Better Bubble Shields
Formerly Clear Bubble Shields
Gives every bubble shield in the game its own style and its own color, chosen in your mod manager's options. Keep the honeycomb without the swirling cloud, turn the shield into a clean see-through tint, or hide it completely, then pick a color for each shield separately. The color covers the whole shield: the bubble, its hit flash, the glow on its generator and the effect when it breaks.
Features
Affected shields
Install
Updating from Clear Bubble Shields: it's the same mod, so it installs as an update. The options changed, so open them and pick your settings again.
Manual install: every option folder in the zip holds a set of three files named 9ba626afa44a3aa3.patch_0. For each shield you want, copy its Textures set, one Style set and optionally one Color set into Helldivers 2/data, renaming each set to the next free patch number. The Color set must get a higher number than the Style set.
Uninstall
Disable or remove the mod in your mod manager and deploy.
Compatibility
Known limitations
Troubleshooting
How it works
Each shield's model is pointed at the mod's own materials, one per style, so the style and the color can be picked in separate dropdowns. The honeycomb and cloud texture slots use tiny plain textures of the mod's own. The Shield Generator Pack's dome is a particle effect, so its color is set in that effect and its brightness in its materials. A Color option also sets the bubble's hit-flash color and ships the shield's own glow and break effects with their colors changed; the materials those effects share with other effects are pointed at the mod's own recolored copies, so nothing outside these shields changes.
Credits
Formerly Clear Bubble Shields
Gives every bubble shield in the game its own style and its own color, chosen in your mod manager's options. Keep the honeycomb without the swirling cloud, turn the shield into a clean see-through tint, or hide it completely, then pick a color for each shield separately. The color covers the whole shield: the bubble, its hit flash, the glow on its generator and the effect when it breaks.
Features
- One option per shield: untick a shield to keep it vanilla.
- A style for each shield:
- Honeycomb (default) - keeps the honeycomb but removes the swirling cloud and ripple, and is much more see-through.
- Clear - Medium - no honeycomb or cloud, an even tint at 50% opacity so you can still tell where the shield is.
- Clear - Low - no honeycomb or cloud, a faint tint at 25% opacity.
- Invisible - no shield bubble at all; the generator glow, hit flash and break effect still show, in the shield's color.
- A separate Color option for each shield: the game's own color, White, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Purple, Pink or Dark (a smoky dark tint). Every color works with every style, and colors are brightness-matched so blue and purple look as bright as the default.
- The color also covers the hit flash, the glow on the generator (the arcs and glowing core of the Relay and Shield Generator Pack, the glowing band on the G/SH-39) and the break effect. Game Default keeps the game's look.
Affected shields
- FX-12 Shield Generator Relay (the dome, the generator's glow and the break effect)
- G/SH-39 Shield (the shield grenade: the bubble, the grenade's glow and the break effect)
- SH-51 Directional Shield (the shield panel and its break effect)
- SH-32 Shield Generator Pack (the dome, its glowing layer and the line along its top, the glow on the backpack and the break effect)
Install
- Add the zip to Arsenal (or another manager that supports manifest options).
- Open the mod's options, tick the shields you want, and pick a style and a color for each. A Color option needs its shield's option turned on.
- Confirm and deploy.
Updating from Clear Bubble Shields: it's the same mod, so it installs as an update. The options changed, so open them and pick your settings again.
Manual install: every option folder in the zip holds a set of three files named 9ba626afa44a3aa3.patch_0. For each shield you want, copy its Textures set, one Style set and optionally one Color set into Helldivers 2/data, renaming each set to the next free patch number. The Color set must get a higher number than the Style set.
Uninstall
Disable or remove the mod in your mod manager and deploy.
Compatibility
- Conflicts with other mods that change the same shields (the bubble models of the Relay, G/SH-39 Shield and Directional Shield, the Shield Generator Pack's dome effect and, with a color picked, the shields' generator glow and break effects); whichever loads last wins. Untick a shield here to leave it to the other mod.
- Built for the September 2026 game version. After a game update the mod checks the game's shield files and is rebuilt from them in one step if they changed.
Known limitations
- The Shield Generator Pack's bubble is the same model as the Relay and G/SH-39 bubbles, so the Pack's bubble and its hit flash follow those shields' Style and Color. The Pack's own options cover its glowing dome layer, the glow on the backpack and its break effect.
- A Color option does nothing while its shield option is off.
Troubleshooting
- A color doesn't show: make sure the shield's own option (the one with the style) is ticked too.
- Nothing changes: deploy again after changing options, and check that no other shield mod loads after this one.
How it works
Each shield's model is pointed at the mod's own materials, one per style, so the style and the color can be picked in separate dropdowns. The honeycomb and cloud texture slots use tiny plain textures of the mod's own. The Shield Generator Pack's dome is a particle effect, so its color is set in that effect and its brightness in its materials. A Color option also sets the bubble's hit-flash color and ships the shield's own glow and break effects with their colors changed; the materials those effects share with other effects are pointed at the mod's own recolored copies, so nothing outside these shields changes.
Credits
- Muchacho5894 - "Bubble Shields - No honeycomb - No cloud - 0.1 Opacity", the original idea for the Shield Generator Relay. This mod uses its own textures.
- Filediver by xypwn and contributors - github.com/xypwn/filediver
- Helldivers 2 SDK: Community Edition by Boxofbiscuits97 and contributors (original SDK by ToastedShoes, Kboy and Irastris) - github.com/Boxofbiscuits97/HD2SDK-CommunityEdition
