Cave Defender Devlog – Week of November 19, 2018
Since January 1st of this year, I’ve been keeping a log of my daily work on Cave Defender. I’m sharing this log on a weekly basis so you can find out how development is going with the game. In the last week I:
- Thinking more about redesign: SP missions need to communicate types of debris that are incoming, have a countdown until the next wave, and a countdown for the ‘mission to be over’. Also considering some mechanics where you collect minerals that come from destroyed debris. Still need to think about how to better communicate and balance the resource (‘energy’ for building defenses) and whether to include defense repair. Posted screenshot saturday. Oh and installed yet another new version of Unity LTS.
- Got more feedback, this time in person. I was suggested to check out Defense Grid 2 (which I will). Doing a thought experiment about what would be required to ship the game soon. I also thought about some of the appeal of the original prototype and how to bring that back into the current build. Thinking about reducing the narrative stuff during the mission to an absolute minimum, and keeping it light (and skippable) between missions. Then really focusing on UX and providing a deeper ‘endless mode’ experience.
- Tested Unity and Oculus upgrade on the Go - I’m missing some laser pointer logic (maybe lost in merge) and audio isn’t working, will have to check the plugin update notes to find out why. Fixed the laser pointer logic (was it always this way?) - still need to figure out the audio. And it actually appears to be working. Not sure why earlier the volume controls weren’t responding, but I guess the volume was low.
- Unity upgrade day. Also upgraded the Oculus plugin to 1.31.
- Added another tractor beam defense type (last one). Mesh and initial game object.
- Added another tractor beam defense type.
- Started implementing changes to shield behaviour (debris bounces off)
Media posts this week:

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