, and the reasons Storage Sifter drilled several folders deep, the treemap re-tiled around that subtree
  • Digital audio workstation

    Fontelle

    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

    Fontelle's studio view with tracks and a timeline Fontelle's mixer Flopsynth, Fontelle's SoundFont instrument A plugin editor hosted inside Fontelle
  • 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

    Foverse

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.

Ty Johnston
Ty Johnston Knoxville, TN. Founder, Fopull LLC.