Photon Dev Diaries: Meet Team Nthusia – Creators of Fusion Karts, Fusion Golf and Food Fusion.
We’re excited to launch a new series of dev diaries in partnership with Nthusia, a talented indie game development studio. In this series, we’ll take you behind the scenes to see how our teams work together to bring cool new projects to life. Let’s start by introducing the people behind Nthusia and looking back at how we first connected.
Who is Nthusia?
Nthusia is made up of two passionate indie game developers, Dan and Cody. Dan is based in Scotland, and Cody is in the US. They both have a lifelong love for games, and in January 2022, they founded Nthusia, fueled by the capital and motivation gained from their collaborative work with Photon, to pursue their shared goal of creating engaging and innovative projects.
Dan, who had been dabbling in game development since before high school, decided to pursue it full-time after losing his job due to the pandemic. Around the same time, he crossed paths with Cody. Cody’s fascination with game creation began at the age of 10, leading him on a journey through various platforms like GameMaker, Flash/ActionScript, JavaScript for web development, and ultimately Unity and C#. Their paths converged on the Brackeys community Discord server, where they forged a strong bond and embarked on collaborative game projects. This partnership honed their expertise in “rapid prototyping,” a skill that caught the attention of Photon, leading to their collaboration on educational samples.
Fusion Golf
How We Started Working Together
Our partnership began in September 2021. At the time, Dan and Cody were developing a prototype for a kart racing game. They were happy with their progress and decided to share a video of the prototype on the Photon Bolt server Discord:
This is where Christof, our CEO/CTO here at Photon, first saw their work. He was impressed with the polish and the potential of their project, and he thought it would be a great educational sample. He specifically thought it would be a good example of how to migrate a project from Bolt to Fusion, Photon’s new networking package at the time.
Photon reached out to Nthusia, and so began a successful collaboration. The karting project, now known as Fusion Karts, became the first of several sample projects that Nthusia developed for Photon.
Nthusia’s Sample Projects
Since Fusion Karts, Nthusia has created several other high-quality sample projects that demonstrate the power and versatility of Photon’s products. These samples are great resources for developers who are learning to use Photon and want to see how to create different types of online multiplayer experiences.
- Fusion Karts: Fusion Karts is an arcade racer with all the features you’d expect, like checkpoints, laps, powerups, and a fun kart controller with drifting and boosting.
- Fusion Golf: The Fusion Golf sample illustrates an arcade golf racing game using a server-authoritative, client-predicted model. It includes an 18-hole course, session browser, and customizable game settings for a dynamic experience.
- Fusion Impostor: The Fusion Impostor demonstrates how to create a social deduction game for up to 8 players, featuring communication integration with Photon Voice SDK. It has been upgraded from Fusion 1.0 to Fusion 2.0, retaining core functionality.
- Food Fusion: Fusion Cooking Coop is a sample of a cooperative party cooking game using Fusion Shared mode. Players are presented with a series of orders to be made and served before they expire.
- Quantum Motor Dome: The Quantum Motor Dome sample demonstrates an approach on how to build a free-for-all Snake-like sports game for up to 6 players, featuring hands-off host-or-join lobbying, automatic game state progression with a custom-built FSM system, broadphase hit detection, and player customization. This was an original concept sample that originated from a “back to school” multiplayer game jam hosted by Photon and the Global Game Jam in October 2022.
Food Fusion
Nthusia’s Development Process
When Nthusia starts working on a new sample project, they have a process that helps them work efficiently and produce high-quality results. Here’s a general overview:
- Research and Analysis: First, they spend some time getting familiar with the type of game they’re making. They’ll play similar games, watch videos, and think about the core systems that make those games work. This helps them understand the gameplay they need to recreate for the sample.
- Character Controller First: One of the first things Nthusia does is build a character controller. This is a key part of many games, and it lets them start interacting with the game world early on.
- Leveraging Existing Code: Nthusia reuses code from their previous projects whenever possible. They have core scripts for things like interacting with Photon services that they can adapt for each new project. This saves them time and lets them focus on the unique parts of each sample.
Looking Ahead to the Next Dev Diary
In the next installment of this series, we’ll dive into Nthusia’s current project, a cooperative, Animal Crossing-inspired game that uses Photon Fusion’s shared mode. You’ll get to see what they’ve been working on, including:
- Core gameplay mechanics like chopping trees, digging holes, burying items, collecting shells, and interacting with NPCs to buy and sell items.
- A system that lets players drop money for each other, hinting at a shared inventory or economy system.
- We’ll also take a closer look at the Character Customization and talk about how to sync it in the best possible way. You’ll learn how Nthusia is enabling players to express their unique style in a shared online world.
We’re excited to share more of Nthusia’s journey with you! Stay tuned for the next dev diary where we will go much more into detail and showcase the different steps and processes needed to build a sample with Photon.
Ready to build your own successful multiplayer game? With Fusion and Quantum by Photon, it’s never been easier to integrate cutting-edge multiplayer features into your project. We offer the industry’s most advanced tools, comprehensive support, and everything you need to get started – from downloadable samples to detailed documentation.
Take the first step today – download Fusion or download Quantum and start building. If you’re looking for in-depth assistance, join our Gaming Circle, where you can connect directly with our developers and get expert guidance throughout your journey.
Your multiplayer success story starts here!
