Small Tools that make a BIG difference
Hey everyone,
We wanted to share a bit of what’s been happening behind the scenes at Covyne lately, specifically something small we built that’s been making our day-to-day work a lot smoother. Like most dev teams, we spend a fair bit of time running builds. And as you probably know, builds aren’t always quick. Sometimes they take long enough to break your flow, especially when you’re in the middle of solving something.
That’s where CADET came from.
Why We Built It
This actually started pretty simply. Andrew was running into the same issue over and over kick off a build, then sit there waiting… or try to switch tasks and lose momentum. Neither option felt great. So instead of working around the problem, we decided to build something to handle it.
The idea was simple: Run a build in the background so we can keep working on the game.
What CADET Does (In Plain Terms)
And Voila, CADET was born. CADET means ‘Cross-Platform Automated Deployment Engine and Tooling… bit of a mouthful but it handles builds in the background so you don’t have to stop what you’re doing and thats it in a nutshell.
It sounds simple and it is but the difference it’s made has been surprisingly big. Instead of builds being a pause point, they just happen alongside everything else.
What Changed for Us
Since we started using CADET, a few things have noticeably improved:
We stay in the zone longer
There’s less context switching
Builds feel less like interruptions and more like part of the process
Overall, work just flows better
It’s one of those changes that doesn’t seem huge on paper, but you feel it immediately when you’re working.
Bigger Picture
We’re definitely not the only ones dealing with this kind of problem. Larger teams especially have to think a lot about build pipelines, automation, and keeping things moving. CADET is our small, practical take on that. It’s not trying to reinvent anything it just solves a problem we were running into every day. And honestly, those are often the best kinds of tools.
Why We’re Sharing This
Part of what we want to do with our news posts is give a bit more insight into how we actually work as a studio and not just what we’re building, but how we’re building it. CADET is a good example of that. It’s a behind-the-scenes tool, but it’s had a real impact on how we work day to day.
We’ll probably keep building little things like this as we go; tools that make development smoother, faster, and a bit less frustrating.
More soon,
– The Covyne Team