Minigame 2 - Peanut Shoot

Concept play and mechanics: 

Much like the concept and mechanics process for the ‘Peanut Drop’ minigame, it was important to gain an understanding of the minigames gameplay and to break down the core mechanics that would be required for a successful testing. Andy was able to make an animation for the ‘Peanut Shoot’ minigame much like he did before. 

Andy’s ‘Peanut Shoot’ Gameplay Concept Animation.

The animation above breaks down as follows:

1.   The trunk at the bottom of the screen rotates ~30° from left to right. 
2.   A crosshair follows where the trunk is pointing. 
3.   When the player touches the screen, a peanut is fired out of the trunk. 
4.   A peanut is removed from the peanuts reserve display. 
5.   The peanut strikes the target in line with where the crosshair was when the player touched the screen.
6.   The impact leaves behind an imprint that shows the player where they hit. 
7.   If the player hits the ‘X’ (Bullseye), a win menu pops up. 
8.   If the player runs out of peanuts, they lose, and a lose menu pops up. 
9.   Peanuts are rewarded to the player if they win.

At this point there are still a number of unknowns that will be addressed further down the road. 

Development List:

1.       UI Replication

The first step in the development of the ‘Peanut Shooter’ minigame was to replicate the user interface. As the player will be provided with the same number of peanuts (attempts), it was safe to replicate the peanut reserve display as well. In the case of this minigame, the text on the ‘Drop’ button were replaced with ‘Shoot’.

2.       Crosshair

This minigame is built on the timing of a button press and to assist the player in determining precisely when to press the ‘Shoot’ button, a crosshair was required. I attached the crosshair to the rotating trunk so that it would inherit its rotation. When the trunk rotates to the left or right, the crosshair follows. The Trunk Rotation Script I created previously for the ‘Peanut Drop’ minigame also includes a public variable that allows the change of maximum rotation. I used this to ensure that the crosshair remained on the target at all times by setting the maximum rotation to 30°.

3.       Gravity Script

I created a script that overwrites the gravity of the scene to allow the peanut to travel without resistance. This ensures that the peanut strikes the target precisely where the player was aiming.

4.       Boundary Collisions Script

To ensure the peanut strikes the target rather than flying off the screen, I created a boundary script. This script checks the collision of the peanut with an invisible object and when it is no longer colliding it will destroy the peanut and instantiate a peanut shaped hole at the hit position. The ‘X’ is placed on the edge of the boundary so that the peanut can hit it before being destroyed by the boundary.

Problems:

Developing ‘Peanut Shoot’ has had a few production complications so far. These complications include projectile velocity, inverted trunk rotation, and target hit height.

The moment I tested the trunk shooting script the projectile velocity issue was very prominent. As the projectile (peanut) has a rigid body, physics are applied to it. In this particular case, the minigame has gravity of 9.81 applied to it by default. This was causing the projectiles velocity to decrease and eventually revert. Removing the rigidbody was not an option as there would no longer be a way to add a force to the projectile when spawned. I resorted to removing the default gravity of the Unity project and instead applying a scene specific gravity script that would manually overwrite each scenes gravity. Although this technically may not be the most efficient solution, it does allow for future minigames to have varying gravity strengths.

After attaching the ‘TrunkRotate’ script to the trunk I tested the minigame. The trunk began to rotate upside down, completely on the wrong side as intended. After checking the ‘Peanut Drop’ trunk and rotation script it was visible that I had made a mistake with the layering of the trunk. The trunk is attached to an empty game object and inherits its rotation. This allows the trunk to not only rotate on the spot but also move slightly from left to right. Intended to appear more realistic as it is unlikely an elephant moves the tip of its trunk like the animation above. After readjusting the position of the trunk in relation to the empty game object, the rotation functioned perfectly as intended.

Now that the peanut travels in the exact direction it was fired, the next problem became visible. If the peanut did not hit the ‘X’ (Bullseye), the peanut would continue flying off the screen rather than hitting the target. This was fixed by adding a hitbox with boundaries in line with the crosshair path. If the peanut leaves the boundaries, it is destroyed and replaced with a hole. This solution has some buggy moments and may be revisited at a later date.  

‘Peanut Shoot’ Trunk Rotation & Impact Holes.

Future Inclusions:

I still have not included the curtain opening animation that Andy has made for each of the minigames, and I hope to be able to include this very soon. I anticipate that I will have to disable the user interface while the animation plays as the shoot button, peanut reserve display, and pause button are all a part of the UI and will be visible over the top of the curtain. This may require some time to script and is why I have been focusing on more important aspects of the project. At this point, sound effects and background music are still missing however, a file has been produced with listed sound effects that can be included in the upcoming weeks.

‘Peanut Shoot’ Current Product Development State.