Shield's Offline Indicator.

posted on September 6th, 2009, 3:37 pm

Surely I'm not the only person to think that the shield effect when shields are down doesn't look too good? Why a blue bubble would flash on and off when the shields are down eludes me.

Of course it is so you can easily tell which ships have shield and so forth, but I would rather something less counterintuitive, i.e. you see shields, so shields must be down. Maybe have the whole wireframe flash when shields are down?
And slightly related, more elaborate explosions on hulls when shields are down would help this slightly. When a photon torpedo hits an unshielded target, the visual display isn't likely to be just a shower of sparks surely?

posted on September 6th, 2009, 4:28 pm

Not sure about the shield down effect (aka, I don't have a preference either way at the moment... but you are right, probably something should be done )

I agree about more elaborate explosions on the hull... that would be very nice indeed--even in general  (in terms of eye candy)

posted on September 6th, 2009, 4:34 pm

And also, at some angles, the attempt at making the bubble 3d looks ugly, pixels overlap and look horrible. Maybe dim exterior lights on the ship to show a dip in power? Have them turn on and off?

posted on September 6th, 2009, 4:57 pm

Another "cool" addition would be to see hull-damaged ships "venting plasma". I suspect it's problematic to implement, though.

And yes, I agree that the blinking effect to show "shields down" is a little... illogical. I put it as "necessary evil" and leave it at that.

posted on September 6th, 2009, 4:59 pm

Another "cool" addition would be to see hull-damaged ships "venting plasma". I suspect it's problematic to implement, though.

That's planned to be redone and re-added at some point

posted on September 6th, 2009, 5:27 pm

I have always assumed that the flashing effect is an attempt at showing the shield generator struggling to initialise the localised energy distortion field. Like a fluorescent light with a malfunctioning starter would flicker erratically but not actually engage.

I do think the effect currently used could be improved however. I, too, dislike the solid colour that appears around the object. I think if anything, the actual shielding bubble should have some kind of distortion effect for a while but then go away. After all, if a unit is damaged at all, we can see the shield/hull bars by default and the fact that no shield appears when it's fired at should be evidence enough to show that it's shields are down.

posted on September 6th, 2009, 5:32 pm

Hence my idea to scrap it completely and just largen the hull explosions.

posted on September 7th, 2009, 12:57 am

Quite honestly(and you will all hate me for this I bet) I am happy with the curent sheild down effect. Of course my oppinion could be tainted by the fact that I just played a round of both B5 armada and Armada 2 unmodded...However I do think we need better damage indicators.

posted on September 7th, 2009, 1:15 am

Yeah having those little fire balls pop off the hull from ignited oxygen, (like shown in the shows) would be very realistic and not to mention, COOL! More flame from exploding ships would be cool too, maybe lok the ship is breaking apart instead of just blowing up all the time.

posted on September 7th, 2009, 3:42 am

The only thing i can think of that needs to be changed is that it could use more color variation and have sections flickering independently of each other.

posted on September 7th, 2009, 6:03 am

and have sections flickering independently of each other.

I released a shield disabled effect that did that a while ago at Armada 2 files. I can't get to the site right now for some reason but it's in the Misc folder in the A1 section.

posted on September 7th, 2009, 6:57 am

When I was talking about the "venting plasma" effect, I wasn't talking about the crappy "engine is disabled/no crew present" effect from stock A2. I was talking about the "cool" plasma trail that appears in Insurrection when the Enterprise-E is hit, but the engines are still functional, for example. It doesn't need to be a long trail, but I think it would be nice to have it.

posted on September 7th, 2009, 7:24 am

yes, the current disabled shield effect is that prominent so that you see right away when a shield on a vessel has failed. it shows a shield regenerator trying to reenable itself. still, you may be right that it could be toned down a bit

posted on September 7th, 2009, 7:40 am

For those of you who have never player Haegemonia... get it... good game.

The Explosions in that game are right on perfect. It has great explosion sprites.

The Other pare of this, which would also stop slowdowns when ships explode is instead of having ships fracture. Have them split in two of three tops and have a plathora of 2D sprites fly out.

posted on September 7th, 2009, 12:00 pm

yes, this has been mentioned already in another thread but this is not about the ship explosions than the shield down indicator...
btw. in stock armada hull explosions are not possible, however we have code that allows us to integrate that but it will not be part of the next patch

section flickering would be a nifty effect for sure not sure if it can be done though