Hitscan

“

The bullets come out of the slim end, mate!

Click to listen

— The Sniper on how hitscan weapons work.

”

Hitscan attacks instantly damage targets in their path. All hitscan attacks emit down the crosshair, from the attacker's eye level, despite what is suggested by the view model and world model. Unlike projectiles, hitscan attacks are not code-rendered physical objects but are infinitely-thin lines drawn on the server that are then rendered client-side visually as projectiles. Depending on the object hit and client settings, the hitscan weapon then generates an effect: dealing damage or painting blood and bullet hole sprites.

In technical terms, this means that hitscan weapons have infinite velocity, but this does not mean that they always damage instantly after firing.

Melee weapons, with the exception of the Spy's unique melee weapons and the Engineer's melees while working on a building wait .25 seconds after input before initiating a short-ranged hitscan attack. This prevents the weapon from hitting or killing a foe before the melee animation completes.

There are two main types of hitscan attacks: those that make contact with the bullet-based hitbox (the eponymous 'bullets' and the Showdown taunt attack) and those that make contact with the environmental/projectile hitbox (melee weapons, the Chargin' Targe bash, and most other taunt attacks).

Bullet-based weapons (a list of which is given below) fire infinite lines. All bullet-based weapons (with the exception of the Ambassador) are affected by bullet-spread during a 1.25 second cooldown after firing a bullet, which causes bullets to move off-course to varying degrees. Certain bullet-based weapons fire multiple bullets in different directions, but all still are fired from the same spot on the crosshair. The effect of this is masked by 'bullets' that are visible only after passing a certain point or, in the case of the Heavy's primaries, appear to fire at different times and from different locations than they actually do.

List

Here is a list of bullet-based hitscan weapons in Team Fortress 2.

Scout	Primary	Scattergun	Force-A-Nature	Shortstop
Scout	Secondary	Pistol	Lugermorph
Soldier	Secondary	Shotgun
Pyro	Secondary	Shotgun
Demoman	None
Heavy	Primary	Minigun	Natascha	Iron Curtain	Brass Beast
Heavy	Secondary	Shotgun
Engineer	Primary	Shotgun	Frontier Justice
	Secondary	Pistol	Lugermorph
	Other	Sentry Gun	Combat Mini-Sentry
Medic	None
Sniper	Primary	Sniper Rifle	Sydney Sleeper
Sniper	Secondary	Submachine Gun
Spy	Primary	Revolver	Ambassador	Big Kill	L'Étranger