Need advice on non-realistic bullets collision vs distance

Questions & Answers
1

Hello!

I need some advice on whether or not doing a distance check between a bullet and an enemy is better performance wise than OnCollisionEnter().

Right now I have my bullets only collide with enemy and wall/platformer layers and they are “destroyed” (or deactivated since I’m pooling) with OnCollisionEnter. Same goes with the enemies receiving the damage code - tied to OnCollisionEnter();

These bullets don’t move at super realistic speeds- it’s a stylized side scroller so think of contra or megaman speed of bullets.

Alright so would

Update(){

  if(distanceFromEnemy < 0.5){
    
//destroy and damage

   }


}

or

OnCollisionEnter(collision : Collision){
//layer check
//destroy and damage

}

be more efficient?

I would like to keep the distFromEnemy in an Update() to make sure there’s enough accuracy of the detection. Also if it IS distFromEnemy how would I go about defining distFromEnemy if I have a bunch of enemies on screen? Some sort of array I suppose but how should I check?

2

Joseph just FWIW

you mention “keeping track of enemies some sort of array”

Here is a novel-length answer

funnily enough it actually includes the very typical “closest of pool” idea as an example