Homing Missile Part 1

How to create a homing missile

Create a Homing Missile Prefab

Just use a placeholder if you don’t have an image you are satisfied with.

1. Create object with sprite
2. Add component: Rigidbody 2D
3. Add component: Box collider 2D
4. Add a script
5. Prefab it

Our Homing Missile Prefab with box collider

Pseudocode Homing Missile

As always we start with our logic in pseudocode.

find target — search enemies by tag
get position of target
move towards target
if enemy is hit
then destroy both

Script

To find our target we search by tag. This returns the first enemy found with this function. (Not the closest enemy as is usually the case in games)

GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag

void Update()
 {
     _direction = (_target.transform.position —  transform.position).normalized * _speed;
     transform.Translate(_direction * Time.deltaTime);
    //self destruct
    if (_target.gameObject == null)
    {
         Destroy(gameObject);
    }
 }

If does the job, but it doesn’t look/feel that good. That will be covered in our next article.