Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: Stormkeeper on May 02, 2008, 07:00:22 am

Title: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Stormkeeper on May 02, 2008, 07:00:22 am
Not sure if this question has been asked before, and if it has, then I apologize.

So, basically, its exactly as the topic says. If I were to equip a capital ship with shields, say the Aeoleus(sp?), using FRED, will the shields stick, or must I define a new ship totally with shield vertices? And if I need to define an area around a ship for said shields, if a fighter should enter this radius, will the shield cover the fighter too, or will the fighter be unable to get in at all?

I'm asking this primarily because I tested an Aeoleus with 64000 shields and it seemed to take damage normally, i.e its hull strength went down. Or at least, the percentage indicator in the target box dropped to 99. I poked it with a UD-8 Kayser, btw.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Mawhrin on May 02, 2008, 08:16:23 am
AFAIK shielded ships need shield meshes defined in the .pof, unless this (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships.tbl#.22surface_shields.22) is set in ships.tbl I suppose that may as well be set for all ships without shield meshes, with shield values of 0 unless overwritten in FRED.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Stormkeeper on May 02, 2008, 09:25:32 am
So I need to modify the ships.tbl as well as override the 0 shield value ?

Can i get an example of how to enable the surface shields stat, because its not under the heading of the cruiser I'm tweaking.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: blowfish on May 02, 2008, 10:00:58 am
Code: [Select]
$Flags: ( "cruiser" "blah" "surface shields" )
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Droid803 on May 02, 2008, 05:55:19 pm
In the table. I don't think it can be done in FRED alone.

On a related topic, is "surface shields" supposed to disable a shield mesh on a capital ship, yet keep the shields (SSD Diablo)? Its shield mesh produces fugly effects when hit, and even though I set surface shields, I still get the fugly effect.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: blowfish on May 02, 2008, 06:23:13 pm
No.  I tried it (actually with the Diablo), but it still keeps the shield mesh.  The solution is go into PCS2 and remove the shield.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Stormkeeper on May 02, 2008, 06:50:12 pm
Kay. I'll try it out later when I get back home.

Thanks lots blowfish.

=edit=

Now i just repackage the .tbl into a new vp ? Or how do I use the ship in FRED?
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Droid803 on May 02, 2008, 08:10:12 pm
No.  I tried it (actually with the Diablo), but it still keeps the shield mesh.  The solution is go into PCS2 and remove the shield.

Ehhh...figures... PCS2 it is.
EDIT: "Editing of shield data is currently unavailable"  :mad:
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: blowfish on May 02, 2008, 09:15:12 pm
Now i just repackage the .tbl into a new vp ? Or how do I use the ship in FRED?

Put the TBL in freespace/data/tables
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Mobius on May 03, 2008, 12:11:22 pm
Stupid question...do you think it would be possible to automatically generate a shield mesh? I don't know, maybe thanks to a new PCS2 feature?
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: blowfish on May 03, 2008, 08:07:39 pm
If all you want is a cheap stretched sphere, then yes, that would be possible.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Droid803 on May 03, 2008, 08:42:38 pm
Erhm, how do you get RID of a shield mesh in PCS2?
It keeps telling me shield data can't be edited.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Stormkeeper on May 04, 2008, 03:28:30 am
Stupid question...do you think it would be possible to automatically generate a shield mesh? I don't know, maybe thanks to a new PCS2 feature?

If all you want is a cheap stretched sphere, then yes, that would be possible.

Which brings me back to my question; could a fighter enter the shield if it was a sphere ? If so will the cap ship's shields protect the fighter too ?
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Mobius on May 04, 2008, 04:17:00 am
No, not a sphere...a bigger and less detailled model serving as shield.

When I played around with TrueSpace I found something like that...
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Polpolion on May 04, 2008, 04:42:11 pm
AFAIK shield meshes are essentially (model_size*1.1)-greebles.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Stormkeeper on May 05, 2008, 08:57:57 am
Bump.

I really wanna know guys. Could a fighter enter the shield if it was a sphere ? If so will the cap ship's shields protect the fighter too ?
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Droid803 on May 05, 2008, 05:44:50 pm
Donno, try it with the SSD Diablo.
Fly under its shields mesh and then spawn something to shoot at you. you could also shoot at the Diablo.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: NGTM-1R on May 08, 2008, 02:57:54 am
Bump.

I really wanna know guys. Could a fighter enter the shield if it was a sphere ? If so will the cap ship's shields protect the fighter too ?


No.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: blowfish on May 08, 2008, 10:00:03 am
The game behaves really weirdly when capships have their own big shield meshes.  IIRC you can go through them, but they don't behave properly once you are inside.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Stormkeeper on May 08, 2008, 11:03:04 am
The game behaves really weirdly when capships have their own big shield meshes.  IIRC you can go through them, but they don't behave properly once you are inside.

Okay ... So I guess I should stick with surface shields. I don't think the FS2 engine was meant to handle capital shield meshes anyway.
Title: Re: Shields on a capital ship.
Post by: Droid803 on May 08, 2008, 04:56:53 pm
Yea, but uhm...what version of PCS2 allows you to remove the Diablo's shield so you can use Surface?