Projectiles Shoot At Correct Angle

Hi all,

I’ve currently got a script that causes a Weapon to Instantiate a Projectile prefab, and then adds force to it, to make it shoot. Currently I’m just adding X force, because I reckoned that it only needs to fly straight. However, I failed to consider the possibility of the weapon being aimed at any angle other than straight ahead, meaning that when you shoot up, the bullet simply exits the barrel and flies…forward, instead of upward. This means that you can’t currently shoot above or beneath your character. I want to remedy this, but I’m not entirely sure how. The code in question is:

    void Effect ()
    	{
Transform musketBall = Instantiate (MusketBall, firePoint.position, firePoint.rotation) as Transform;
musketBall.rigidbody2D.AddForce(new Vector2(projectileForce,0f));
Transform clone = Instantiate (muzzleFlashPrefab, firePoint.position, firePoint.rotation) as Transform; //CASTING the result of the Instantiate method into a Transform. We're doing this so that we can affect individual instances of MuzzleFlash, instead of the class as a whole.
    		clone.parent = firePoint; //The muzzleflash will be auto-set as the child of a firePOint
    		float size = Random.Range (0.6f, 0.9f);
    		clone.localScale = new Vector3 (size, size, size); //sets the local scale, which is the scale of the transform relative to its parent, (X, Y, Z) to each be equal to the randomised size of the explosion
    		Destroy (clone.gameObject, 0.04f); //deletes the muzzleFlash special effect after 0.02 seconds of existence - we don't want the muzzleflash to last too long, now, do you?
    		
    		
    	}

I considered adding Y force based on the y position of firePoint, but that didn’t seem to work properly. I also considered checking if the weapon is at a certain position (ie, if its position.y is less than 0 that means it’s beneath the player) and basing the y movement off of that, but that didn’t seem to work well either.

Any ideas?

You want to add a force in the direction the weapon is pointing.

musketBall.rigidbody2D.AddForce(firePoint.right * projectileForce);

You can get this quickly with Transform.right

This gives you a unit vector of the transform’s red axis (local space X axis) in world space.

Just multiply transform.right by however much force you want to apply.

It’s probably worth your time to review the VectorMaths tutorial video on the Unity Learn page as well

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/scripting/vector-maths-dot-cross-products