aframe-ball-blaster

Overview

A simple gun that blasts small yellow balls. Useful for testing / demoing physics scenes.

Compatible with:

• aframe-physics-system (Cannon & Ammo drivers)
• physx for A-Frame

Two components are provided, both with the same schema:

• ball-blaster intended for use directly in a scene
• controller-ball-blaster intended for use as a child of a controller. This component includes some additional functionality to appear when the controller is instantiated (e.g. on entering VR) and disappear when the controller disappears (e.g. on exiting VR)

Schema

Both components have the same schema:

Property	Description	Default
velocity	Velocity of balls in m/s	20
radius	Radius of balls, in m	0.05
ballColor	The color of the balls	yellow
blasterColor	The color of the blaster	#333 (dark grey)
debug	Enables detailed console logging of ball speed and position, useful for debugging issues	false

The components automatically detects any supported physics system configured on the scene, and applies appropriate physics configuration.

When PhysX is used, Continuous Collision Detection is configured (this is unsupported in Cannon and Ammo).

Usage

A blaster that shoots slow balls (1m/s)

<a-entity position='-0.5 1.5 -1' rotation='20 -20 0' ball-blaster="velocity: 1">
</a-entity>

A blaster held in a player's right hand (with desktop-vr-controller simulation of the hand when running on desktop).

      <a-entity id="right-hand"
                hand-controls="hand: right" 
                position="0.4 1.4 -0.5"
                rotation="45 0 0"
                desktop-vr-controller>
        <a-entity controller-ball-blaster rotation="-80 0 0" position="-0.02 0 -0.01"></a-entity>
      </a-entity>

Installation

Via CDN

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/aframe-ball-blaster@0.0.1/index.min.js"></script>

Or via npm

npm install aframe-ball-blaster

Examples

This component is used in tests for the xr-room-physics component, for example:

ammo-desktop-room5.html

See also tests for each supported physics engine:

ammo-blaster.html

cannon-blaster.html

physx-blaster.html

Futures

At some point I would like to add the following (PRs welcome!)

• sound effects when projectiles collide with other entities

• haptic feedback when shooting in VR

Code

ball-blaster