How come there are no shield effects?

[Malakie]

I just realized and noticed something.. Something that was always off but I could never figure out exactly what it was until now...

Shield effects. There are none! That's what is missing in combat, which I love watching fleets battle from a 3rd person view.. There are no shield impact effects at all.

Is this an oversight or intention?

[-Arkangel-]

It is ..... unintelligible since it contributes a lot on an aesthetic level as playable, let's imagine that the shield has tremendous layers of resistance and individual sections after knocking down a section the battle would have to sit on it and it would be very congruent with consistent visual effects
the best shield effect: the nexus jupiter incident fortress shield..a game over 20 years old

efect shield : https://youtu.be/IE1n7dKYm9A?t=219
big hit in the shield...the best: https://youtu.be/L3oGg6lP4zM?t=2050
my dream : https://youtu.be/PC4y2T0-skM?t=137



es.....inentendible ya que aporta mucho a nivel estetico como jugable, imaginemos que el escudo tiene tremenda capasidad de resistencia y secciones individuales tras derribar una seccion la batalla deveria sentrarse en ella y seria muy congruente con efectos visuales acordes
el mejor efecto de escudo : el escudo fortaleza de nexus jupiter incident..un juego con mas de 20 años ya

[Y-llian]

There is, sort of... I happened to watch some station drones peck an Ody to death this evening and noticed something I hadn’t spotted before. If the shields are up, the weapons detonate a short distance away from the hull - like there’s an invisible shield barrier. Once the shield drops, the impacts hit the hull directly... At least that’s what it looked like!

[Shuulo]

They are doable in mod, as seen in this video.
Though I would like to have them in vanilla game as well and have a bit more control on how and when they appear.
Guess devs just didnt get to them yet, maybe we will see them in 5.0?

[mr.WHO]

I recall devs have shields visual on low priority "to do list" since around 2.0.

Keep nagging them so maybe we'll get it for 5.0

[alt3rn1ty]

I recall devs have shields visual on low priority "to do list" since around 2.0.

Yes I recall this too, I think they are doing their best for performance purposes and rebalancing first, so this will probably come late development which is usually circa 3-4 years after game release for X series (maybe more for X4, its a lot more complicated than previous titles).

[Bastelfred]

There have never been any in X. If there were any, they were mods. Small lightnings at the point of impact were all there used to be.

[Max Bain]

They are doable in mod, as seen in this video.
Though I would like to have them in vanilla game as well and have a bit more control on how and when they appear.
Guess devs just didnt get to them yet, maybe we will see them in 5.0?

Wow that is cool! Do you have any info about how they were implemented? Would be cool to have them outside of the mod as well.

[Shuulo]

They are doable in mod, as seen in this video.
Though I would like to have them in vanilla game as well and have a bit more control on how and when they appear.
Guess devs just didnt get to them yet, maybe we will see them in 5.0?

Wow that is cool! Do you have any info about how they were implemented? Would be cool to have them outside of the mod as well.

Those are few entries in defaults.xml

Code: Select all

	<!-- Adding shield hit sounds -->
	<add sel="//dataset[@class='ship_s']/properties/effects">
		<shieldedsurface ref="shield_damage_s" chance="0.1" />
	</add>	
	<add sel="//dataset[@class='ship_m']/properties/effects">
		<shieldedsurface ref="shield_damage_m" chance="0.1"/>
	</add>	
	<add sel="//dataset[@class='ship_l']/properties/effects">
		<shieldedsurface ref="shield_damage_l" threshold="-0.15" chance="0.1"/>
	</add>	
	<add sel="//dataset[@class='ship_xl']/properties/effects">
		<shieldedsurface ref="shield_damage_l" threshold="-0.15"  chance="0.1"/>
	</add>	

[Max Bain]

They are doable in mod, as seen in this video.
Though I would like to have them in vanilla game as well and have a bit more control on how and when they appear.
Guess devs just didnt get to them yet, maybe we will see them in 5.0?

Wow that is cool! Do you have any info about how they were implemented? Would be cool to have them outside of the mod as well.

Those are few entries in defaults.xml

Code: Select all

	<!-- Adding shield hit sounds -->
	<add sel="//dataset[@class='ship_s']/properties/effects">
		<shieldedsurface ref="shield_damage_s" chance="0.1" />
	</add>	
	<add sel="//dataset[@class='ship_m']/properties/effects">
		<shieldedsurface ref="shield_damage_m" chance="0.1"/>
	</add>	
	<add sel="//dataset[@class='ship_l']/properties/effects">
		<shieldedsurface ref="shield_damage_l" threshold="-0.15" chance="0.1"/>
	</add>	
	<add sel="//dataset[@class='ship_xl']/properties/effects">
		<shieldedsurface ref="shield_damage_l" threshold="-0.15"  chance="0.1"/>
	</add>	

Thats all? Why is there a chance of just 10% and if thats all you need to add, it seems that X4 is pretty well prepared for shield effects. So why are they not in vanilla?

[Jeraal]

I remember a game that had shield effects that I really liked. The shield was broken down into the segments kind of like a soccer ball pattern. you could actually damage each little section separately. I think that was Free Space 2, but I could be wrong. I know it would be a resource and graphics hog, but I would love to have shield impacts and hull damage.

[KrYcHokE]

There have never been any in X. If there were any, they were mods. Small lightnings at the point of impact were all there used to be.

Ehem. X2 had shield effects, also ships fall apart when destroyed.

[Artean]

...and while speaking about shield effects - I really would like them to redo the one on station landing platforms into something more... liquid looking. That blue texture moving back and forth does not look great.

[Mr.Killer]

It would be nice to see visually where you hit the shield or the hull, I do think that this is also a precise job for programmers to enact, think of how every item on your ship has shields too, how to combine those, how one shield is hit while the underlying is not hit.
On a station I think it would start as one turret with shield and the next and then the shields kinda flow to each other and so on, filling the whole station in a blob-like shield structure.
I do think it is possible, but give it some time, give the developers time to make something of this actually work, but remember, and it has been said many times before, there is so much else that has a higher priority. (I hit my head also several times against that wall)

[taztaz502]

Would be great for visual shields, i wish they also worked differently against different weapons.

e.g. block lasers and energy based weapons 100% until shield is drained, only block like 25% of physical weapons e.g. bolt, and say 75% missile damage, have the missiles blow up when they hit the shield and give minor damage to hull.

This would make hull a more useful ship stat, granted resupply/repair AI would need adjusted since ships would be taking more hull damage thus needing repairs, would make weapon types more variable though and add more flavour.

[Mr.Killer]

.... and a little bit off topic, when they built this game, we watch it through one eye, your screen, and objects that explode are soundly heard, while flying at huge speeds has no effects and gravity is also everywhere, bullets that stop being there at some distance after firing out of a canon (real bullets would keep going, and going)....
Kinda a game that defies all rules of Sir Isaac Newton and the reality of which we should feel ourselves in.

I don't mind that some effects are still not what we want to see or have, but I stll keep in mind that space is dark, not empty at all, but unable to carry sound waves and on top of that, we should all float down there
(Not that I refer to a classic movie or something )

But maybe, maybe they did find a solution for gravity on ships, like magnetic boots, and force fields... ai, that is a hard thing to realize now, but, if Hollywood can make you believe it, so do a few game makers that successfully let us enter in a make believe world that is very exciting.

So, again, I like what I see, and yes, there should be shields visible, it is EYE CANDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Malakie]

Shield impact effects should be part of this game.. I play quite a few space games and a whole lot of them use shield impact effects.. What made me realize they were actually missing all this time was Star Citizen... I knew subconsciously they were not appearing but it never hit me until I was trying to actually figure out why things looked off all the time to me.. That was why.

[linolafett]

I poked the dev who could make it happen again. It just got pushed down by other more urgent tasks.

[Shuulo]

I poked the dev who could make it happen again. It just got pushed down by other more urgent tasks.

I didnt figured how to make effect work only if above threshold.
Threshold parameter tells the effect when it can work, e.g threshold=0.5 will make effect work only when HP is below 50%, but can i make it reverse? so that effect will play only if if HP is ABOVE 50%?
i guess this will be required for your implementation as well as with constant shield regen large ships will always play shield hit effect unless threshold is implemented

[Axeface]

My concern with this is performance. The fps impact of battles with a lot of ships is large already even on the best computers, turning large battles that should be the highlight of our games into something to avoid.