[Bryan See]

Since the release of the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project in 2002, the hard-coded engine limits has been either bumped or raised, especially the Inferno builds that have became a standard from FSOpen 3.6.14 onwards. However, the shield polys limit has been unchanged ever since. But with the release of "shielded" ships with extendable shields, such as those from fightermedic like the SSP Chakra and the GVCv Mahal, that was not the case of leaving the limit unchanged. When it comes to larger shields projected by ships, it may cause a crash, probably linked to fireballs. Whatever the problem is, I'm afraid this is all really too much for me and possibly the other modders who wished to create shielded ships that are larger than bomber class (e.g. cruisers, corvettes, frigates, destroyers, juggernauts, stations, etc.). I'd therefore like to propose that the shield poly count limit is either to be bumped or increased from the original limit of 800, as well as the refactor of the shielding code allowing nice different effects to be applied into, and allow any ship class larger than fighter/bomber classes to use shields. I'm posting this as I am sure that this will end up here anyways, just as to accomodate these shielding of non-fighter and non-bomber ship classes and any class that Objecttypes.tbl defines.

[The E]

We have this feature, which eliminates the need for shield meshes.

[zookeeper]

Also, are you sure that such a limit is really used anymore? I've made all sorts of shield meshes without being aware of a limit, and they've all seemed to work just fine.

[Spoon]

We have this feature, which eliminates the need for shield meshes.

However, the shield impact effects which normally get projected onto the shield mesh itself won't occur.

Makes this feature kind of useless, in my eyes at least.

Also, are you sure that such a limit is really used anymore? I've made all sorts of shield meshes without being aware of a limit, and they've all seemed to work just fine.

yeah I havent hit any shield poly limits either and I definitely know ive used shield meshes with more than 800 polies before.


But seriously, I would pay money to get nicer looking shield effects into freespace. what we have is ancient and no different type of impact.ani's will really improve on it. Valathil got me all horny with this http://youtu.be/4uW106Vxqf4 but then he never expanded on it and just sort of dropped it. I want an effect like that in freespace. It would improve the overal graphical fidelity of freespace so much more than any new htl model could.

[Dragon]

Makes this feature kind of useless, in my eyes at least.

Exactly my views. Really, I'm kind of counting on FoTG to fix that particular issue, but it's up there with FSO-generated shield icons. Good for testing/placeholder, but no replacement for an actual shield mesh, and definitely not good enough for the release. Especially that with this option, shots just kind of vanish into the hull, with no effect being projected at all.

FSO shield code needs an overhaul. Badly.

[Shivan Hunter]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84362.0

[zookeeper]

Makes this feature kind of useless, in my eyes at least.

Exactly my views. Really, I'm kind of counting on FoTG to fix that particular issue, but it's up there with FSO-generated shield icons. Good for testing/placeholder, but no replacement for an actual shield mesh, and definitely not good enough for the release. Especially that with this option, shots just kind of vanish into the hull, with no effect being projected at all.

Well, sure, it doesn't really work next to FS2-style shield hit animations, so it's mostly good for TC's or some special cases. I don't know why you think that FotG would need that kind of an improvement to it though; we don't, we're only adding support for the explosion-type shield impact effects to use different animations for hull and shield hits.

[Dragon]

Anyway, some sort of shield impact effect is needed, otherwise it just looks bad, the shots disappear into space. TBH, FoTG could use shield meshes and proper shield effects, I'm pretty sure I've seen shield flashes in the movies.

[Bryan See]

Re to The E and Shivan Hunter, I, and the other modders agree that we see no need for us to use shield meshes in ships. We like this feature. The only issues left to resolve here are how to fix the problem which is the shots disappearing upon impact of the auto-spread shields by implementing "shild impact effects" which may or may not require shaders to accomplish this, as well as other effects like when the shield goes down after a specific subsystem upon which the shield is generated (as with the case of the SSP Chakra by fightermedic) is destroyed, and local shields guarding the particular subsystem require this auto-spread feature.

[Droid803]

I have like a 7200+ poly shield meshes and they works fine.
I don't understand the purpose of auto-spread...it seems to be "surface shields" that you can bypass by getting close enough to the surface? Feels like it would just behave like surface shields 99% of the time - wouldn't matter unless you specifically design missions for it.

Heck, visually, I think perhaps surface shields is better than this auto-spread thing if it indeed does not project hit effects onto the shield mesh. As with Surface Shields and a Shield Mesh, you can have the mesh present purely for impact effects and have shield collision be calculated from the hull surface.

Or you could just be lazy and have no special shield impact effect...which is basically what I decided was the best course of action since there's pretty much no way to make shield impact effects look halfway decent with the current engine. Fweh. If only Valathil finished that bubbleshield effect...

[Bryan See]

Droid803, I know what this works. Auto-spread shielding is shileds whose radius extend a given distance away from the ship's hull, without the need for a shield mesh. This is good for capships, ships with odd shapes with which shield meshes tend to not work right, or ships with large moving parts which would require a huge shield mesh to cover. Or simply if I prefer not making shield meshes.

[Droid803]

Yes, but what does that really offer over surface shields, which is equally good for ships with odd shapes with which shield meshes tend to not work right, or ships with large moving parts which would require a huge shield mesh to cover. Or simply if I prefer not making shield meshes ?

Answer looks to me to be "not much".

EDIT: let me clarify - by not much I mean (almost) identically zero in terms of graphical effect - which I perceive to be the primary issue at hand with capital ships and shield systems in the first place. Even without auto-spread, it was entirely possible to create a fully-functioning shielded capital ship - in more than one way, even. You had the option of having a modeled shield mesh which would produce hit-effects, and the option of deciding whether the said mesh is used for collision calculations for the shield or not (and remain purely a graphical volume on which to display impact effects). What auto-spread does (if I'm not mistaken), is allows for a bit more control if you opt to not use the shield mesh for collision detection - you can now have the shield collision point occur a distance away from the hull, but does absolutely nothing in terms of graphical indication - your options remain the same : Use a Shield Mesh to display impact effects, or do not, and simply have...no impact effect.

Which is why I say this solves nothing. The main issue with using shield meshes for capital ships isn't how it's difficult to enclose one with odd shapes and whatnot in a shield mesh which has a polygon limit (because there isn't one), but that creating such a mesh enclose complex/moving parts results in an unsatisfactory graphical effect upon weapon impact.

[zookeeper]

Yes, but what does that really offer over surface shields, which is equally good for ships with odd shapes with which shield meshes tend to not work right, or ships with large moving parts which would require a huge shield mesh to cover. Or simply if I prefer not making shield meshes ?

Answer looks to me to be "not much".

Nothing beyond allowing weapons to impact away from the hull, making the shields a bigger target than the hull and giving a more clear visual cue that it was the shields which took the hit.

[Droid803]

Here I'm thinking that it would be a lot more clear of a visual cue without having to physically more the impact location by simply say... having $Impact Effect: and $Shield Impact Effect: being two different things that could be specified on a per-weapon basis. (Of course, in conjunction with auto-spread this could make for a fairly good replacement for the actual shield-impact effect of a shield mesh!) With the additional benefit of working with surface shields *and* the default shield mesh impact effect as well...

[zookeeper]

Here I'm thinking that it would be a lot more clear of a visual cue without having to physically more the impact location by simply say... having $Impact Effect: and $Shield Impact Effect: being two different things that could be specified on a per-weapon basis. (Of course, in conjunction with auto-spread this could make for a fairly good replacement for the actual shield-impact effect of a shield mesh!)

I've ported Wanderer's old code which does exactly that to my branch; after a bit of FotG testing I'll merge it to trunk so there you go.

[Droid803]

Most excellent~

[Bryan See]

Way to go, zookeeper. I'm looking forward to that, as the next MediaVPs will make extensive use of that I'm sure. After that, would you mind implementing the code that allows nice auto-spread shielding effects by means of shaders?