How to make a simple homing missile

This is a small guide into making a simple target-seeking missile. Start off by creating a rocket: the LBP2 missile object or the one from the Metal Gear Solid DLS are perfect for this (set acceleration to 0%, but leave it switched on for a nice smoke trail), but you can make your own as well. It doesn't even need to be a missile. Killer bees are fine, too.

For the convenience of this guide, point your missile upwards.

http://i.imgur.com/cVwa3.jpg

Now we put a microchip on it and put the following logic on it:

• A Look At Rotator
• A simple Mover

http://i.imgur.com/zQfAV.jpg

The Rotator will point our missile to its target, while the Mover will give it a continuous forward motion. Make sure the Mover is set to an Up value, instead of the default sideway one, and Local Space (so it will move into the direction it is facing). Give the Rotator a large trigger radius.

N.B.: in case you are using the existing missile objects, you can choose to leave out the Mover and rely on the missile's own engine instead.

Per default, the missile will follow the nearest player, but if you tweak the Rotator to aim for a tag, you can have it chase other specific targets as well. Stick an emitter to a dark matter platform and have it spit out missiles to see it in action. With these settings we now have a missile that is almost impossible to dodge; it is very fast and way too manoeuvrable.

You can go two directions with this:

1. If you set the Mover to a high speed, then you should set the Rotator speed to a low value; the missile will reach its target very fast but isn't very accurate unless the target is a fast mover himself as well - this is like a real homing missile. The missile also needs a lot of space for this. It is ideal for a flying game.
2. If you set the Mover to a low speed, then the Rotator speed can go up. The missile will not be as fast and you can avoid it if you are faster. It will, however, make very short turns and be always on your tail. Works best in small, closed environments.

http://i.imgur.com/kK5fN.jpg

There is a chance that your missile will make endless circles around a target that, due to its Rotator settings, it cannot reach. For a more fulfilling gameplay experience, you can have the missile blow itself up after a short while. A timer hooked up with a Destroyer will do that for you.

Thanks for the guide! :D Really useful.
Maybe add how you can let the missiles follow Sackbots ;)

The tute does touch on that with this line:

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Per default, the missile will follow the nearest player, but if you tweak the Rotator to aim for a tag, you can have it chase other specific targets as well.

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To follow any target, put a tag on it and set the look-out rotator to that tag.

Could you put this together in a level? I tried it, but using something other than missles, I used flaming circles, set to explode upon impact. But either I dont have the emitter settings correct, or I don't have the chip components correct, and I'd like to see/study a working copy, then tweak as needed to fit my situation.

If not, could you list some good examples of setting for the rotater, the mover, and the emitter?

I came up with a much more complicated way to make a homing missile that is perfectly accurate and very fast. I put a microchip on a missile and put an anti-gravity tweaker with default settings on the microchip. next i put a player sensor with it's trigger angle range set to where it just detects a player right in front of it not behind it or on the side of it then i hooked up the player sensor to a not gate and the not gate was hooked up to the anti-gravity tweaker. the player sensor was also hooked up to the thruster part of the missile. and finally you put a look-at rotater and tweak the trigger range to what ever you like NOTE: set the player sensors trigger range the same as the look at rotaters range or else far away targets wont be targeted and eliminated and if you want this to destroy targets instead of sackboy then just replace the player sensor with a tag sensor and tweak the look-at rotater to look at tags instead i hope this didnt turn out too complicated i just have so many ideas and when i tell someone it sometimes comes out a little complicated

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Originally Posted by Antikris

For a more fulfilling gameplay experience, you can have the missile blow itself up after a short while.

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This part made me laugh.

Also, @above, why disable the anti-grav?

Great, just what I need!
Thanks! :)