Norman Druart on 10/11/2005 at 19:34
Anyone know what is the blue glow that surrounds certain characters (Hermann and Simons come to mind) when they're taking damage? I thought it was either ballistic armor or the ballistic protection aug but when I shot Simons with a tranq dart during our showdown, the glow appeared everytime he stumbled in pain while the drug affected him. Healing aug maybe? It doesn't seem to match anything JC experiences.
TF on 10/11/2005 at 19:51
It's obviously something that was quickly thrown in to half-justify their immunities to those types of damage, like the teleport sfx for System Shock 2 monsters being spawned.
Fun fact: you get the same effect when using the baton on those characters
the one true thief on 10/11/2005 at 22:34
Its just armor isn't it? Thats what I always thought. :erm:
ZylonBane on 10/11/2005 at 22:34
Without poking around in the editor, there's no way to tell exactly what it is. Could be the regen aug, or aggressive defense, or EMP shield, or all of the above.
Note that JC does not have the same visual effects for most of his augs as the NPCs do. For example, try turning on Cloak in front of a mirror. There's no visual change at all.
Marecki on 10/11/2005 at 23:24
I'm pretty certain this is supposed to be regeneration, as it looks quite similar to JC's (give or take the fact you can only see his "from the inside") and essentially means that the attack you have attempted is not effective against this target (yes, I know this is not exactly the case when it comes to poison; I'd blame this one on inconsistency on behalf of the devs, though).
Norman Druart on 11/11/2005 at 01:40
I'll see what happens when I smoke multiple packs of cigs with regen on and while standing in front of a mirror. :D
Bluegrime on 11/11/2005 at 02:25
But if I recall, the only NPC to go cloak is Agent Navarre and the only time I ever saw her do that is when I shot her murdering ass on Lebedevs 747
Norman Druart on 11/11/2005 at 05:38
Quote Posted by Bluegrime
But if I recall, the only NPC to go cloak is Agent Navarre
and the only time I ever saw her do that is when I shot her murdering ass on Lebedevs 747Simons will cloak as well when you have him on the run. He also sounded like he used a bioelectric cell so I finished him off in fear that he would return to full strength. I'll have to test that too.
Bluegrime on 11/11/2005 at 08:02
I guess I never gave him the chance to go cloak. I tend to run and set a little LAM trap for him, then a GEP rocket if he's still twitching. Always works, and I suppose I might've hit him in big enough chunks that he wasn't in the 'run zone' before I killed him.
Dr. Dumb_lunatic on 11/11/2005 at 10:25
Yep, Simons has cloak.
I think all the cloaking code got shuffled off to a native function somewhere (so I can't be sure), but generally those pawns with cloak will enable it once they've taken damage equal to 50-75% of their total health.
As for using bioelectric cells: nope. NPCs can't use them. Probably it was the sound of his plasma rifle reloading, as that has a similar sort of tone.
The blue glow is a "ShieldEffect", and does indeed represent "some sort of non-specific damage resistance". To fake augs for NPCs, the devs just put in a filter on incoming damage, certain damage type are ignored (like knockedout, stunned, poison and poisoneffect for Anna, making her un-knockable-outable), and others are reduced by some modifier or other.
For gunther and co, this damage reduction is displayed as a blue glow.
(actually, looking at the code, it appears that Gunther DOES take tranq damage. At only 10%, but still...hmm...*runs off to try*)
