Crosshair from Gun

OK so I have a platformer game I'm making where I want the firearms to display a crosshair where the bullets are generally going to hit. (They hit instantly) How do I make the crosshair display instantly across any amount of space on obstacles and entities and whatnot without using fastloops or pasting the same code 480 times? I'm going to use the XNA exporter in the end so keep that in mind if you're going to suggest an extension.

I could use fastloops, but then I'd need 480 iterations since the width of the screen is 480 and this causes slow down when I run 480 loops, regardless of whether it's applied to events or not.

Shoot another fake invisible bullet all the time that hits instantly and when that bullet overlaps an obstacle/entity then position the crosshair at that bullet's location.

I got the idea just now to use the platform movement object itself to move stuff instantly since you can set its speed to some ridiculous amount like 20,000 and it still detects things near perfectly and it works like a charm.

I was able to use fastloops with only 49 iterations alongside 10 iterations by making the 49 iterations move the crosshair object 10 pixels at a time and then the 10 iterations moving the object back 1 pixel if it overlaps anything. It's not what I would like to do but it works. Unless someone knows something better, I guess I'll go with this.

What's wrong with my suggestion?

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Originally Posted by Konidias

What's wrong with my suggestion?

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With the method you described i can identify a lag ( the time it takes for the Invissible bullet to reach the Obstacle ).

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I do have a nice method in mind, and i just might make an example illustrating it too :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Konidias

What's wrong with my suggestion?

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There would be a lag like King_Cool pointed out and also an inaccuracy in detecting obstacles and other objects.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by King_Cool

With the method you described i can identify a lag ( the time it takes for the Invissible bullet to reach the Obstacle ).

...
I do have a nice method in mind, and i just might make an example illustrating it too :D

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I would like to see your example. I got it to work fine with the 49 + 10 iterations, but if you've got a more efficient method, by all means share it. :D

Here it is.
Its accurate, but seems to lag quite a bit for long distances though.

How does your method work?
Does it lag?

Here is a much faster version.

My method just moves a dummy object across the screen 10 pixels per iteration with 49 iterations to cover 480 pixels of distance, then when it collides with an object it initiates a fastloop with 10 iterations to move the dummy object back up to 10 pixels to give the illusion of pixel perfect accuracy, then it sets the crosshair to the dummy object's coordinates.