Jimmus' Diary: Jutsu Skillshot System
Good day Shinobi players! Greetings and welcome to my first development diary. Hopefully this diary and further updates will showcase what we currently have, and what is planned for the future. In this diary I'll be making updates in regards to the Jutsu Skillshot System (JSS? heh).
What are Skillshots?
I think one of the first things we should discuss before we continue, is what exactly a skillshot is.
A skillshot is simply an ability, or in this case, jutsu, that allows casting without direct targeting of any individual unit (usually an enemy, but could be friendly too!). Skillshots as a whole require some varying degree of aim, hence the "skill" part of skillshot. There are probably more definitions that cover this in depth, but this on a whole is what a skillshot is, and how we will be going about implementing them as a basis.
But how does it work?
It's not much of a secret, as many would probably agree, that the core backend of Shinobi Story is based on a WoW engine. For those who don't know or don't play WoW, it probably doesn't mean much, but let it be known that skillshots within a WoW engine haven't been attempted before as the main focus on spell casting. Spells in WoW are mostly non-skillshot based. From a technical standpoint we had to rewrite quite a few things within the core engine to make this all work!
Skillshots are a separate entity from the moment they leave your hand after casting. This would mean that even if you died, said skillshots would still persist.
Generally speaking, when a skillshot leaves the hand of a player, it's size, shape, speed and damage are precalculated upon cast; however in the case of a fireball jutsu, we could actually amplify the size, speed and damage during flight if it contacted a wind projectile (spoilers!).
Other varying factors that we had to take into consideration when building this system is the interactions it would have on other Jutsu ability types, for example, a fire projectile being empowered when contacting a wind projectile. Or perhaps, an earth jutsu ability being able to block other projectiles as a whole.
Current progress
Pictures usually speak a thousand words (excuse the dwarf model).
Wind Style: Gale Palm Jutsu
Fire Style: Phoenix Fire Jutsu
Wind Style: Wind Bullet Jutsu
Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu
Wind Style: Great Breakthrough
Future Plans
With this being early days as the whole jutsu system had been decided to be rewritten in C++ (See Vlad's earlier diary post), this is just the start of it all! We will be rolling these changes out soon so stay updated! Water and earth jutsu is still in progress and this post will be updated to reflect that.