Raycasting

HLF provides functions to easily perform raycasting.

Raycasting for blocks

You can raycast for blocks using the raycast() functions. It takes the ray-origin, the ray-direction and the maxSteps as parameters.

The function returns the position where the ray hit a block. If the ray didn't hit anything, the function will return the position where the ray stopped.

Example:

Vector origin = Vector(0, 64, 0);
Vector direction = Vector(0.5, -0.5, 0);
Vector hit = raycast(origin, direction, 1000);

// replaces the block where the ray hit the ground with a restone_block
setBlock(hit, BlockType("restone_block"));

Raycasting for entities

You can raycast for entities using the raycastForEntity() functions. It takes the ray-origin, the ray-direction and the maxSteps as parameters as well.

The function returns a reference to the entity hit by the ray. If the ray didn't hit an entity, it will return an empty entity. There is currently no way of telling if the entity is empty. (Ik, this should be fixed asap)

Example:

Vector origin = Vector(0, 64, 0);
Vector direction = Vector(0.5, -0.5, 0);
Entity hit = raycastForEntity(origin, direction, 1000);

// kills the entity hit by the ray
kill(hit);

Raycasting from the players cross-hare

Raycasting from the players perspective is luckily very easy thanks to the Forward property of the Entity-Type. The Forward-property returns a directional Vector specifying the way an entity is looking.

Example:

// Make sure to offset the ray-origin because the players position is at their feet, not their eyes.
Vector origin = @p.Positon + Vector(0, 1.7, 0);
Vector direction = @p.Forward;
Vector hit = raycast(origin, direction, 1000);

// replaces the block where the player is looking with a restone_block
setBlock(hit, BlockType("restone_block"));

Max steps

The maxSteps-value is used to stop the raycast after a certain amount of iterations. The default stepSize is 0.1 blocks. This means that the max-length of a ray with a max-steps value of 1000 is 0.1 blocks * 1000 = 100 blocks.