[gevatter Lars]

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?

[Galemp]

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...

[Nico]

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 )

[gevatter Lars]

I have searched the Ani's with VPview and found many Ani's, but where are these Shield and shochwave ANI???

[Nico]

search again then, coz I've changed both in OTT ( tho the shield one is ugly, has to be redone )

[gevatter Lars]

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.

[Kazan]

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

[gevatter Lars]

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?

[Kazan]

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

[Nico]

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 ).

[gevatter Lars]

and how is it done in Priv2?
Didn't they also use a shield-mesh?

[KARMA]

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:)

[gevatter Lars]

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
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.