✈ Plane War Ultimate

A complete 2D shoot-'em-up built from scratch in ~3500 lines of C++ — no game engine, just raylib.

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Why This Project Is Interesting

Most "game programming" tutorials stop at a triangle moving on screen. This is a fully playable arcade game with all the systems you'd find in a commercial STG:

• 🔫 Charge laser — hold to charge, release for a screen-piercing beam
• 💣 Bomb stock — 3 per life, press B to clear the screen
• ⚡ Graze scoring — near-miss bullets for bonus points
• 💎 Item collection chain — magnetic gold stars with x5.0 score multiplier
• 👑 3 unique Bosses — Carrier, Destroyer, Hellbringer — each with 2 attack phases
• 👾 Mid-bosses — mini-boss encounters at waves 3 and 7
• 🌊 10-wave JSON-configurable stage — edit waves.json to design your own
• 🎚️ 4 difficulty levels — Easy / Normal / Hard / Lunatic
• 🏅 Top-10 leaderboard — persistent local rankings with timestamps
• 🎵 BGM support — drop an .mp3 in resources/ and it plays

All built without a game engine — only C++17 and raylib as a rendering/audio layer.

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Gameplay

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Controls

Key	Action
WASD / Arrow Keys	Move
SPACE (tap)	Fire bullet
SPACE (hold)	Charge → release for laser beam
B	Bomb — screen clear (3 per life)
P / ESC	Pause
F11	Fullscreen
M	Mute

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Architecture

main.cpp
  └── Game (state machine: MENU → PLAYING → PAUSED → GAMEOVER)
        ├── Player         Movement, shooting, charge laser, invincibility
        ├── Enemy[30]      3 types (Stinger / Ravager / Juggernaut)
        ├── Boss           3 variants (Carrier / Destroyer / Hellbringer)
        ├── Bullet[160]    Object-pooled, player + boss
        ├── Particle[300]  Explosion FX, object-pooled
        ├── PowerUp[10]    Heal / Triple-shot drops
        ├── StarItem[80]   Magnetic collectible chain
        ├── WaveManager    10-wave JSON-configurable spawner
        ├── UIManager       Menus / HUD / Settings / Leaderboard
        └── Input           Single-point key binding (remap in one file)

Design Patterns

Pattern	Where	Why
Object Pool	pool.h — bullets, enemies, particles	Zero heap allocation during gameplay
State Machine	GameState enum — 6 states	Clean menu→game→pause→gameover flow
Delta Time	All movement/timers use GetFrameTime()	Game runs correctly at any framerate
Namespace	namespace pwu on all types	No global namespace pollution
Input Abstraction	input.h — Input::Shoot()	Change one file to remap all keys
Data-Driven	waves.json — external config	Edit waves without recompiling

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Build

Quick Start (CMake)

git clone https://github.com/Tomzkl/PlaneWarUltimate.git
cd PlaneWarUltimate
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DRAYLIB_PATH=/path/to/raylib-6.0
cmake --build .

Visual Studio 2022

1. Open MyFirstGame.sln
2. Set RaylibPath in .vcxproj to your raylib folder
3. Build → Build Solution

Raylib will be auto-downloaded via FetchContent if not found.

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Project Structure

PlaneWarUltimate/
├── main.cpp              Entry point
├── game.h / .cpp         Core engine (~900 lines)
├── player.h / .cpp       Player + charge shot (~280 lines)
├── enemy.h / .cpp        3 enemy types (~290 lines)
├── boss.h / .cpp         3 boss variants (~260 lines)
├── particle.cpp          Explosion particles
├── powerup.cpp           Heal / Triple drops
├── pool.h                Generic O(1) object pool
├── ui_manager.h / .cpp   All UI (~490 lines)
├── wave_manager.h / .cpp Wave system + JSON parser (~250 lines)
├── input.h               Key binding map
├── types.h / constants.h Shared types & tuning values
├── tests.cpp             12 unit tests
├── resources/
│   ├── waves.json        Wave configuration
│   ├── bgm.mp3           (optional) Background music
│   └── *.png / *.wav     Game assets
└── CMakeLists.txt

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Run Unit Tests

g++ -std=c++17 tests.cpp -o tests && ./tests
# Output: 12/12 passed

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Technical Deep-Dive

Object Pool (O(1) amortized)

Pool<T, N> wraps a fixed-size array. Acquire() uses a circular hint to avoid O(n) scanning. No new/delete during gameplay — memory is allocated once at startup.

Delta-Time Physics

All movement, timers, and animations scale with GetFrameTime() * 60.0f. The game plays identically at 30fps, 60fps, or 144fps.

Procedural Art Fallback

Every entity has a fully detailed procedural drawing path. If PNG textures are missing, the game still looks great with hand-coded geometric ships. The player is an X-wing style fighter with animated engine flames, cockpit reflections, and wing markings.

JSON Wave Parser

wave_manager.cpp contains a ~120-line hand-written recursive-descent JSON parser. It reads waves.json at startup and falls back to compiled-in wave definitions if the file is missing or malformed.

Procedural Audio

If .wav files are missing, sound effects are generated from sine/square/saw/triangle waveforms with amplitude envelopes.

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Credits

• raylib by Ramon Santamaria — graphics, audio, input
• Sound effects from the Dravenx Space Shooter SFX pack
• Built by Dominic Harmon

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License

MIT — see LICENSE