To "conclude" this topic about shield effect:
So on my (very) slow computer, where Nova should not be running because (1) it has not by far the minimum specs required and (2) I don't have a valid licence, the shield effect is shown on the player's ship, and no AI ships.
On the computer of my office mate (high end G4 and valid license ), the shield effect is drawn for every ship, including AIs.
So intermediate conclusion: the game draw more or less things according to the ressources available, and on "normal" computers, the shield effect should be no problems.
I may only conclude by praising the developers, that did make a very flexible engine that adapt itself to the speed of the computer!
For your information, my computer is a Performa 5200 (603e 75MHz), with system 8.1, 24 Mb RAM, 1 Mb V-RAM. I didn't buy a licence of Nova myself, as the game is not very cool to play on my Mac (in opposition to the Mac of my office mate). To run Nova, mostly to be able to develop plug-ins at home and quickly test them, I replaced every picture ressource by 256 color pictures, reduced the memory requirement of Nova, and used my old faithfull RAM-doubler to achieve an amazing 72 Mb of RAM, where some 64 are free to use by Nova.
Nova requires officially 128 Mb of RAM and a G3 processor. The fact that Nova is playable on my Mac is in itself is a great achievment in software flexibility. Praise Mr. Burch! Of course, Nova needs some 4-5 minutes to start, and several seconds to react when you land or make an Hyperspace jump, but it is still possible to debug plug-ins!
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