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. When fixed weapon spread is disabled, 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. The Ambassador is the sole exception to this rule, and can fire a perfectly-accurate shot after a 0.8 second cooldown. Weapons that fire multiple pellets, like the Shotgun and Scout primaries guarantee a pellet straight down the crosshair if the weapon was not fired within the last 1.25 seconds. When fixed weapon spread is enabled, these weapons that fire mutliple pellets will use a fixed spread pattern that does not require a cooldown to be accurate. For example, the Shotgun uses a fixed 3x3 pattern when fixed spreads are enabled.

Hitscan weapons

List of bullet-based hitscan weapons
Scout	Scattergun	Force-A-Nature	Shortstop	Soda Popper	Pistol	Lugermorph	Winger
Soldier	Shotgun	Reserve Shooter
Pyro	Shotgun
Demoman	None
Heavy	Minigun	Natascha	Iron Curtain	Brass Beast	Tomislav	Shotgun	Family Business
Engineer	Shotgun	Frontier Justice	Pistol	Lugermorph	Widowmaker	Sentry Gun
Medic	None
Sniper	Sniper Rifle	Sydney Sleeper	Bazaar Bargain	SMG	Machina
Spy	Revolver	Ambassador	L'Etranger	Big Kill	Enforcer	Diamondback