I'd like to ask a few questions about weapon effects.

1. Is there a way of making objects or characters melt/burn/incinerate etc effects when hit by energy weapons?
When I played crysis 1/2, the energy weapons does not have cool effects when hit.

2. Is there a way of making shield effects? Like when a bullet hit the shield, some kind of energy field appears and stops the bullet.

1. For make them burning maybe just add a particle effect to them and change the material...for the others I think you have to do custom animations or particles.
2. Possible? yes sure...but you have to do all this textures by yourself. Take a look at the nano-glass of Crysis 2 or the forcefield of Crysis 1, maybe you can just change some settings in the texture editor.

for 2. spawning a particle effect as your shield, and another one where your shield is hit, would probably work