🚀 Vector Chicken Invaders

A high-performance 2D arcade shooter built from scratch using C++ and SDL2. This project serves as a practical implementation of game engine architecture, design patterns, and vector-based physics.

🎮 Gameplay Demo

demo.mp4

🕹️ Controls

Designed for an intuitive, mouse-driven arcade experience:

• Aiming: Rotate the cannon in a 360-degree radius by moving the Mouse.
• Firing: Launch projectiles by clicking the Left Mouse Button.
• Movement: The cannon's orientation is calculated in real-time based on your cursor's position.

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🛠️ Technical Highlights

🏛️ Architecture & Design Patterns

• Factory Method Pattern: Utilized clsChickenFactory and clsShotFactory to encapsulate object creation. This decouples the game loop from entity instantiation, allowing for scalable waves of enemies.
• Manager Pattern: The clsGameField acts as the central engine, coordinating physics updates, collision detection, and the rendering subsystem.
• Game Loop & Timing: Implemented SDL_GetTicks() to manage frame-independent logic, ensuring consistent fire rates and smooth entity updates regardless of CPU speed.

📐 Physics & Math

• Vector-Based Movement: A custom clsVector class serves as the mathematical foundation for all position and velocity updates.
• Trigonometric Trajectories: Projectile paths are calculated using atan2, sin, and cos to map mouse coordinates to precise firing vectors.
• AABB Collision Detection: Implemented Axis-Aligned Bounding Box (AABB) checks via SDL_HasIntersection for efficient $O(n \times m)$ hit detection.

💾 Data Structures & Memory Management

• Node-Based Entity Management: Built using std::list<T*> to ensure $O(1)$ complexity for frequent insertions and deletions. This approach avoids the "shifting" overhead of contiguous arrays, making it ideal for high-speed arcade shooters.
• Fragmentation Resistance: By utilizing a linked list, the game maintains stable performance during intense gameplay by avoiding memory fragmentation and reallocations common in dynamic arrays.
• Manual Lifecycle Control: Carefully managed heap-allocated objects through a list of pointers. This allows for polymorphic behavior (supporting different chicken types) while ensuring manual memory cleanup to prevent leaks.

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

Ensure you have the SDL2 development libraries installed on your Ubuntu/Linux system:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev 

Installation & Build

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/Ahmed-Gamal24/Chicken-Invaders-Game.git
cd Chicken-Invaders-Game

2. Compile the project

make 

3. Run the game:

./chicken_invaders

Chicken-Invaders-Game