Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: gevatter Lars on August 26, 2002, 06:23:32 pm
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I have a question...what else, I am always asking and asking...
My question is can I make an own shild for caps that fit to the shape of the hull?
I think it is possible, but how is it made?
My thought was, since a shild is a own model (IIRC), to take the main hull of the ship and just make it a bit larger.
Question is when that works, what I have to do to make that model a shild and invisible.
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this whole shielding a capital ship thing has been done before, unsuccessfully I might add.
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Originally posted by demon442
this whole shielding a capital ship thing has been done before, unsuccessfully I might add.
Yes it has been done before, successfully. The SSD Diablo was completely shield-meshed.
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I stand corrected. But didn't the AI stop putting power to shields and all of it to weapons?
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The problem with shields on capships is two-fold:
1) To make a skin-tight shield-grid (the diablo had a 'relative form'), youd need ALOT of polys, effectivly doubling the poly-count on the ship. It would also be very difficult. Therefor, a bomber could slip between the gap in the shields (since these are plasmic shields, not force shields), and launch its warhead, then escape back outside the shield, where the shockwave would reflect off it.
2) The main threat to capships besides bombers is beams. Currently shields do not deflect beams... so much for the shields.
However, the AI can handle shields fine.
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Oh well...i was remembering a thread on the VBB about this same thing and thought it was the same problem.
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I made a ship I called the Titan-class cruiser before, which did have shields. It was a fairly fast ship, with a pretty good setup of forward-facing weaponry. The real threat I noticed toward it was not beams, but flak. It tended to fly quite close to the enemy ships, too close for beams, but get it's shields shredded by flak.
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By the way, who made that Diablo ship? I might want to use that in my campaign, but I don't know who to credit.
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Fighter flys behind the shild->
No not if they are so close as I have planed it. Just a few cm above the hull! Show me the ship that can get behind that!
Polycount-> That dosn't matter at the moment. I just want to know how to make them...lets say for a prov of concept / want to know how it would look.
Beams-> There aren't any Beams in Wing Commander so that isn't a problem...well there was one beam, but that was a planet shredding one, so even the best shild would hold a second against it ^___^
Thats it so far...if anyone knows how to make a shild like I have discribed it please tell me.
Other think...can the impact ani be changed? Maybe into something more electric or in something like in, well Wing Commander?
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Originally posted by gevatter Lars
Fighter flys behind the shild->
No not if they are so close as I have planed it. Just a few cm above the hull! Show me the ship that can get behind that!
Polycount-> That dosn't matter at the moment. I just want to know how to make them...lets say for a prov of concept / want to know how it would look.
The two are not mutually exclusive. If you increase the poly count of your model above 3500 you probably won`t even be able to get it to work in game. If you do make a lower poly shield model then it will have gaps large enough to fly a fighter into.
As for how to make the shield why not download one of the shielded caps already out there. I believe a shielded Aeolus is already out (don`t know the address though)
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If I remember right, Kazan made a few shielded capships for UA, but never used them.
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That didn't realy solve my problem... I have searched for shilded models, but every time I convert them to pof to see how it works only the model is converted without the shield.
I have made a very simple model, a box and a bigger box as shield and got both in TS.
What do I have to do now to get this shield effect for the big box?
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Simple.
1. Make sure it is untextured
2. Call it "shield" in truespace
3. Give it a light like any sub object should have (I think)
4. Group the shield and the light together and glue them to the hull as a subobject
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Correction of 1) Needs to have a monotone colour. :)
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Seems as if I got it working...now I have to make a new shild for every ship in the mod...damm it, but its ok as long I can keep the polycount low enough to keep it playable and high enough to make it looking good.
The Confed ships would be easy mostly boxes from WC3-4 but WC 1+2 will be very difficult...
and thanks for helping. Hope that I can show you some results in the future.
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Originally posted by CP5670
By the way, who made that Diablo ship? I might want to use that in my campaign, but I don't know who to credit.
MEEEE!!!!!!
:)
Incidentally, the Diablo mesh doesn't really match the hull cos I couldn't model it well enough in Blender. :) It worked ok, although I never used it much cos The Ghost and the Darkness was stillborn. The sides are horribly weak, though, due to the AI's broadsiding tactics.
Personally, I'd try and make partly shielded capships - i.e. only top and bottom, or something, so there's a weakness to probe for. :nod:
Of course, I have other reasons for liking this idea....
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I wish we could do shields like in the Honor Harrignton books for capships. Inpenetrable grav bands cover the top and bottom, with sidewall generators for the sides, and a perfect up-the-kilt or down-the-throat if you manage to get in front of it :)
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Well, I suppose this is as good as a time as any to publicly release the...
[glow=black]SHIELDED LUCIFER MODEL!![/glow]
Made by DTP for the Freespace Port, but never implemented. Stealth or someone should be able to now, in my absence.
You guys can contact DTP on how he made it. It doesn't open in modelview but it works fine in-game. Have fun with it.
Get it HERE now! (http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/fsport/main/capital02.pof)
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Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
Well, I suppose this is as good as a time as any to publicly release the...
[glow=black]SHIELDED LUCIFER MODEL!![/glow]
Made by DTP for the Freespace Port, but never implemented. Stealth or someone should be able to now, in my absence.
You guys can contact DTP on how he made it. It doesn't open in modelview but it works fine in-game. Have fun with it.
Get it HERE now! (http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/fsport/main/capital02.pof) [/B]
eh? me?
what do you want me to do with it? let me know and i'll do it
you should let me know about these posts, i almost missed it
;)
let me know
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Originally posted by vadar_1
The problem with shields on capships is two-fold:
1) To make a skin-tight shield-grid (the diablo had a 'relative form'), youd need ALOT of polys, effectivly doubling the poly-count on the ship. It would also be very difficult
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OK I have got the shield working, now I have other questions
1) Is it possible to change the impact "ani"
2) Can the size of the impact be reduced or increased?
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The size of the impact is currently relative to the size of the polygon hit. On fighters the polys are small enough to make a nice sized impact ani, but on larger ships like the Lucifer you need to break it down...
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and yeah, you can replace the impact ani ( I think it's shieldhit.ani or something like that). for test (and fun), replace it with a copy of the shockwave ani :) ( and post pics :D )
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I have searched the Ani's with VPview and found many Ani's, but where are these Shield and shochwave ANI???
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search again then, coz I've changed both in OTT :p ( tho the shield one is ugly, has to be redone )
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I found them and have also changed the Ani as you said. The effect is....well...intresting. I would like to post a pic, but I can't. Would someone do so for me? Just 2 or 3 pics.
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any ship with shields - meshed or nonmeshed is subject to a signifficantly less amount of shockwave damage - the helios and cyclops torpedos loose a lot of punch
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Damage thats a good point...
Could it be made that Cap ships have inpenetrable shields, except for Torpedos?
Isn't there a value in the Table for weapons that says how much damage it does to hull, shield and subsystems? Could that be used to make fighter primarys useless against cap-shields?
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those are universal so those weapons would be equally ineffective against fighter sheilds unless we made some code - add a weapon flag capship-shield-ineffective which would have to be coded in
when the shield-hit code is ran it checks weapon for capship-shield-ineffective on the weapon and "cruiser" or "capital" [or the other large ship classes] or "bigdamage" or similiar flags on the ship and if they're both true it has no effect on the shields other than making them flare
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well, for capships anyway, even if it's possible, doing a shield mesh isn't great. doing it ala privateer2 would be the best way ( plus it looks cool ).
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and how is it done in Priv2?
Didn't they also use a shield-mesh?
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its done like in any other space sim (as i can remember)
almost all the spacesims have capitalships with shields and almost none of em have modelled shields
shields are simulated with a different hit effect: when shield goes to 0 the hit effect changes in to a hull hit effect
older games had not noticebale differences between the two effects or none at all, in the most recent difference may be more significant
for example in xvt the differences between the graphic effects are very minimal but it changes the sound,
in xwa the energy of the laser hit seems disperding in a minimal area, and when shields are at 0 the effect reproduce instead bruises and holes on hull
in wc prophecy as far as i can remember there is no big difference like in starlancer
and i can't remember in tachyon to be honest
in my opinion even enabling the shields when shield model is not present without changing the effect(so you just can't damage hull until shield is at zero) would be better than now, disabling the standard hit effect when shields are active even better, applying the shield effect or a new one to the hull to represent shields hitted the best possible:)
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Funy I have asked if someone could do that a long time ago, didn't know that the industrie allready uses this idea...
Beside that I have made a small pic site with 3 screenshots of the shield I have made for one of our ships.
Take a lool at:
Shield pics (http://gevatter_lars.tripod.com/shieldpics/index.html)
and also take a look at the CONTACT ME part of the page I have got a funy pic there.
The second page (Photo page/Picture1) dosn't work for some unknown reason, just ignor it.