Regarding the shockwaves - maybe 3.6.12 just changed some of the lighting effects? It's just that I see a large amount of pure white in the middle, seemed more than what I'm used to; but is covered up by the explode glow most of the time.
As for fading beams, I haven't been taking much notice of that, I just notice that when you are say 1km form the beam, there is 50% width of the beam of white, but when you are right next to the turret, it has the texture and seems redder because of that.
Strange that MV_Assets is causing such an issue without MV_Advanced being present. Is the AnimGlow package present? If so, try without it.
I tried this with a
normal mission instead of my Hell Gate copy with about 50% of the ships, and it is better, not surprisingly. An Orion filling the screen with stuff blowing up still puts a dent in the frame rate, but I guess that's what you get with a 128MB GPU. Also changed to 1024*768
Feedback on the Shivan Shields: Noted, we're contemplating refining that effect.
Yay!
As much as I took notice of it, the 3.6.10 shield effects seemed OK.
After further playing, I'm getting more used to the new effects, so the explode glow isn't so wtf anymore.
One last thing - I've noticed some
really tiny suns being used as stars, and the white out effect is over the top for such small things, as it is for some background nebulae; there's no sun visible, but looking at the nebula whites out. Isn't noticeable when fighting Dragons though...