Shape Wars

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Overview

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Shape Wars is an arcade-style 2D Arena Shooter where precision is key and hesitation is fatal. You control an agile ship in a closed arena, fighting off increasingly difficult waves of geometric enemies. Designed as a technical portfolio piece, Shape Wars strips combat down to its essentials: move, shoot, and survive while demonstrating mastery in Unity architecture and performance optimization.

Game Modes

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• Campaign Mode: Battle through 10 waves of increasing intensity. Manage your resources carefully, you have limited special ability charges to reach the final Boss encounter.
• Infinite Mode: Test your endurance. How long can you survive against an endless onslaught?

Enemies

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• Chasers: Relentless units that swarm your position
• Shooters: Ranged enemies that force you to keep moving
• Boss: A multi-phase challenge that tests all your skills

Architecture

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The project is built with a Finite State Machines for robust game flow management. Core systems include a Player Controller, Weapon System, Wave Manager, Spawning System, Health/Lives System, Scoring System, and a Game State Manager handling Main Menu, Gameplay, Pause, Victory, and Defeat screens.

Object Pooling System

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The primary technical challenge was designing a high-performance Object Pooling system to eliminate the overhead of frequently creating and destroying game objects at runtime. Operations like Instantiate() and Destroy() are slow and generate memory garbage, causing frame rate stutters. This system solves that by recycling a pre-allocated set of objects.

Success Criteria

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The system handles 500+ simultaneous active objects on screen (distributed among enemies, projectiles, and particle effects) while maintaining a stable 60 FPS. The Unity Profiler shows zero bytes of garbage collection allocation (GC Alloc: 0B) during the main gameplay loop after the initial pooling phase.

Architecture

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The system is composed of a central manager overseeing multiple individual pools, each handling a specific object type.

• ObjectPoolManager (Singleton): A globally accessible manager (ObjectPoolManager.Instance) holding a dictionary of all object pools. Responsible for initialization and providing public SpawnFromPool and ReturnToPool methods.
• Pool (Serializable Class): Configured in the Unity Inspector. Defines a tag (unique identifier), prefab, and size (pre-allocation count).
• Dictionary<string, Queue<GameObject>>: The primary data structure. The string key is the pool’s tag, and the Queue<GameObject> stores inactive, ready-to-use objects.
• IPooledObject (Interface): Allows pooled objects to reset themselves via OnObjectSpawn(), called by the manager immediately after activation.

Usage Example

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Instead of Instantiate, any system calls SpawnFromPool():

// Inside PlayerController's HandleFiring() method
private void HandleFiring()
{
    if (isFiring && Time.time >= nextFireTime)
    {
        if (firePoint != null)
        {
            ObjectPoolManager.Instance.SpawnFromPool(
                "PlayerProjectile", firePoint.position, firePoint.rotation);
            nextFireTime = Time.time + 1f / fireRate;
        }
    }
}

Pooled objects implement IPooledObject and manage their own return:

public class Projectile : MonoBehaviour, IPooledObject
{
    [SerializeField] private float moveSpeed = 20f;
    [SerializeField] private float lifeTime = 2f;
    private Rigidbody2D rb;

    private void Awake() => rb = GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>();

    public void OnObjectSpawn()
    {
        rb.linearVelocity = transform.up * moveSpeed;
        Invoke(nameof(ReturnToPool), lifeTime);
    }

    private void ReturnToPool()
    {
        ObjectPoolManager.Instance.ReturnToPool("PlayerProjectile", gameObject);
    }

    private void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D collision)
    {
        CancelInvoke(nameof(ReturnToPool));
        ReturnToPool();
    }
}

Camera System

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The camera system provides dynamic 2D camera behavior inspired by Enter the Gungeon, featuring a dead zone, mouse look-ahead, and smooth interpolation for responsive yet cinematic camera motion.

Core Features

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• Dead Zone: The camera remains stationary when the player moves within a central area, only following once the player reaches the edge — reducing unnecessary motion and keeping focus on the action.
• Mouse Look-Ahead: The camera pans ahead based on the mouse cursor position, giving the player visibility in the direction they’re aiming.

Project Management

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This project was managed using a structured workflow in Notion, emphasizing traceability and organized task execution.

View Task Tracker   View Dev Log

Task Tracker (Backlog)

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All work was organized using a Kanban-style task board with statuses: Not Started, In Progress, QA, and Completed. Tasks were grouped under Epics and executed in Sprints. Bugs were tracked separately to maintain a clean pipeline.

Daily Work Log

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A chronological log of every development session, documenting what was implemented, decisions made, and progress captured with screenshots. Available in the Dev Log section of this portfolio.