Custom Shields without Scaling/Deformation?

posted on May 11th, 2009, 5:55 am

Hey there again FO team,
The custom-shield capabilities are awesome, but I was wondering if it might be possible to take it a little further...
As far as I know, the standard shield sods are scaled/deformed to account for where they are placed around a unit when it is hit, which is a great system... for standard shields. In order to have shields that contour around the hull (I.e. Skin Shields), this scaling/deformation needs to be disabled. Would it be possible to add a command for units which would disable this scaling/deformation, allowing the custom shield-sod to simply show up as-is at the unit's position?
By having this capability, one can produce a sod that is slightly larger than ship X, with say, a texture animation for the effect, which would then (when ship X is hit) show up at ship X's position, thus creating the skin-shield effect.

I'm not sure how much of the shield-code you guys have reversed, but if you have control over whatever scaling/deformation goes on, then this should be a cinch.

Yay, or Nay?

posted on May 11th, 2009, 7:34 am

i think at an early stage of development, we had an odf command to just have a fixed shield sod around a vessel. however, weapon impact positions are still being calculated as an orb around the vessel and second, you cannot simulate a hit impact, as the sod now is static. so it's not that easy to accomplish at all, but it is still on (low priority) todo to find a solution for that one

posted on May 11th, 2009, 8:36 am

Yeah, I thought of that. The best way I can think of is simply treating the target as if it has no shields, but remove the small hull-explosions caused by the weapons hitting the hull.

posted on May 11th, 2009, 8:40 am

my favoured solution would be to have the shields have it's own hitpoints. still, don't know if all this is doable..

posted on May 11th, 2009, 8:54 am

Well, if a shield is unique to a vessel, you could technically put some shield hardpoints on the vessel itself just above the hull or something, then set them in the odf along with the other stuff (engines, crew, etc), which is a simple solution if you were to treat the target as if it has no bubble shields

posted on May 11th, 2009, 9:37 am

the problem is still the impact animation of the shield. if the shield has no rotatable geometry (a hull-thing sovereign shield for example) the animation would have to be achieved by translating the UVW map on an animated texture. Or making several animated sods for different impact angle (which would of course be the worst solution).

posted on May 11th, 2009, 10:37 am

the animation would have to be achieved by translating the UVW map on an animated texture.

That would, of course, be the best possible implementation (and would look stunning, mind you), but I was thinking of the more simplistic approach of simply having the whole shield texture-animated. While this wouldn't look too great on large vessels, smaller ships should be ok with it.