[Trivial Psychic]

As with many of my feature suggestions, this isn't something that I have any personal intended use for, I just think that it might look cool... if it can be made to work.  The idea would be to modify the shield impact effects so that each frame of the effect includes a normal map allowing an upwards and/or downwards displacement of the effect to give the appearance that the hit has made a momentary buckle-zone to the shield.  As for upwards movement, use some of the shield hit effects from the movie "Independence Day" as an example... almost like a drop hitting water surface.

[Galemp]

It could work, animated normal maps already do.

This should really be in the FSU forum though..,

[Kolgena]

It depends on what weapons are hitting it though. I get the impression that normal maps can't show deep grooves, so it may only look nice on primaries or tempests. I mean, it might look wonky if I shoot a treb at a fighter, and it leaves a tiny dimple in the shields while taking out the whole quadrant and hurting the target in the process.

Regardless, I get the feeling that this would be great mod material for custom shields or shields on different races.

[Aardwolf]

Prototype it (or, failing that, get someone else to).

[Aardwolf]

Actually, wouldn't it be better to displace the shields' vertices, instead?

Although that might not be so easy...

[chief1983]

If Axem were here, he'd say something like SHIELD GEOMOD WOOO.

[Flipside]

The Vertices might not be equally spaced, which would create wierd deformations, as Chief notes, you'd have to Geomod the shields, subdivide them up in hit areas, which is pretty math-heavy.

Bump maps might work, but the problem is the fact that, especially with rapid-fire weapons, you're asking an awful lot from the texture system.

[Axem]

SHIELD GEOMOD WOOO


* Axem runs

[chief1983]

Yeah unless it's just one hit at a time, the texture effect would never look very good.  Actually deforming the shield would produce a much better result as the deformation wave could be calculated at the intersections, like multiple disturbances in a pond.  Again though, very math heavy stuff, and the current shield hit effect itself wouldn't make it very noticeable.