A lot of shooters have meters that you have to keep an eye on while playing, but they're usually at the bottom of the screen. Since it's really important to keep your eye on your ship, this can be inconvenient. We both wanted to have a visual indication of the shield being low on the ship itself somehow. Originally we were going to have both an external shield meter and have the center of the ship change color. I was going to keep the bigger meter on the side of the screen because that little colored area wasn't always going to be visible.
We had already incorporated this circle around the ship for another mechanic though and so today I was thinking about it and decided to have that double as the shield meter. I think this will work a lot better.
