Goblin Horde

Hold the old fort on the hill against waves of goblins, alone, with friends on one screen, online, or both at once. Pick a hero and a main weapon in the lobby: a sword, a great axe, a bow or a crossbow. Five kinds of goblin come through the four gateways: grunts with clubs and swords, archers, battle shamans throwing fire, war shamans who heal and buff the others, and brutes with two-handed axes. Every fifth wave a giant comes with them. The nearest few go at each hero while the rest circle and jeer, waiting their turn. Each kill shakes the wave's nerve, and when it breaks the last of them run for the trees.

The demo teaches crowd AI on the engine AI core (docs/AI.md), one-against-many melee on kke::Combat (docs/COMBAT.md), enemies and weapons as data (YAML), telegraphed boss attacks, projectiles with charge and aim, split screen through the lobby (docs/LOBBY.md), host-run online play on NetModule (docs/NETWORKING.md), clips from one animation library retargeted onto many Synty skeletons, capped Jolt ragdolls and a procedural hit flinch. Start here for a hack and slash game, a co-op wave survival game, or any game with dozens of enemies on screen at once.

Run it

cmake --build build --target goblin_horde
cd build/bin
./goblin_horde
KKE_SKIP_INTRO=1 ./goblin_horde                     # skip the logo intro
KKE_HORDE_BOT=1 KKE_HORDE_QUIT=60 ./goblin_horde    # a bot fights alone for a minute, with a report every 10 s

The root CMakeLists.txt adds it only when KKE_ENABLE_JOLT is on (the default).

Variable	Effect
KKE_HORDE_BOT=1	a bot plays (attract mode, headless runs); skips the title and lobby
KKE_HORDE_WEAPON=<id>	the first hero's weapon: sword, greataxe, bow, crossbow
KKE_HORDE_WAVE=<n>	start (and restart) at wave n
KKE_HORDE_BOSS=1	a giant comes in the first wave
KKE_HORDE_LINEUP=1	every goblin type and giant stands in a row and shows its moves in turn (for checking the art)
KKE_HORDE_POSE=<clip>	every goblin plays that UAL clip (checking a clip on every skeleton)
KKE_HORDE_LOBBY=0	skip the lobby: one player, keyboard and the first pad
KKE_HORDE_MAX=<n>	goblins alive at once, at most (default 60)
KKE_HORDE_RAGDOLLS=<n>	ragdolls at once (default 12; 0 = the dead just topple)
KKE_HORDE_QUIT=<s>	quit after that long
KKE_ASSETS_DIR, KKE_SYNTY_DIR	where the Synty packs are (else assets/synty)

Rebindings are saved to horde_input.json, lobby choices to horde_lobby.json (both named in main.cpp).

Controls

Bound in HordeModule::defineActions (HordeModule.cpp), on top of the engine's character actions (move and look). Every seat in the lobby gets its own copy, so each player can rebind theirs.

Action	Keyboard / mouse	Controller
Move (relative to the camera)	WASD	left stick
Look	mouse, once the view has the mouse	right stick
Attack: a three-hit combo; with a bow, hold to draw and let go to shoot (horde.attack)	left mouse / J	X (west), or RT
Heavy swing; hold to charge a 360° spin; a kick with a bow (horde.heavy)	F / K / middle mouse	Y (north)
Aim a bow or crossbow (horde.aim)	right mouse	LT
Block, held; just before a blow lands it parries (horde.block)	Left Shift	RB
Roll (horde.roll)	Space	A (south)
Next weapon (horde.swap)	Q	d-pad right
Inventory: choose a weapon (horde.inventory)	Tab / I	d-pad up
Pause menu (shell.pause, from the game shell)	Esc	Start
Try again after being overrun (horde.again)	R	Start

Esc frees the mouse and opens the pause menu (resume, inventory, start over, settings, quit). Closing the window (Super+Q on Hyprland, the close button elsewhere) quits like any other game.

How it plays

• Lobby. Each player presses a button on their device to take a seat (up to four on one screen) and picks a name, character, skin, accessory, main weapon and colour. The Online row hosts or joins a game; local seats and online players mix freely (up to 16).
• Waves. data/waves.yml lists the waves: how many goblins, how many at once, speed, health, and the mix of types. After the last, it repeats the last wave with more goblins each time. Waves grow by perPlayer (60%) for every hero after the first.
• Taking turns. Only attackers goblins (4) go at each hero; the rest wait in rings and step in as the ones in front fall.
• Morale. Kills lower the wave's morale; below 0.15 they break and run. Clearing a wave heals every standing hero 40% and gives a breather.
• Bosses. Every bossEvery (5) waves a giant comes with the wave. Its health grows by half for each extra hero. The boss bar shows its name and health.
• Down and out. A hero at zero health is down; when every hero is down, the fort is overrun and horde.again starts over.

Weapons (data/heroes.yml)

Weapon	Attack	Heavy	Notes
Sword	three-hit combo, the third the strongest	heavy swing; hold for a 360° spin	fast, one hand
Great axe	slow three-hit combo	two-handed overhead that can't be blocked; hold to spin	slow, wide, hard
Bow	hold to draw (1.1 s to full), let go to shoot: 8 damage at a tap, 46 at full draw, ×2 on the head	a kick to make room	aim with the camera; a pad gets a 4° aim assist
Crossbow	one bolt, 34 damage whether aimed long or not, ×1.5 on the head	a kick	1.7 s reload after every shot

Goblins (data/foes.yml)

Each type has three moves, picked by range and situation:

Type	Moves	Looks
Grunt	slash, double cut, lunge	War Camp warriors, knights, prisoners, cooks; Dungeon goblins
Archer	kick, volley (arrows rain on a marked circle), aimed shot	War Camp archers and rangers, with quivers; keeps 9 m away
Battle shaman	firestorm (a circle that bursts), fireball, zap	War Camp wizard, Dungeon shaman
War shaman	heal the most hurt goblin, war cry (haste), stone skin (takes half damage)	War Camp shaman and beast tamer
Brute	overhead slam, sweep, charge	Dungeon war chief, War Camp king; two-handed axe or hammer

Giants

The troll, Grukk the big ork, the barbarian giant and the pig butcher (POLYGON Fantasy Rivals). Each has three moves, every one marked on the ground before it lands: a thrown boulder (a circle where it will fall), a basic combo (a cone in front), and a super slam (a big circle around the giant).

How it works

File	What is in it
main.cpp	The application, the game shell (title, pause, settings), lobby and network modules
HordeModule.h	The module and its structs: heroes, foes, shots, marks, HUD
HordeModule.cpp	Controls, the lobby, the arena and navmesh, waves and phases, cameras per player, drawing projectiles and marks, the headless report
Roster.h, Roster.cpp	Reads foes.yml, heroes.yml and waves.yml into weapons, moves and goblin types
Art.h, Art.cpp	Loads characters and props from the packs, retargets UAL clips onto each skeleton, places props in hands (grips)
Puppets.cpp	One animated body: clip states per move, posing, weapon and hat attachments
Heroes.cpp	Players and bots: input, combos, heavy and spin, bow draw and crossbow reload, aim, soft lock, two-hand IK
Foes.cpp	Spawning and pooling goblins, choosing moves, telegraphs, movement, death, ragdolls, animation
Shots.cpp	Arrows, bolts, fireballs, boulders, ground marks and blasts, and every hit
Hud.cpp, ui/horde_hud.rml	A HUD panel per player in their part of the screen, the boss bar, the inventory
Net.cpp	Online play: the lobby's Online rows, player states, the horde from the host
Flinch.h	The procedural hit flinch
data/goblin.yml	The goblin minds for the AI core (charge, wait, keep distance, break)

Minds are data, bodies are code

Every type thinks with the goblin species in goblin.yml (charge, wait their turn, break); the game feeds it crowded, morale and health. What a goblin can do is its moves list in foes.yml: a goblin picks the first move that is ready and in range. A move's kind decides what happens: melee, dash, shot, lob, blast, slam, combo, buff, heal. Adding a goblin type is a YAML edit and a restart.

One clip library, many skeletons

Every character, goblin and giant plays Quaternius's Universal Animation Library clips (UAL 1 and 2), retargeted by bone name (kke::retargetAnimations). The repository ships the 43-clip UAL1_Standard.fbx; when the full pack is there, Art.cpp adds the rest of UAL1.fbx (kicks, spells, strafes). The War Camp goblins use Synty's older bone names (Shoulder_L, Elbow_L, UpperLeg_L, Ankle_L); kke::canonicalBoneName maps them to UAL's (upperarm_l, lowerarm_l, thigh_l, foot_l), and the ragdoll builder looks bones up the same way. Without that mapping those goblins stood in a T-pose and had no ragdoll.

Telegraphs

A move with a ground mark (telegraph, or every giant move) draws a glowing outline that fills up until the blow lands: a circle for slams, lobs and blasts, a cone for combos, a line for charges (buildMarkMesh in Shots.cpp).

Split screen and online

The lobby gives every local seat its own input map and a part of the screen (kke::splitScreen); each hero has a camera, a HUD panel and an inventory in that part. Online, the host runs the horde: it sends wave state and every goblin (position, facing, move, health) 15 times a second; clients draw them, send their own hero's state, and report their hits on goblins to the host, who applies them. Hits on a hero go to the player who owns it. A client starts when the host's game leaves the lobby.

Crowd cost

Goblins are not physics bodies: they move kinematically with a push-out from walls and heroes. Bodies are pooled and reused. Ragdolls are capped (KKE_HORDE_RAGDOLLS), oldest first. The bot report every 10 s prints the frame time and the time spent on minds and animation.

Assets

The game runs without any pack: mannequins stand in for every character and boxes for weapons, and the log says what was missed. With the packs (kke_assets needs prints the required ones):

Pack	What it gives
POLYGON Goblin War Camp	most goblins, their bows, staffs, clubs, swords, quivers and hats; hero accessories
POLYGON Dungeon Pack	the knight heroes, goblin chiefs and shamans, the great axe, big hammers
POLYGON Fantasy Rivals	the four giants
POLYGON Fantasy Characters	the heroes (king, queen, rogue, druid, bard, witch, sorcerer, peasant) and the sword
Universal Animation Library (full UAL1.fbx, optional)	kicks, spells and the rest beyond the shipped Standard set
Universal Animation Library 2	sword combos, heavy swings, knees

The repository ships UAL1_Standard.fbx (CC0), the fonts and Xelu's CC0 button prompts. The fort, trees and rubble are boxes built in code.

Make a game like this

1. Copy the folder. cp -r games/goblin_horde games/my_horde, rename the target and namespace, and add it to the root CMakeLists.txt inside if(KKE_ENABLE_JOLT).
2. New enemies are data. Add a type to data/foes.yml with models, a weapon and three moves; add it to a wave's mix in data/waves.yml. Check it with KKE_HORDE_LINEUP=1.
3. New weapons are data. Add one to data/heroes.yml with kind (onehand, twohand, bow, crossbow), a prop, a combo, heavy and spin.
4. Check the art. KKE_HORDE_LINEUP=1 for every type, then KKE_HORDE_POSE=Idle_Loop if one stands in a T-pose (its bone names don't match; see "One clip library").
5. Measure. KKE_HORDE_BOT=1 KKE_HORDE_QUIT=60 and read the report.

Pitfalls:

• Goblins move without physics, so add a box to m_obstacles for every solid thing you add, or knockback pushes them through it.
• A prop's grip decides its axes (grip() in Art.cpp): a bow stands up along the arm's forward, a crossbow lies flat across it.
• Online, only the host decides damage to goblins; a client that applies its own hits would kill goblins the host still sees alive.