[Ship] Asteroids pass through Zoltan and regular shields!

[RocketFlash]

I am currently working on my first mod, (http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 0&start=10) and when entering an asteroid field, the asteroids pass right through the Zoltan and regular shielding! I don't know how to fix this. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you

[5thHorseman]

The only thing I can think of is that your ship is so big, the shield stretches beyond the "where stuff spawns to hit you" boundary so the asteroids and stuff actually start out inside your shield.

Just a guess and probably wrong

[RocketFlash]

That actually makes sense... the shield is actually pretty huge. I'm going to try. Thanks

[RAD-82]

Something you need to know about shields: the shield graphic isn't really the shield. Superluminal uses the dimensions of the image file you feed it to determine the actual shield. Your image was 1280 x 720, even though your actual graphic only took up 806 x 671. Things probably are just spawning inside the actual shield, at least in front of the ship. You just need to crop the empty space from around your shield, then reapply it in Superluminal.

Other things I noticed about your ship:
-You made a cloaking graphic, although there is no cloaking system for this ship. If you do add a cloaking system at any point in the future, you'll want to fix your cloak graphic. Refer to 5thHorseman's signature for what I'm referring to.
-You gave the ship an artillery system, which might be why you didn't give it a cloak. You did not make the artillery show up in stores or start the ship with it, so nobody can actually use it. You need to change the rarity of the system to 1 so it will show up in stores. You can copy these lines into your blueprints.xml.append file. I only changed the rarity.

Code: Select all

<systemBlueprint name="artillery">
	<type>artillery</type>
	<title>Artillery Beam</title>	
	<desc>Powers a slow, high-powered beam that pierces all shields and does one damage per room hit. More power means faster cooldown.</desc>	
	<startPower>2</startPower>
	<maxPower>4</maxPower>
	<rarity>1</rarity>
	<upgradeCost>
		<level>30</level> <!-- level 2 -->
		<level>50</level> <!-- level 3 -->
		<level>80</level> <!-- level 4 -->
	</upgradeCost>
	<cost>150</cost>
</systemBlueprint>

-Your miniship image isn't mini. It should be 191 x 121, usually. This version I'm providing will likely overlap the edges of the interface still, but it is 191 x 121. Smaller ships have an easier time of adding empty space in such a small image.
{Attachment broke, image lost}

edit: I believe I looked at version 4, but I see version 5 went up when I posted this, so I guess I better see what changed.
edit2: I see the shield appears to be fixed and the ship starts with the artillery now. Now I've noticed something strange about the interior images. Cloaking for shields? Whatever... There will be a problem with the shields and the piloting when the crew gain skill, due to the lack of glow images. Engines and weapons are also missing the glows, but they will be fine because they are using vanilla images that will catch those.

[RocketFlash]

Wow thanks! That was extremely helpful. You gave me loads of good info. That artillery was actually not supposed to be included aha. Also, the cloaking was a rudimentary feature I suppose, the early versions of the ship (pre-release) did have cloaking, however talking to everyone here I figured, if someone really did cobble together a ship on a big asteroid, you wouldn't be able to cloak something like that. Thanks for the miniship too Oh what is that tool you used in the hangar?

[RAD-82]

Oh what is that tool you used in the hangar?

I use an old program, Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7, for my image editing needs.

I've taught myself how to position ships without the use of Superluminal, because I do most of my work on an older computer that doesn't run the game or Superluminal. For the image I provided, I placed your ship in the hanger, inverted the boundaries of the rooms (because the shield position is taken from the middle of the rooms), applied your shield graphic, then finally applied the actual shield that the game would use.

Not that it matters, since you had if fixed by the time I actually posted it.