Shields

Oni has three kinds of shields that can be applied to a character plus one special effect, the chenille glow. It can get a bit confusing to keep track of them so this article is meant to keep things straight.

Force shield

Blue color. This is a powerup you can pick up or give to someone via BSL function chr_givepowerup. Some enemies spawn with one. The wearer takes no damage from weapons until the force shield has been totally exhausted by absorbing damage.

Boss shield

Red color which only appears briefly when body parts are struck with a weapon (can be easy to miss). Reduces damage from weapons but not melee. The damage reduction factor is set in ONCC's <BossShieldProtectAmount> field. Applied with BSL function chr_boss_shield. The only characters in vanilla Oni who are given a boss shield are Barabas (2nd fight at TCTF HQ), Mukade, Muro (2nd fight at Mountain Compound) and Mutant Muro. For Barabas and Mukade the damage reduction factor is 50%, for Muro it's 75%, and for Mutant Muro it's 85%. For all other characters in the game it's 50%.

Supershield

A supershielded character will be totally immune to weapons. In vanilla Oni it is only used by Mutant Muro. Applied to a character by adding the <HasSupershield> flag in their ONCC (there is a tutorial for doing this) and then granting them chenille or overhealth. When a character has a supershield:

• It is visible as a faint red shield (unless you have a force shield and are not in overpower mode, in which case the blue force shield takes visual precedence). The other visual effects you can see surrounding Mutant Muro are his Daodan aura, not part of his supershield.
• When impacted by a melee attack, a "zap" sound plays and a sizzling orange flare effect is spawned at the point of impact.
• They are invulnerable to weapons and melee except for throws (the reason Mutant Muro is not throwable is because he has the <CantTouchThis> flag).
• It requires the ONCC flag <HasDaodanPowers> and over 50% overpower to be enabled. In the Mutant Muro fight the engine manually massages his overpower amount in order to raise and lower his shield; as a player, if you have added the <HasSupershield> flag to your character, you are responsible for maintaining your overpower state at a sufficient level (see the tip under "Chenille" below).
• A TRAM can have a flag that clears the supershield, which is why some of Mutant Muro's attacks remove his shield.

Chenille

The chenille cheat code grants a character two things: their Daodan aura (also called the chenille glow) and a boss shield, or in Mutant Muro's case, a supershield. The chenille glow can be applied via BSL with the function chr_super, and you can give a character a boss shield with the function chr_boss_shield, but there is no BSL method for giving a character the supershield that Mutant Muro possesses because it is a boss shield which has been automatically upgraded to a supershield on account of the <HasSupershield> flag in his ONCC.

After using chenille or chr_super, you will only see the Daodan aura if a character has one; this is true for Konoko who glows blue, Muro who glows red, and Mutant Muro who is surrounded by orbs and rising waves. Oddly the cheat says "Daodan Power Enabled" when used, but this is not Daodan overpower mode, which does extra melee damage. The cheat will only increase your defense by granting you a boss shield. It will also permanently activate the supershield if the character has the <HasSupershield> flag, as only Mutant Muro does.

Setting the character's health with chr_set_health is the only way to grant actual Daodan overpower mode to a character, but note that the potential for Daodan overpower mode must be set with the <HasDaodanPowers> flag in ONCC for this to be possible.

Recall from above that the Daodan glow alone can be activated with chr_super without triggering a shield or overpower mode. This is used to make Konoko glow in the opening cutscene to Chapter 14 when she falls from the sky (after the cutscene she is granted overpower by setting her health to maximum, replacing the chr_super glow with a "legitimate" glow).