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Samples & Cleanup

Massive Swarm System ships with two optional sample tiers under Assets/CreativeSpore/MassiveSwarmSystem/Samples/. Both are installed by default. You can remove either tier at any time. The core plugin keeps compiling and running without them.

What ships in each tier

Starter Combat Kit

Located at Assets/CreativeSpore/MassiveSwarmSystem/Samples/StarterKit/.

Scripts plus a small set of combat assets, no scenes. This tier gives you a damage and weapon system to attach to your own GameObjects so combat works without writing it from scratch.

It includes:

  • Damageable base classes: DamageableBase, CombatTargetBase
  • Combat target types: PlayerCombatTarget, SwarmAgentCombatTarget, DestructibleCombatTarget
  • Weapons: RotatingWeapon (melee), ProjectileWeapon (ranged), SwarmProjectile, TouchDamageSource
  • Feedback helpers: DamageFlashFeedback, HealthBarDisplay, SpawnPrefabOnDeath, FloatingTextFeedback + FloatingTextManager (floating damage/heal numbers), PooledEffect, SwarmPoolManager
  • Prefabs and assets: MSS Combat Agent and MSS HealthBar prefabs, the MSS Floating Text Label prefab with its MSS Floating Text Damage / MSS Floating Text Heal styles, plus an MSS Combat Agent Archetype settings asset

Bringing your own damage system

The damage contract lives in the core plugin, not in this tier: IDamageable, SwarmDamageContext, ITargetable and SwarmAttackProfile. The Starter Kit is one implementation of it. If you already have a health and damage system, implement the contract on your damageable objects and skip this tier entirely.

Implement IDamageable. Swarm contact and melee damage always calls its hit-metadata overload, which is a required member, so there is no half-implemented state that compiles and then silently takes no damage. See Combat contracts.

Full Demo

Located at Assets/CreativeSpore/MassiveSwarmSystem/Samples/FullDemo/.

The heavy showcase tier. It contains the four playable demo scenes (MSS Pyramid Level, MSS Agent Archetype Sandbox, MSS Tower Defense, MSS Surface Flow Field), all their characters, art assets, VAT bakes, the arena generator, level progression (XP), respawn, camera rig, collectibles, and the fully-built example prefabs (weapons, projectiles, player, HUD, and VFX). It also ships the demo audio (music, desert ambience, an SFX kit and its credits file) with the SwarmHordeAudio and SwarmAudioListenerRig scripts that drive it, plus the in-game quality selector overlay. This is the largest part of the package.

The Full Demo depends on the Starter Combat Kit (for example, the respawn system uses DamageableBase). No Starter Kit script depends on the Full Demo, so the Starter Kit compiles and runs on its own.

One Starter Kit prefab points at Full Demo art

MSS Combat Agent uses the Full Demo's agent death effect, which is built from the demo's shared fire materials. Remove the Full Demo and the prefab keeps working, minus the puff on death. Assign your own effect in Death Effect Prefab, or leave it empty. Nothing else in the Starter Kit reaches across.

Configuring the project for the demo

The demo scenes run without any setup, but they run better with it. The Welcome window has a Configure Demo Project button under Demo Project Setup, which appears only while the Full Demo is installed. It does two things:

  • Names layers 6, 7 and 8 Player, Enemy and Obstacle. A layer already carrying a different name is left alone and reported, so it cannot quietly rename something of yours.
  • Sets the physics collision matrix among Default, Player, Enemy and Obstacle, so the horde stops firing trigger contacts at the player every fixed step and scenery on the Player layer stops blocking you.

It touches nothing else. Every other layer and every other collision pair in your project is left as it was. Run it from edit mode: in Play mode it refuses and tells you why, because layer and matrix changes made during play do not persist.

Third-party licences

Two files ship inside the package rather than in this manual, because licences belong with the code that needs them:

  • Assets/CreativeSpore/MassiveSwarmSystem/Documentation/ThirdPartyNotices.txt: every third-party component in the package and its licence.
  • Assets/CreativeSpore/MassiveSwarmSystem/Samples/FullDemo/Audio/MSS_Audio_Credits.txt: the demo audio, track by track.

Read them before shipping anything built on the demo assets. The audio credits file goes with the Full Demo, so deleting that tier removes it too.

Removal order matters

You can remove both tiers independently, but the dependency runs one way:

  • You can remove the Full Demo while keeping the Starter Kit.
  • To remove the Starter Kit, remove the Full Demo first.

How to remove samples

Open Tools → Massive Swarm System → Welcome and scroll to the Samples & Project Cleanup card.

Each tier shows its current status (Installed or Removed). Three buttons are available:

  • Remove Full Demo: enabled whenever the Full Demo is present.
  • Remove Starter Kit: enabled only after the Full Demo is removed.
  • Remove All Samples: removes both tiers in one step.

Each button asks for confirmation before deleting anything. Removed files are moved to your system trash via Unity's AssetDatabase.MoveAssetToTrash, so they are recoverable from the trash or re-downloadable from the Asset Store.

Route B: Delete in the Project window

Delete the folder directly in Unity's Project window:

  • Assets/CreativeSpore/MassiveSwarmSystem/Samples/FullDemo: removes the Full Demo only.
  • Assets/CreativeSpore/MassiveSwarmSystem/Samples/StarterKit: removes the Starter Kit (delete Full Demo first).
  • Assets/CreativeSpore/MassiveSwarmSystem/Samples: removes everything.

The core plugin recompiles cleanly after either folder is gone.

Skip at import time

When importing the package from the Asset Store, you can untick the Samples folder in Unity's import dialog before clicking Import. Neither tier is installed, and the core plugin works immediately.

Remove Full Demo before Starter Kit

Deleting StarterKit while FullDemo is still present causes compile errors because the Full Demo scripts reference Starter Kit types. Always remove the Full Demo first when deleting the Starter Kit manually.