This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
In many games which show projectiles, a shortcut often taken by programmers who don't want to bother with complex stuff like tracking and physics is to assume that every missile eventually connects with its target. This doesn't really cause a problem with lasers and stuff that move too fast for the eye to track anyway, but for slower missiles like arrows , stones and mortar shells the effect can be quite surreal. Common symptoms include normal, (unenchanted) arrows changing paths mid-flight, flying sideways or emerging from a bow at an angle. Other more dramatic effects are not unheard of.
- Real-Time Strategy games are very prone to this.
- The arrow examples come from the earlier Age of Empires games.
- Age Of Empires 2 actually stradles the line, in that normally arrows do not home. However, the technology Ballistics turns hitscanning on, and arrows do curve if fired at a fast enough unit.
- It's fixed by number 3.
- Blizzard's games are notorious for this: Starcraft and Warcraft 3 (at least) feature projectiles (magic or otherwise) which can track a fast enemy all the way across the map- easily 20 or more times the official range of the unit which fired them.
- Total Annihilation also features this effect with 'missile' type weapons, especially the large ballistic ones. Additionally, ordering a unit being tailed by a missile to circle a fixed position will caused the missile to follow it in circles as well. Granted, these missiles are supposed to be homing, but those aerobatics are pretty impressive...
- In the first Mech Commander game, everything homes (including lasers and cannon shells, which move quite slowly and would turn up to ninety degrees to follow a fast-moving Mech) except the short range missiles. I Am Not Making This Up.
- The arrow examples come from the earlier Age of Empires games.
- Many a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game uses this one as well.
- In Maple Story, arrows usually home in on their targets, even if the archer's bow isn't pointing in the same direction. Throwing Stars do funny things, too, but they're Ninja weapons so maybe thats not too surprising...
- Occurs in World Of Warcraft. Magic projectiles can be excused, but only to a certain extent before they fall under this trope.
- The Trope Namer (but neither the first example nor the Ur-Example) is City of Heroes. The damage also isn't applied until the boulder actually hits, although the decision of whether it does is made as soon as its thrown. This troper has been killed by a boulder that chased him halfway across the zone.
- Action Game exmples:
- Spells home in in the video game Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. There's nothing particularly weird about that (after all, a wizard really did do it), but it's made quite clear in the original books that spells travel in a straight line.
- Machinegun bullet streams and lasers in many Gundam games tend to do this as well, but most players don't seem to mind.
