How We Built Shopify Party - Shopify

This post details the development of Shopify Party, a browser-based internal tool for virtual hangouts. It leverages Unity WebGL for 3D rendering and Normcore for real-time networking and state synchronization. Key technical contributions include: using Unity's editor and physics engine, implementing a peer-to-peer networking model with Normcore for state synchronization and VoIP, synchronizing non-player-controlled objects using room time and deterministic functions (e.g., `Sin`), and optimizing character customization through texture application and shader programming to reduce rendering overhead. The development also utilized third-party assets from the Unity Asset Store to accelerate level design.