Raycast and ignore player

Unity Engine
1

I’ve got a spaceship with lasers. It’s surrounded by a force field. When I use raycasts to determine if my laser hits anything, I of course my myself.

How can I avoid that? Putting the force field into the ignoreraycast layer doesn’t seem to do it, even when I do it only on my own player object, at least tests show that then I suddenly don’t hit other players anymore.

Aargh. :slight_smile:

2

You could give your laser a reference to the object that shot it, then check if something that it is hitting is a child of that object or not.

3

You mean like this?

var layerMask = 1 << 8; //layer 8 is Player Layer
// This would cast rays only against colliders in layer 8.
// But instead we want to collide against everything except layer 8. 
//The ~ operator does this, it inverts a bitmask.
layerMask = ~layerMask;

var detectorPosition = transform.position;
var Detector : RaycastHit;
if (Physics.Raycast (detectorPosition, -Vector3.up, Detector,Mathf.Infinity,layerMask))
{
	//do some stuff
}
2 Likes
4

No, the problem with the player layer, as I understand it, is that both me and the other players will be in the player layer. So I will hit either them and me, or neither.

I want to test against OTHER players, but not myself.

5

But that only tells me that I’ve hit myself. It doesn’t allow me to let the raycast ignore that and continue on.

I don’t have to check if I hit myself, since I’m shooting from inside the force field, I will always hit myself. :slight_smile:

6

Just before you do the raycast, move the current player into another layer and ignore that layer during the raycast. Then move them back into their usual layer immediately afterwards.

7

Ok, my problem is getting stranger.

Now I can hit myself, but not other players.

My solution was to raycast from transform.position + Vector3.forward*ShieldDistance

And now, even when I see the beam I create for the laser visual effect to clearly pass right through the target object, and the same target object does react to rockets, the laster raycast doesn’t throw a “hit” message.

What’s going on?

function FireGuns() {
	// Did the time exceed the reload time?
	if (Time.time > reloadTime + lastShot) {
		// raycast to see if we hit anything
		var hit: RaycastHit;
		var length;
		if (Physics.Raycast(transform.position + Vector3.forward*ShieldDistance, Vector3.forward, hit, MaxDistance)) {
			// we hit something, draw until collider, and tell it that it was hit
			length = hit.distance;
			hit.collider.SendMessageUpwards("ApplyDamage", damage, SendMessageOptions.DontRequireReceiver);

			print ("Hit " + hit.transform.name);
			GameObject.Find("GameGUI").SendMessage("AddMessage", "You hit "+hit.transform.name+" with lasers.");
		} else {
			// we hit nothing, draw the full distance laser
			length = MaxDistance;
		}
		target = Vector3(length, 0, 0);
		line.SetPosition(1, target);
		audio.Play();
		renderer.enabled = true;
		Invoke("TurnOff", timeOut);
					
		lastShot = Time.time;
	}
}