Arena Rush is a first-person 3D arena shooter built from scratch using C++ and OpenGL, following an Entity-Component-System (ECS) architecture. The player is dropped into a closed urban arena and must survive increasingly difficult waves of enemies while managing limited health and ammunition.
The game features three distinct enemy archetypes:
- Brute (Monster): A slow, heavily-armoured melee enemy that deals devastating close-range damage.
- Charger: A fast, aggressive melee enemy that rushes the player at high speed.
- Drone (Flyer): A ranged flying enemy that orbits the player and fires projectiles from a distance.
The player has access to three switchable weapons:
- Automatic Rifle (AR): Fully automatic, high rate of fire, moderate damage.
- Hunting Rifle: Semi-automatic, very high damage per shot, slow fire rate.
- Deagle: Semi-automatic pistol, balanced damage and fire rate.
- Graphics & Rendering: PBR and Blinn Phong shading, Bloom post-processing, HDR tone-mapping, and a blood-splatter screen effect. Full model loading with multiple meshes, materials, and textures.
- Animation: Skeletal animation for all enemy and map models (GLTF).
- Physics: Bullet-physics-based collision with capsule colliders and GImpact & BVH Triangles mesh colliders.
- Artificial Intelligence: Context-steering AI for ground enemies and orbital AI for flyers.
- Gameplay Systems: A data-driven, JSONC-configured wave progression system with 10 escalating waves.
- Audio: Spatial audio via OpenAL (ambient, weapon fire, enemy attacks, reload).
- User Interface: Menu system (Main, Pause, GameOver) with HUD elements including health bar, ammo counter, weapon icon, wave countdown, crosshair, and enemy health bars.
- Movement Mechanics: Sprinting, crouching, sliding, dashing, and jumping with full collision response.
- Controller Support: Full gamepad support.
 Main Menu |
 Gameplay |
 Enemy Encounter |
 Game Over |
 Different weapon |
 Different enemy |
This project uses CMake and just (a command runner) for its build system, with optional support for Nix.
just dev: Enter the Nix development environment (if using Nix).just build: Configure and build the project using CMake and Ninja.just run: Run the game using a dedicated Nvidia/AMD GPU.just run-int: Run the game on the integrated GPU.just clean: Remove thebuildandbindirectories.just package: Package the project using Nix.just desktop: Create a desktop entry for the game.
Alternatively, you can manually build using CMake:
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
cmake --build build
./bin/ArenaRush