Author Topic: cap ships shields problem (Read 7832 times)

Tolwyn · **on:** June 21, 2003, 03:36:40 am

I've noticed that if you have cap ships shields (like in my pet project Wing Commander Saga), that there is a limit for shields hits and afterwards the game crashes. Is there any way to fix this?

Besides that, only the current latestrelease.exe works with with cap ships shields correctly. Older releases including fs_open3_5 show the shield animation not corect, as if the shield would have about 400 and not 4k polys. Fix, please.

StarGunner · **Reply #1 on:** June 21, 2003, 12:17:35 pm

Quote

Originally posted by Tolwyn
I've noticed that if you have cap ships shields (like in my pet project Wing Commander Saga), that there is a limit for shields hits and afterwards the game crashes. Is there any way to fix this?

Besides that, only the current latestrelease.exe works with with cap ships shields correctly. Older releases including fs_open3_5 show the shield animation not corect, as if the shield would have about 400 and not 4k polys. Fix, please.

I use FS2_Open and never have this bug with the FSPort's Lucifer shields, but I do get an odd over sized shield hit ani it looks funny but it's hard on the eyes.

Darkage · **Reply #2 on:** June 21, 2003, 01:36:06 pm

Quote

Originally posted by StarGunner

I use FS2_Open and never have this bug with the FSPort's Lucifer shields, but I do get an odd over sized shield hit ani it looks funny but it's hard on the eyes.

Thats because the shield is low-poly. If you had a shield with a higher poly count you would also see smaller shield hits.

gevatter Lars · **Reply #3 on:** June 21, 2003, 05:31:39 pm

Jup the polycount for Capship shields has to be quite high...working with 4000polys for a shield is a good thing. Still have problems when you are using a ship shaped shield, but it looks quite cool.
The Vesuvius with its shield is realy an eyecandy when in heavy battle.

TSC Vesuvius from Wing Commander 4 for everyone who dosn't know what ship I am talking about.

Bobboau · **Reply #4 on:** June 21, 2003, 08:08:50 pm

there is no cap for shield pollys

Tolwyn · **Reply #5 on:** June 22, 2003, 07:29:18 am

Quote

Originally posted by StarGunner

I use FS2_Open and never have this bug with the FSPort's Lucifer shields, but I do get an odd over sized shield hit ani it looks funny but it's hard on the eyes.

it is not just that. fs_open seems to have problems with shield hit animation, except the latestrelease.exe, so you get an oversizedeffect and that even if the shield mesh has 4000 polys.

Still, I'm not sure what may cause the game crash. Any ideas?

Tolwyn · **Reply #6 on:** June 22, 2003, 10:23:30 am

may this cause the game crash?

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Do you mean shield hits in total or shield hits at the same time? I'm not really a table guy, but I found that defining the ship as a bomber or other shielded ship type tended to help. I suppose the problem might be being caused by the shield power being too high or the like, other than that, I'm afraid I'm out of ideas.

IceFire · **Reply #7 on:** June 22, 2003, 11:16:59 am

Well...making the Vesuvius a bomber will make the game crash. That is certain.

Tolwyn · **Reply #8 on:** June 22, 2003, 11:47:08 am

well, it doesn't crash direct... but if I have more than 4 ships in a battle the game will certanly crash... with 4 or less after a certan ammount of time

Tolwyn · **Reply #9 on:** June 23, 2003, 08:05:12 am

suggestions?

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That might be the problem, I certainly found I had problems with very powerful shields I find that capital ships have a hell of a lot of power to charge shields with anyway, so the best bet is to give them moderately weak shields, which can absorb, for example, the main impact of a heavy bomb or the like but need to recharge afterwards, but which tend to fail under combined fire, that way it gives the ship a weakness despite the shields.
Of course, this technique may not tie in with what you are trying to do

Flipside .

Bobboau · **Reply #10 on:** June 23, 2003, 10:12:05 am

for a ship the size of the lucifer you would need a shield mesh on the order of 40,000 pollies

Tolwyn · **Reply #11 on:** June 23, 2003, 10:19:22 am

I disagree for a ship of the size of the Vesuvius a 4-5k mesh is sufficient...
and besides, I would like to know why the game crashes...

KARMA · **Reply #12 on:** June 23, 2003, 11:21:09 am

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Originally posted by Tolwyn

and besides, I would like to know why the game crashes...

what would you expect from a ship called vesuvius?

btw you guys already know what i think about shields for capships, maybe something good will come from the decal code, let's see:)

Tolwyn · **Reply #13 on:** June 23, 2003, 11:42:59 am

is it possible that the shield verticles limit is the reason for the game crash? I'm quite sure that my shields exceed this limit (1600)

GT-Keravnos · **Reply #14 on:** June 25, 2003, 11:13:38 am

I will not claim to have understood what has happened.

I only think that your best source of information on that subject is the TBP team. Why? Well, because if you come to think at the time they took incorporating all those ships on TBP, well they should know what works, and what doesn't. How to fix it then, should be easier. My gut feeling has to do with the amount of faces in the shield, AKA when they are lower, the game should be more stable, but then that is all I can think, right now.

I am watching this project and honing my skills to help as a Freder. Good luck with the ships.

Tolwyn · **Reply #15 on:** June 25, 2003, 11:28:57 am

It looks like that FS2 has a general problem with powerful shields. The easiest solution would be to have cap ships without shields making the game running more stable (shields render every bug testing useless) until TSP implements support ofr cap ships shields.

GT-Keravnos · **Reply #16 on:** June 25, 2003, 02:29:38 pm

So, for vol. 1 just make the ships tough, without them needing shields. Besides, If I recall correctly there seems to be a problem concerning ships and shields and paths (for docking - undocking) meaning that you couldn't have all of them, unless you got really creative.

Another thing that sprang to mind. Use the new fred instructions so that when a ship is close to its mothership (the distance_from_subsystem sexp), a landing sequence (avi or something) is played. (different one for each ship)

With the SCP, we can make FS2 more WC than ORIGIN ever could!

I really hope that you elect to use the SCP version of FRED. (Ok, it has got teething problems but so much potential!)

Best of luck with the ships.

Woolie Wool · **Reply #17 on:** June 30, 2003, 06:06:36 pm

Quote

Originally posted by StarGunner

I use FS2_Open and never have this bug with the FSPort's Lucifer shields, but I do get an odd over sized shield hit ani it looks funny but it's hard on the eyes.

I do. Whenever a mission with a shielded Lucy loads, an illegal operation occurs in DDHELP.EXE and I have to reboot my computer before running FS2 again. Grrrr, I'll never get past Playing Judas at this rate. It was irritating enough when it didn't crash your computer while the mission was loading.

Anaz · **Reply #18 on:** June 30, 2003, 06:58:12 pm

hmm...is there some kind of shieldhit buffer? From my experiences with things like this in other games (the out of sfx_t error in sven coop for half life...the game crashes when there are more than 512 different sounds in the sound buffer) it seems like there might be something like this, and it normally doesn't happen on fighters/bombers because there isn't as many things impacting the shield at once, but a cap ship has a good deal more things hitting it, so this might overwrite something, thus causing an access violation...just my 2c

Whitelight · **Reply #19 on:** July 01, 2003, 12:49:23 am

The same problem happened when I used the Unholy Alliance mod by Kazzan, after so many hits the game would crash..

Found a cure, that worked for me, but I had to remove these entries from the hud table (IconAeolus.ani, IconMentu.ani and IconSobek.ani) after that it quit crashing..

(edit) Hope this helps track the bug.

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Author Topic: cap ships shields problem (Read 7832 times)

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