[DaveTheEmbalmer]

Is there any correct way to do it? I have a couple of cappies I'm trying to shield. Unfortunately, it only works some times (sometimes not all of the ship is shielded etc.) I tried making the shield larger, and now it doesn't seem to work at all...

Also, is there anyway to make Beams NOT ignore shields? Thanks!

[WMCoolmon]

No, as of now it is not possible to make beams ignore shields.
I do know that shielding capital ships is possible, but don't know all the details.

[Bobboau]

if the sheild mesh is larger than the bounding box of the ship it won't work properly

[DaveTheEmbalmer]

How exactly would I increase the bbox's size? It appears that currently its bounderies are located at the extremes of the ship's shape.

[Galemp]

Originally posted by DaveTheEmbalmer
How exactly would I increase the bbox's size? It appears that currently its bounderies are located at the extremes of the ship's shape.

That's shipshape! *groan*
DTP shielded the Lucifer for me and it'll be released in Port 1.7 when I get the time. Till then... uh... ask him.

[Unknown Target]

Ummmm...can't you just tag it in  FRED(2)?

[karajorma]

Nope. The has shield button only works for ships that normally have a shield anyway.

The only real use for the button is for turning OFF the shields on ships that normally have one (e.g for turning off the shields if you are making T-V war missions)

[vadar_1]

To have shields the ship needs a shield mesh... simple as that. There are programs that will make an oval shield around a ship... but the best way is to build a mesh in truespace, and call it shield.

[DTP]

Think of your shield as a bubble that has to engulf the whole of the ship.
And your  bubble has to be like a bubble, no intersecting polygons.

There is a function ("somewhere") within the code that detects if a ship has a shield, well before the ship’s shield gets hit. it is likely that it is this function that causes crashes, because this the laser / stream hits the hull before it hits the shield. And the code knows that the ship has a charged shield so, THIS is not supposed to happen.

If it has this shield, than this shield must engulf the whole of the ship.

Take your mesh and make a copy of it. Now scale the copied version a bit larger than the original.

You will note that everything is out of place and maybe some points on the original model will poke through the shield.

Now you have to take each point and move them where they should be just a little outside the original point surface.

when you have done this time consuming job "took me 2-3 weeks, if not a month". well then you have to locate places with turrets.

Turrets will poke trough the shield or else the player can get under the shield while playing, if the shield is to far away from the hull.

You will now have to Sweep/bevel and such at polies where these turrets are located, in order to cover them.

Don’t worry about rotating turrets, they will not have the affect when rotating outside the shield, but they are still shielded so, they take no damage from fire.

Now after you have all turrets covered, you will have to increase polycount on the shield, or else you will most likely run into the "bloop" effect where half the shield goes white when hit.

BUT: before you do that, make sure that all turrets are within the shield, because Modelview32 will not load models with shields above 1600 polies. "The programmers are setting limits for us, here"

The shield used in the next port release on the Lucifer is 4300 polygons big. So don’t be scared by testing the extremes.

When you know your limits, you know what you can make & not make.

Hoped I helped.

--- dam im tired

Hoped i helped LOL---

[Bobboau]

to increse the size of you're bound box, make a cube paint it with the invisable texture, glue it to the main parent object (should be sibling to the hull geometry)

[DTP]

yup, i thought of that, looking at the knossos mesh in wire-frame-mode. but never actually tested it, so i would not lead anyone in the wrong direction.

[EdrickV]

Hmm. I wonder how the game knows the difference between invisible textures you can fly through (Knossos & Dry Dock boxes) and invisible textures you can't. (Orion hanger bay entrance) It looks like it might determine by the subjobject's other textures. The boxes are all the invisible texture, while the hangar bay entrance is part of the basic mesh.

[Woomeister]

Originally posted by EdrickV
Hmm. I wonder how the game knows the difference between invisible textures you can fly through (Knossos & Dry Dock boxes) and invisible textures you can't. (Orion hanger bay entrance) It looks like it might determine by the subjobject's other textures. The boxes are all the invisible texture, while the hangar bay entrance is part of the basic mesh.

Actually its the "dont collide invisible" tag in the table. if you put one of those in the Orion table you can re enter the hanger

[EdrickV]

:doh:

Forgot that flag even existed! I never used it and never knew what it did.

[Woomeister]

Originally posted by DaveTheEmbalmer
Also, is there anyway to make Beams NOT ignore shields? Thanks!

There was a way (sort of) I was working on, it did work but was unstable a bit and has some disadvantages. Once you have created your shield mesh clone it and map it with invisible.bmp (note the shield shouldn't be more than 800 polys for this otherwise you'll have to cut the mesh into parts). Glue them both to the model. Using a POF editor make the invisible shield a subsystem and make a table for it. Put the ship down and make it invincible. Put the enemy ship down and make it fire beams at the test ship. The beam should collide with the invisble grid and not hit the main ship. Destroy the subsystem using sexps to turn the secondary shield off.

Disadvantages:

-The shield mesh isn't being hit so the beam will just seem to stop
-No fighter or weapon will be able too pass through the shield
-The ship must be invincible or it will take damage
-The ship will hit itself if it fires

Advantages:

-Makes a ship invincible looking.
-Can make cool missions using outside sheild generators which must be destroyed to make the ship vulnerable

This is the only way to make beams ineffective to a ships main hull.

I used this to shield a planet from Shivan attack