Project Page: Bow Hunter

Bow Hunter

In the game Bow Hunter, as in real life, the town of Bayside, Texas has a wild boar problem.  Players of Bow Hunter shoot wild boar with a crossbow to score points.  Bow Hunter is a game that I wrote from scratch in Processing and players interact with it using a Wii Nunchuck plugged into an Arduino.  I created the game to prove that I have all the good skills.

• Nunchuck skills
• Bow hunting skills
• Computer hacking skills

Nunchuck

Anyone who has ever tried to hack together a custom controller, even those with good skills, can appreciate how nice it is to have a prepackaged consumer controller like the Nunchuck.  At your disposal is a three axis accelerometer, a joystick and two buttons.  The Wiichuck adapter from Tod E. Kurt., a.k.a. todbot, makes it simple to use with the Arduino.  Solder some header pins onto the adaptor, plug it directly into the Arduino and use todbot’s code library.  The cord on the Nunchuck is pretty short but you can buy an extension.

Game Play

Bow Hunter does not make use of the accelerometer but does use the joystick and both buttons.  The crossbow is at the top of the screen and shoots down at the boars scurrying across the bottom of the screen.  The crossbow is moved horizontally with the joystick.  The Q button loads an arrow from the quiver and the F button fires the arrow.

The game is split into three rounds.  In the first round boars move across the screen at regular intervals, in the second round they move faster and in the third round they alight at irregular intervals.  It can be played by a single player or by two players taking turns. 

I used two great products in this project – the Wii Nunchuck and Kurt’s adaptor and code.  It should not be forgotten how Nintendo broke the mold of controllers when they released the Wii.  Since they used the IC2 protocol their products can easily be adapted for an elegant interface to DIY projects.