Star Wars: Interregnum is an upcoming mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion that builds off of the highly successful Enhanced 4X Mod. Fleeing the unknown terror that is chasing the Vasari, the factions of Sins of a Solar Empire stumble on a temporary wormhole that takes them to a galaxy far, far away. The sudden arrival of armadas with trillions of refugees and thousands of warships between the events of Episodes 5 & 6 forever alters the Star Wars universe and plunges the galaxy into an unprecedented period of chaos and violence. Begun, a new conflict has.
Star Wars Interregnum Developer Journal 2
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A quick video demonstrating one of the more controversial changes (and a policy flip) we may be making, as well as a quick summary of progress on the mod. Feedback welcome!
Ehh honestly if you must render shields then I'd go the route that SoGE went and have hull hugging effects rather than bubbles. Personally though I'm completely okay with no visible shield effect as like you said there was none visible in the original trilogy.
One thing I would do is increase how noticeable the muzzle flash origin points are, I don't know it's just nice to see just where each shot comes from on the ship when I get the camera up clos.
The problem is that doesn't reduce the RAM usage. To get it to look like there is no shield, we basically had to do SoGE style shields and then just tell the game not to use the effect. Not having shield meshes creates all sorts of problems under the hood. Very inefficient, but it is the way it is.
So the real question is not if this is better than no shields in absolute terms(which is what I would prefer as well), but is this a tolerable price to pay for better performance/content later down the road.
Well how much lower would the RAM usage be? If we're weighing the costs it would be better to know just how much of a benefit such a change would be.
I mentioned it in the video, it would reduce the RAM usage of most models by almost half. Uncompressed that's well over 100mb, which was the number I cited. The compressed version released to you guys would be probably be in the neighborhood of 50mb. And of course the more units we add in the future, the more of a difference it would make to the status quo.
MY apologies, I was watching it...or I should say I was trying to watch it over a wifi connection that was almost nonexistent. Must have missed the crucial info while it was stuttering and skipping.
Well if we must go the bubble route then I'll suck it up and make do, I hope the impact effects will be tweaked and maybe the bubbles' size as well, there's alot of empty space in the shields for Star Destroyers.
The main problem with the ISD shields is that it just seems to be off center, so the shield has to be bigger on the top and front to cover it than it should be, creating empty space in the back and below. If I can figure out just how Sins centers shields on a ship I would love to, however I can't say if that's even possible at this moment.
Aside from re-centering the shields is there anyway to manipulate the shape of the shield? I notice ships like the Vasari and Advent Titans use more form fitting shields that stay close to the body but not right on the hull.
Are they using that RAM intensive system as the current hull-hugging/non-visible shields as well or is there some merit in investigating their attributes?
They are better than what we have now but worse that ovoids. And they would have to be custom made. The nice thing about these shields or the SoGE style shields is that they can be made without much additional labor/time in a modeling program. Which is probably not on the table at this point. There are more important things to spend the man hours on.
@GoaFan77 Just thought id share a 3d oval is called and Ovoid.
Good to know, thanks! :-)
I'm quite a fan of both the lowered ram usage and the visual effects, I think it looks great, and believable as is. Keep up the amazing work.
Even if this shield effect is inaccurate for star wars, i think it looks really cool, its quite pretty and i would be happy if given this with the next update of the mod.
Personally I don't like it, its distracting and makes it hard to see the ships in detail themselves. If the impacts were way smaller, and the fade after the shields were hit were made very very quick, to the point where it was barely a flash, I think that would be fine. But having a huge bubble around capital ships like that during the battle just looks strange, annoying, and out of place to me.
Again, this is my opinion, do whatever you feel should be done.
That is what I was originally aiming for. Unfortunately in practice it was hard to get it to look right because the shield would vanish before the impact animations were done playing. Also in large battles in practice the shield just ends up on all the time no matter what the duration, because so much fire gets directed at the primary targets.
Certainly I'm not an expert in shaders like this though, I intend to ask some people with more experience for advice.
Think Zombie has shields in his SOTF mod, don't remember much about them fading or if the wrapped around the ship or not, but you may be able to ask him
so the bubble shields are more ram efficent than having SOGE style shields?
Way more efficient.
fair enough. maybe in the future you could release a submod that adds the SOGE style shields? if you have time.
Personally, I dislike it. However if the mod gains enough advantages from it then I'm ok with it.
Initially I was critical of the bubble, but the effects of the explosions on the bubble's surface convinced me that it is the right move to make. It looks good, saves memory, and allows you to put more into the mod. Let's just hope Stardock gets it together and releases 1.83 so we can see your beautiful work.
One question, will the shield effect be generated for planets with a shield generator?
Planet shields should already have a subtle shield effect around them. I'll check if this will affect them.
I'm wondering if you can change the color of the shields for each faction, Like static grey for imperials, or blue for rebel, and eventually dark red for new republic?
Yes, but where did you get those colors from? I mean there's not a lot of info on original trilogy shields, but I'm pretty sure none have been grey. :p
It looks fine, and to save some ram to be used some place else sounds good. I would prefer the hugging shields but as you mention they don't save ram. Keep up the good work.
The practical side of me says that saving ram is a good thing even if turning an effect "off" taking up more ram than letting it run makes no bloody sense.
The fan boy in me, however, says that, while it is not necessarily how the in-universe shields work visually, I couldn't care less because that video was so cool. Is the faction color chosen by the player based on the color of the icon they choose or is it coded in so that Imperials are always blue and rebels are always purple for example? I need me some glowing red shields for my Sith Lord led Imperial Navy.
It's set by the faction (race), though you might be able to mod it to be the player color. Not sure on that.
TEC - Yellow
Advent - Light Blue
Vasari - Green
Empire - Blue
Rebels - Light Purple
I personally find these new shield effects very appealing, although I do have some reservations. I an unfamiliar with any capitol ship shields in SW that are so spherical, so they seem to take up a great deal of physical space.
About the old "hull-hugging" effects, do they consume more ram to have that blue effect that spreads across the hull? If so, then I would not suggest going back to that, but I do suggest one alternative.
My favourite shield variant is from Star Wars Galaxies.
Here is an example of fighter shields: Youtube.com
Here is an example of capitol ship shields: Youtu.be
I also have the sound effect taken straight from the files if you would like.