My spatial hash grid has the ability to look up collision shapes within a given spatial hash cell.

But I did not really have the ability to easily query a line of individual cells.

If I wanted to trace a line through the spatial hash, I would need a shape encompassed the entire line.

This was extremely wasteful, as it would include a lot of insignificant cells (imagine a big box around the line trace).

So I wrote code that determines which cells the line passes through.

I can then run a special query only for those cells, which is much faster than a large box overlap.

The goal of this this ray casting system is assist projectiles.

Since projectiles are moving very fast, there is the potential that they may skip space if there is a large delta time.

But I can determine the line representing the projectile's movement since the last frame.

I can use this line to figure out which cells it intersects, and query those cells to see if any ships are within that portion of the grid.

If this line then also intersects any shapes contained within a cell, then it should process that as a collision.