How to Fix Projectiles Passing Through Fast Targets

Fast projectiles that pass through targets are tunnelling. Sweeping the path instead of testing points fixes it. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Raycast along the path

Each frame, cast a ray (or sphere sweep) from the projectile's previous position to its new one and register a hit on anything along that segment. This catches targets the projectile would otherwise skip over.

2. Use continuous collision

If the projectile is a physics body, enable continuous collision detection so the engine sweeps it between frames instead of only checking endpoints.

3. Use hit-scan for very fast shots

For instant or extremely fast projectiles, hit-scan (a single raycast on fire) is simpler and never tunnels. Reserve simulated projectiles for cases where travel time matters.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.