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# Targeting for shooting

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Hello for my game I have a sprite that rotates to face a target. Currently the sprite rotates and follows the target as it should. However now I am trying to get the sprite to fire a bullet in the direction it is facing. Im fairly certain I have the right idea but am just missing something in the trigonometry.
 int targetX, targetY; targetX = front.getX(); targetY = front.getY(); rotation = atan2((targetY-y),(targetX-x)); rotation = rotation * (180/3.14159265); sprite.setRotation(1*rotation); fireRate.update(); if(fireRate.check2()) { bullets->push_back(Bullet(x,y,bulletSpeed*cos(rotation),bulletSpeed*sin(rotation),100)); }
I find the angle to rotate by taking the arctan of the differences in x and y between the sprite and the target. I am thinking that once I have this angle I should be able to take the cosine of that same angle and multiple it by the speed to get the x velocity of the bullet and sine for the y. The bullets shoot off at angles sometimes but in all sorts of directions. I think it has to do with the differences in domain between arctan and sine and cosine. So things end up being 180 degree off what they should or something. Any ideas?

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The sine and cosine of your ships angle will give you the vector the bullet needs to travel on aka the hypotenuse of the triangle you multiply the speed to the x and y components to move along the vector. Sorry I can't go into more detail I am at work and posting from my phone.

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You don't need angles at all. Using vector notation:
diff = target - object; bullet_velocity = bullet_speed * diff / length(diff)

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Thanks alvaro that worked great. I just had to multiple the y component by -1 because positive y is down instead up like usual.

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If you want an example, I do this exact thing in my old blog post here:

Look at the

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Rutin
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