it should be easier to see under stacked shields plus it would be nice if the graphics for shields were improved

Yes, but how? Suggest an approach.

ticket https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/issues/2487

quote: The shield graphic was changed to what you are seeing now for the exact reason that you couldn't see what was below them. Making them uniformly blue improved this.

Incorrect. Engine shield drawing was replaced with LUPS drawn shields because the engine renders shields as segments, which allows them to be depth-sorted and visible in pieces rather than a whole sphere at once.

This is, surprisingly, leads to worse performance than LUPS which renders a single sphere.

The LUPS reimplementation didn't receive a texture for purely technical reasons, as far as i can tell of GoogleFrog not having sufficient bother to do that, and of ivand deciding to construct the hyper-advanced over-engineered thing you see in the video all at once rather than get it merged piecemeal (e.g. texture first, impact ripple later).

quote: How would you make shields look nice again without the stacking problem?

Reduced opacity on top, where most camera rays fall from. Various frag shader tricks if you're Hackerman.

How about doing something similar to supreme commander forged alliance. There were no issues seeing what's under a shield there no matter how many stacked.

I also like the graphics that Kingstad posted.

You could also merge the shield colours like the unit selections merge when you select multiple units so you just see the outline of the entire shield.

My current shield implementation (the shown in video linked by Kingstad) is in pretty good shape from the technical perspective.

I would have liked it to be tested before Steam release, but it's only one day left before the release, so it's clearly won't be happening.

As far as I can tell, drawing with constant opacity or perform shield merge require completely different approach than the one used currently. I might redo the implementation later, but once my current work gets into the game.

I like Supreme Commander and C&C3 shield visuals. These implementations are relatively old, but still done by professional studios: