[AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Distribute and discuss mods that are functional. Moderator - Grognak
splette
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Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2012 12:37 am

Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby splette » Mon May 26, 2014 7:39 pm

Hey guys,
thanks for your very detailed feedback. This is quite helpful.

@Sleeper Service
I now understand what you mean. Yes, the vanilla hexagon shield gives the impression of a crossection (just like the ship is also shown as a crossection) while my shield is a three-dimensional sphere and due to that one might perceive the ship below, above - or as intended - in the center of the shield sphere. I don't think there is a good way to 'fix' it. I would encourage everyone to just try it out and you'll see if you do happen to get this perception that the shield sphere feels wrong.

One more comment about the size of the shield spheres and the overlap with the ship: There are some issues with that in vanilla, too. I had never noticed it until I started working on this mod but some ships touch the outer edge of the shield or even extend beyond that (the top right edge of the Crystal cruiser is outside the shield)

@Rockman from Russia

Unfortunately there isn't really a good way around this and when I look at the vanilla images again they have the same problem, only problem is they look "flat" as well. Of course, both of those things were really not things I notice too much while actually playing the game. It also affects the ship more when there are more active shield bubbles, you don't really notice it when you have a more transparent shield

Yes

I think the middle "transparent" part of the image just needs to be a "tad bit" wider...

I tried to make the transparent middle part about as wide as the original but I agree that a wider middle might help with the perception issue. I will try that out.

Enemy shields appear to be hardcoded, the game just resizes the bubble depending on the room layout of the ship.

That is correct. There is a simple graphic of a shield (without hexagon or any other pattern) that is re-sized automatically by the program to match the enemy ship size.

I actually like the original more after seeing those, they seem sort of "low res" with the thicker lines,and the smaller triangles one seems "cluttered".

Yes, I had tried out these other versions before and I think I will keep my original triangle and line size.

After playing with Better Planet's and Backgrounds, which has brighter backgrounds, I noticed I couldn't see the lines at all

Yes, that may be but I will not consider that. The backgrounds in that mod might look spectacular but many of them are far brighter and more busy than those in vanilla FTL. They not only interfere with the shield graphic of the ship but also the other UI elements (systems, weapons, subsystems) and make them hard to read.

Looking at the shield images in GIMP, I could tell they would not be the same in game as the vanilla ones because they are just darker. So I took the time to tweak with the images a bit and here is an image of what I came up with.

You are right, they were slightly darker. Personally I think hardly anyone would notice (apart from you apparently :), also because the shields in the game have different opacities anyway, depending on how many shields you have.
Anyway, I will change this in the next version to get it closer to the original.

And also if you want to make a version that uses the vanilla hexes that is just more "high-res" and "slightly" more spherical looking that would be cool to see as well.

Funny that you mention it. Just before you posted it I had the same idea. I will do that and offer a 'high-res classic' version with hexagons besides my 'high res 3D' version.
Russian Rockman
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Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby Russian Rockman » Mon May 26, 2014 8:23 pm

splette wrote:@Rockman from Russia

:lol: :lol: :lol:

About the shield images sticking out on certain parts of the shield, the sMPK mod fixes that by adjusting the X Y alignment of the shield image.

splette wrote:
I think the middle "transparent" part of the image just needs to be a "tad bit" wider...

I tried to make the transparent middle part about as wide as the original but I agree that a wider middle might help with the perception issue. I will try that out.

After playing with the shields a bit more I realized it is not really a very big problem on most ships. It was most noticeable for me on the Mantis and Zoltan ships because their front is so close to the border of the shield. There isn't really a very good way of fixing that. Adjusting the transparency slightly worked for me though.

splette wrote:
After playing with Better Planet's and Backgrounds, which has brighter backgrounds, I noticed I couldn't see the lines at all

Yes, that may be but I will not consider that. The backgrounds in that mod might look spectacular but many of them are far brighter and more busy than those in vanilla FTL. They not only interfere with the shield graphic of the ship but also the other UI elements (systems, weapons, subsystems) and make them hard to read.

Well I'm using my own custom UI so it's not a problem for me. :P I can read all the UI things just fine. But I can't see the lines of your shield images too well. If it isn't toooo much trouble I would like to see how the shield images look with thicker lines.

splette wrote:
Looking at the shield images in GIMP, I could tell they would not be the same in game as the vanilla ones because they are just darker. So I took the time to tweak with the images a bit and here is an image of what I came up with.

You are right, they were slightly darker. Personally I think hardly anyone would notice (apart from you apparently :), also because the shields in the game have different opacities anyway, depending on how many shields you have.
Anyway, I will change this in the next version to get it closer to the original.

You can't really notice it when you have only 1 shield bubble. They look exactly the same, but when you get more shield bubbles it becomes really apparent that it is darker. It is blatantly obvious on the Zoltan Cruiser. I did like the images "a bit" darker than the original so I kept them that way for a reason after I made my tweaks. I am interested to see what you come up with though to make them more close to vanilla.

splette wrote:
And also if you want to make a version that uses the vanilla hexes that is just more "high-res" and "slightly" more spherical looking that would be cool to see as well.

Funny that you mention it. Just before you posted it I had the same idea. I will do that and offer a 'high-res classic' version with hexagons besides my 'high res 3D' version.

:D That will be awesome to see! I really want to see what you do! I still like your 3D version though. Are you going to make a classic-classic and a 3D-classic?
splette
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Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby splette » Mon May 26, 2014 11:40 pm

Alright, I created the 'Highres Shields Classic' edition and added it to the original post of this thread. I realized though that the changes are very subtle. I will rather keep tweaking the 3D version.
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Sleeper Service
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Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby Sleeper Service » Tue May 27, 2014 12:15 am

Neat, I'll integrate the classic version into CE at some point. You'll be duly credited of course. Thanks again! Looking forward to see where the mod will be going. :)
Russian Rockman
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Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby Russian Rockman » Tue May 27, 2014 9:07 am

splette wrote:Alright, I created the 'Highres Shields Classic' edition and added it to the original post of this thread. I realized though that the changes are very subtle. I will rather keep tweaking the 3D version.


Do all the shields in the high-res classic version have the same size hexes though? I liked how the Engi ship had smaller hexes and the Crystal ship had huge hexes.

I'll try it out though.
splette
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Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2012 12:37 am

Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby splette » Tue May 27, 2014 11:30 am

Ha! You are not easy to please Mr. Rockman, are you? ;)
Actually the smaller hexes of the Engi ship are not a feature but rather a bug. Have a close look. The hexagons are smaller because they are skewed. It seems, that the circular Engi shield bubble was created by taking one of the eliptical shield bubbles from another ship and simply skew it. So, that's something I was actually trying to fix, not emulate.

Btw, I've now played a few rounds of FTL with my shield version and I believe the perception thing is a matter of getting used to.
Russian Rockman
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Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby Russian Rockman » Tue May 27, 2014 12:03 pm

splette wrote:Ha! You are not easy to please Mr. Rockman, are you? ;)
Actually the smaller hexes of the Engi ship are not a feature but rather a bug. Have a close look. The hexagons are smaller because they are skewed. It seems, that the circular Engi shield bubble was created by taking one of the eliptical shield bubbles from another ship and simply skew it. So, that's something I was actually trying to fix, not emulate.

Btw, I've now played a few rounds of FTL with my shield version and I believe the perception thing is a matter of getting used to.


Hah, no I am very detail oriented, I think I have to have some form of OCD. ;) Don't be offended. Your bubble does look cool though because it will seem more uniform across all ships. I thought the smaller hexes on the Engi ship was sort of an "accidental" feature. But I do still like the high-res shields. Looking at the vanilla Zoltan ship I see that even it's hexes are skewed.

I really did not notice the perspective thing on most ships. I only think the ship is outside the bubble on the Front of the Zoltan and Mantis ship. And again that's because the shield is such a tight fit. If you want to create a whole other shield image (and mess with the dimensions in the code) for those and maybe a few other ships that gives them a little more space I'd be fine with that, if you get that perception too that is. Really they are fine. %90 of people wouldn't notice.

EDIT: You know... I just had a thought. :idea: Gameplay wise it might not be good, but graphical wise it might not really matter if the shield is slightly "bigger" than the vanilla one. The reason is because if lasers were coming in from different angle in a 3D space they wouldn't be hitting the edge of the shield exactly. But maybe so you can gauge whether a shot has been blocked or not it should stay the same. Just an interesting observation.
Tweevle
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Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby Tweevle » Tue May 27, 2014 2:20 pm

splette wrote:@Sleeper Service
I now understand what you mean. Yes, the vanilla hexagon shield gives the impression of a crossection (just like the ship is also shown as a crossection) while my shield is a three-dimensional sphere and due to that one might perceive the ship below, above - or as intended - in the center of the shield sphere. I don't think there is a good way to 'fix' it. I would encourage everyone to just try it out and you'll see if you do happen to get this perception that the shield sphere feels wrong.


What about lightening the edges so the it looks like the camera is "cutting" through the shield barrier?

Here's a quick mock-up I tried using one of RR's images:

Image

Also, would it be possible to make a hexagonal version of the sphere somehow? Hexagons are just cooler (hell, there's even a trope for it).
Russian Rockman
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Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby Russian Rockman » Tue May 27, 2014 3:25 pm

That actually doesn't look too bad! I think it completely resolves any possible perspective problems. The outline is a bit "too" thick owned bright on that mock-up, I think but if you were to make it maybe double thickness like the ones splette showed us examples of I think that is perfect.
Tweevle
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Re: [AE][MOD] Highres Shields 1.1

Postby Tweevle » Tue May 27, 2014 3:39 pm

Russian Rockman wrote:That actually doesn't look too bad! I think it completely resolves any possible perspective problems. The outline is a bit "too" thick owned bright on that mock-up, I think but if you were to make it maybe double thickness like the ones splette showed us examples of I think that is perfect.


Yeah, it was just a very quick test - obviously it'd need to be tweaked further to make it just right.