Lemme guess. You have Power upgrades in your mod, dontcha?

Lemme make a second guess. You got the code concepts from Evolutions, didn't you?

Edited by - Argh on 4/29/2005 12:16:05 PM

Nope, and nope again.

No upgrades except the normal ones.

Edited by - White on 4/30/2005 12:39:05 PM

Hmm. Well, that's the only time I've run into this error, and I thought at the time that this was a shield-damage timing issue. It went away after I'd tightened up the power upgrade code, so I assumed that that was what was going on.

But maybe... maybe we're on to something here. Are you getting any errors from FL Spit? I'm really not seeing a lot from my mod at this point, so I'm rather curious- maybe we can figure out how to track this down and exploit it, to make <gasp> shield-bypassing weapons.

Evil, pure evil you are.

Btw, thanks for all your help on my ship

Or how about shields that don't give 100% coverage >

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Hmm. Well, that's the only time I've run into this error, and I thought at the time that this was a shield-damage timing issue. It went away after I'd tightened up the power upgrade code, so I assumed that that was what was going on.

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?? I haven't heard of a problem, ergo don't know of a problem! What exactly is the problem that was solved?

no-one tells me anything

@Chips: Erm... well, I kinda borrowed some code chunks from Evo. for the thing I'm about to release... and then put them into my XML scripts... and then went to playtest (I didn't know I'd ever genuinely dislike playing the SP storyline through, but 4 times in 2 weeks is enough lol)...

What happened next was very strange, and I cannot explain it... and it went away after I resolved all outstanding issues with Powerplant Upgrade code anyway, so if I'm going to re-create it, it's going to take some imagination to re-trace the mistakes that led to it happening. Hopefully White understands what an interesting thing he has there, and has preserved that code intact so that we can look at it...

Aaaanyways... when I went and playtested, I was flying against the Blood Dragons, and noticed that in fights, my shields were still full, but I'd lose 10% or more damage. intrigued, I began to watch more carefully... and sure enough, some (but not all) hits were causing damage directly to the Hull, and bypassing the Shields.

You'd think that, given that I'd stumbled on something that potentially useful, I'd have immediately stopped working on the main mod to investigate, but nooooo... I was getting so close to an alpha release of the mod that I just debugged the code... and poof, the issue dissapeared, along with some other niggling things (Power Upgrades are surprisingly difficult to get implemented with XML scripts, but I've solved it).

Could it be something like the shield sur is lightly smaller than the ships hull sur? Maybe, then you could hir the hull directly without touching the shields?

Hmm, intersting Argh - I have never come across it... and we know of some issues - like shields on large ships not being damaged by missiles/torps... but that was about it. I will turn a blind eye and claim ignorance until I see it in Evo (in other words, I haven't found this yet - so I am not going to go searching until I hear of it... as it could take some time )

Still not solved that either (shields on capships), moved shield mounts to external parts - nothing, moved shield mounts to the aft of the ship - still no damage to them at all... moved shield mounts to the HpMount - nothing. All I found is that missiles do not tend towards the HpMount at all, but to the center of the ship (or so it appears).

Strangely enough, where-ever you put them, it didn't seem to matter... nothing affected the shields.

If anyone works that one out, or has a solution - then please let us know, as I no longer have time to carry out investigations etc - got too much work to do . By the way, if the solution involves blast radii over 16m - then its not a solution! That is unacceptable.

With Shields on Capships... Run the SURs through the latest version of FLModel Tool, and tell it to join all of the sub=parts. I'm just guessing, but I have a feeling that that might fix it.

Capships were, very obviously, some of the very first things to get built for FL (look at the mod dates, etc.), and they were so complex that they didn't get cut later on, as DA upgraded their model formats- their structures look very different than the Nomad stuff (which was made near the end).

I have added lots of ships, about 40, and 12 new systems. The only erros I'm getting in FL Spew are the usual Weps platform, Fate disapear ones. The only unusual one is this

E:\FL\Scracth\Source\Server\gf\BaseDB.cpp(1645):***ERROR: Location 2316833921 is invalid

I get this error everytime someone docks at one of my new bases. I have checked the code over and over and can't find anything wrong. Apart from these few I have green down the board.

I thought the shield thing was to do with shield and sur size on the new ships until I got a report that it was happening with a standard eagle too. It seems to be from NPC ships or new players who don't yet have the mod installed. I have written the mod to allow new players to join with or without the mod and I now run on the standard verion 1.0

What actually governs the shield coverage, is it the sur or the cmp file

Btw, on a seperate note, any luck with a sur exporter for MilkShape yet.

>E:\FL\Scracth\Source\Server\gf\BaseDB.cpp(1645):***ERROR: Location 2316833921

I'm getting a similar error to that in my mod, I know what it is cuz i'm lazy. You have a room described in mBases.ini, say a shipdealer.. but it doesnt exist in the system/whatever_base.ini files

@Chips: I noticed that alot of your shield add-ons don't have shield_types because they don't have a use for them. If you used a shield for your capships that don't have a type or have a new type then maybe the missiles/torps can't do anything to them. I had a problem with my TLR-killers when I tried to use missiles at first instead of guns. Could be the problem. Of course could have absolutely nothing to do with it at all.

Hmm... yeah, that might be it. But, I think some of it might be these lines in shiparch.ini... as I recall, I had to mod them in order to totally debug my code and get my XML power upgrades working properly:

shield_link = cv_fighter_shield01, HpMount, SpConnect01

These are unique to every "stock" fl ship, and don't seem to "just" be concerned with the FX displayed. I have a feeling that they might have to do with the SUR, too.

And... lemme look at the code chunks I finally ended up with. Unlike Evo, where every ship has 4 new Hps (HpNew, HpNew1, etc.), I wanted to do things with just one- I figured that, since I've been building this project as more of a technical demonstration than anything else... that people might get confused by things if I had a huge amount of Hps sitting in FL's stock CMPs, and I figured that this would give me an easier time getting the XML coded, which it did. At any rate, my entries for the Powerplant Upgrades look a bit different than Chips's did. Dunno exactly which change resulted in the "shots going through Shields occasionally" errors stopping, however- I am embarrassed to admit that I was mainly worried about bug-stomping and getting the Upgrades to be equipable and stable

[ShieldGenerator
nickname = power_generator01
ids_name = 0 ;GENERATESTRRES("Power Generator, Mk. 1"
ids_info = 0 ;GENERATEXMLRES("<xml><RDL><PUSH/><TRA data="1" mask="1" def="-2"/><JUST loc="center"/><TEXT>Power Generator, Mk. 1</TEXT><PARA/><TEXT> </TEXT><PARA/><TRA data="0" mask="1" def="-1"/><JUST loc="left"/><TEXT>When you need more power... call on the Mark 1. It'll give you that extra boost you need. 100 Power/Sec.</TEXT><PARA/><POP/></RDL></xml>"
DA_archetype = equipment\models\st\ku_displacement_shield.3db
material_library = equipment\models\li_equip.mat
HP_child = HpConnect
hit_pts = 20000
explosion_resistance = 0.500000
debris_type = debris_normal
parent_impulse = 20
child_impulse = 80
volume = 0.000000
mass = 10
regeneration_rate = 0
max_capacity = 0
toughness = 0
hp_type = hp_fighter_shield_special_1
offline_rebuild_time = 0
offline_threshold = 0
constant_power_draw = -100
rebuild_power_draw = 0
shield_collapse_sound = null
shield_rebuilt_sound = null
separation_explosion = sever_debris
LODranges = 0, 1
lootable = false

Edited by - Argh on 5/3/2005 12:01:34 AM