🚀 Devlog #2 – Scaling an Endless Tower Defense Without Killing Performance
Astro Company · published
🚀 Devlog #2 – Scaling an Endless Tower Defense Without Killing Performance
Hey everyone đź‘‹
I want to share a deeper look at what I’ve been working on recently, because this update touches the core of the game more than anything else so far.
When you’re building an endless tower defense, things work great at first…
until the enemy count starts going up. Fast.
⚠️ The Problem: Endless Waves, Finite Performance
Early versions of the game handled enemies in a fairly straightforward way.
Each enemy was its own actor, doing its own logic, collision checks, and distance calculations.
That approach works - until you hit hundreds of enemies on screen.
As waves scaled higher, performance started to suffer, and I knew this wouldn’t be sustainable long-term. If the game is meant to be endless, the systems behind it must scale endlessly too.
🛠️ The Solution: Centralized Enemy Management
Instead of letting every enemy and every tower think for itself, I rebuilt the entire system around a central enemy manager.
Some key changes:
Enemies are handled as instanced meshes (HISM) instead of individual actors
All enemy logic is processed in one place
Distance and proximity checks are optimized and simplified
Towers query a shared system instead of scanning the world on their own
This dramatically reduced overhead and made the whole system predictable and scalable.
⚡ Why This Matters for Gameplay
This isn’t just a technical refactor - it directly affects what the game can do.
Thanks to this system, I can now safely:
Spawn much larger waves
Add enemies with special behaviors
Introduce bosses without worrying about FPS drops
Build more complex tower interactions and synergies
In short: the game is now ready to grow.
🔠What’s Next
With the foundation in place, the focus shifts back to gameplay:
New enemy types with unique mechanics
Economy and support towers
Further polishing of the card and upgrade systems
More fun, more chaos, same performance.
❤️ Thanks for Following the Development
If you enjoy seeing how games are built - not just played - I’ll keep sharing progress like this.
👉 Wishlist the game to stay updated, and feel free to leave feedback or questions in the comments.
Your support genuinely helps more than you think.