Apple Shooter Angle and Power: How a Shot Really Works

This guide is based on the game file itself. We opened the Apple Shooter SWF that this site serves and read its ActionScript, so the numbers below come from the code rather than from guesswork.

Angle: where your cursor sits

Each frame, the game measures where the mouse pointer is relative to the bow and turns that into an angle. The bow, the arrow and the archer's arms and head all rotate to match. The angle is clamped: you can raise the bow to about 60 degrees above flat and lower it to about 40 degrees below flat. Moving the mouse further than that does nothing. The angle keeps following the cursor while you draw, and it locks the moment you let go.

Power: how long you hold the button

The button press itself does not have to be on the archer. The game listens for a mouse press anywhere on the stage, so you can click wherever is comfortable. While the button is down the bow plays its draw animation and a power value goes up by one every frame. It stops at 40. The game runs at 36 frames per second, so full power arrives after a little more than one second (40 frames). Holding longer than that adds nothing.

That is the most useful fact for practice. If you are counting out long holds, every one of them is the same full-power shot, and only the angle is changing. For closer shots, short holds are where the range changes.

The flight

On release, the arrow's speed is the power value split along the angle you chose. Every frame after that, a gravity term grows and pulls the arrow down a little more. There is no wind and no random number anywhere in the flight code, so the same angle with the same hold gives the same arc. While the arrow is in the air the view zooms in on it, and the zoom builds faster on stronger shots.

A flight ends in one of four ways: the arrow hits the apple, it hits your friend, it hits the wall behind him, or it drops into the grass.

What each result does

Result	Screen	What happens next
Apple hit	LEVEL COMPLETE, then NEXT LEVEL	Round goes up by one and the distance grows by 5 feet. Arrows from the last level are cleared.
Wall or grass	YOU MISSED, then CONTINUE	Same round and same distance. The arrow stays stuck where it landed.
Friend hit	GAME OVER: YOU SHOT YOUR FRIEND!	The run ends and you are asked to enter a name for the hi-score table.

The game does not wipe missed arrows until you pass the level, and that turns out to be useful. Each one stays in the wall or the ground and gives you a picture of where your last attempts went. If one arrow is stuck just under the apple, keep the angle and hold slightly longer, unless you are already at full power. In that case, raise the bow a little.

Distance and rounds

The top bar shows ROUND, DISTANCE and LIFE. Round 1 starts at 20 feet. The title screen sets the goal: shoot the apple from 100 feet across 17 levels to save your friend. As the distance grows, the game also draws the whole scene a step smaller, so later targets look smaller as well as further away.

Where the arrow hits him matters

When an arrow does reach your friend, the code checks how high on his body it landed and picks a different reaction animation and sound for each height band. The sound files in the game include names such as arrowineyeball, choking and kneel. That explains why two misses into him rarely look the same. Either way, the goal is to make sure you never see most of them.