Evochron Legacy SE Cockpit Viewer...

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Evochron Legacy SE Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Vice »

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Edit: This program has been updated for the 'SE' edition of the game. Details below.

The Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer is a small utility designed to help make the process of creating and modifying custom cockpits much easier. Rather than loading the game each time you want to test changes or additions to a custom cockpit design, this program will render your design in a window with the ability to display animation sequences for indicators that support it as well as provide the ability to pan the view around with the mouse. It also lets you quickly reload your cockpit designs after you make changes. The program supports both custom cockpit indexes for testing, civilian (ccpit1.x) and military (ccpit2.x). With this program, you can edit the files associated with your custom cockpit, then quickly reload the files in the program to view the results.

The program will load your custom cockpit files from the '\media\hud' folder inside the game's install folder. As a result, this program can be placed inside the game's install folder to test files with the game or placed in its own location to test custom files separately. If no custom cockpit files are present, you'll generally receive an error message or see blank white surfaces in the window. Be careful when extracting this program from its ZIP since it contains a '\hud' folder with example files. If you already have a '\hud' folder in place within the game's '\media' folder within the install folder, be sure to back up any files you have in that folder before extracting this program's '\hud' folder to the game's '\media' folder within the install folder.

The program comes with the two default cockpit designs you can use as examples for how to set up a test for the viewing program. You'll need to include the various custom HUD image files and cockpit image/mesh files included in the ZIP to provide the minimum needed data for the program to display a custom cockpit design. That includes the high resolution versions of the texture files you're working with for your design (ccpitX-high.png, ccpitXglass-high.png, ccpitXlights-high.png, ccpitXnormal-high.png, ccpitXshader-high.png where X is either 1 or 2 for the civilian or military design). You can later include the medium and low resolution versions when you're finished and ready to use the custom cockpit in the game. You only need the high resolution version for this program. Certain text files specifying spacing and positioning are optional and are not included in the ZIP file. So only the minimum files needed are included in the ZIP file (some of which have been reduced in resolution and gray scaled). Consult with the game's online documentation for customizing here for more information on what each of the files is for: http://www.starwraith.com/evochronlegac ... readme.htm

When you start the program, it will load what it is able to find in the '\media\hud' folder and display the cockpit in a 1280X720 window. You can optionally specify a custom window size by creating a text file in the program's '\media' folder inside the install folder named 'ecvscreen.txt' and include the horizontal resolution you want to use in the first line and the vertical resolution you want to use in the second line. The 'SE' version of the program is also scalable, so you can also optionally expand the window frame to fill the screen to enlarge it. Once the program has started and displays the custom cockpit, you can pan the view around by holding down the mouse button, then moving the mouse. The viewpoint will rotate based on the mouse cursor's distance from the middle of the window. Release the mouse button to stop panning the view. Click the right mouse button to re-center the view. When you want to reload the cockpit data (for example, after making changes to the design's files), press the 'R' key. Press the arrow keys to change the direction light is projected onto the cockpit (up for light from in front, down for light from behind, left for light from left, and right for light from right). If you want to switch between the two cockpit modes, press '1' for the civilian design and '2' for the military design. You can later rename your custom cockpit files as desired later on.

Here is the download link for the program: https://www.starwraith.com/evochronlega ... Viewer.zip
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Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Nigel_Strange »

This is great, Vice! Thanks!
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Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Vice »

Program update to support retaining pan view when releasing mouse button one and re-center the view when pressing mouse button two. The '0' character sample image has also been renamed to 'bitmapfont32b.png' to avoid possible conflict with an existing image file using the filename 'bitmapfont.png'.
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Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

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Program updated, adds light direction control via the arrow keys. Up key positions light in front, down key in rear, left key at left, right key at right.
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Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Misunderstood Wookie »

You have no idea how excited and pleased I am with this tool mate. I remember when I first emailed you about having something so that we could do exactly this outside of the game and now you have dang gone and done better than I asked.

With this we modders can change the HUD in real time and you also provided the default cockpit model which is something I have been asking for a copy of for a while now as I wanted to smooth the cockpit a little and reduce vertices while keeping a slightly higher poly count. Because now I can make the cockpit displays larger to suit the HUD design.

Really thank you man, you have no idea how much these tools mean to us modders, Maybe now we can finally make sense of the Perch everyone is so eager to get working, as before we were missing the cockpit.x model and its texture mappings so we had NO idea how to map the thing with legacy support.

[Edited on 3/17/2016 by Misunderstood Wookie]
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Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Vice »

Glad it's helpful. It took a while to extract all of the code and put it all together in a stand alone application, but I think it'll be worth it as it makes testing cockpit changes/additions so much more efficient and easy.
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Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Vice »

Program updated again to support displaying (hostile) target indicator, MDTS lead indicator, secondary non-target indicator, cargo indicator, nav waypoint indicator, waypoint indicator, missile lock indicator, and target direction pointer on gunsight.
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Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Vice »

Program updated again to move to version 1.0 (version number is now displayed in the lower right corner of the screen) and fix an issue that could cause an error when switching to the military cockpit mode.

The customizing kit has also been updated to include information about this program, the download link, and to add information on customizing the new nav lights added in build 1.0248.
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Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

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Program updated to version 1.1 with improvements to lighting and fixing an issue with the global cockpit option rendering the glass layer as blast shields rather than just the glass layer by itself.
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Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Vice »

Cockpit Viewer updated to version 1.2 to include the horizon indicator on the 3D radar sphere and the target direction indicator (texture filename is grid-horizon.png). The 3D radar display texture has also been updated for the revised (increased) scaling of the sphere in version 1.0288 and later of the game.
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Re: Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Vice »

Cockpit viewer program updated to version 1.4 to include support for viewing custom font text via the bitmapfont32.png file option. The program can refresh/reload the text details pretty quickly, but there is a slightly longer delay.

All text content has been moved to the bitmapfont32.png image file, so any past cockpit designs will need to include that file (included with the download) in their designs to provide the needed text data.

This update also supports the hudtext.dat file options, so you can place desired text layer information on the screen as well.
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Re: Evochron Legacy Cockpit Viewer...

Post by Vice »

Cockpit viewing program updated to accommodate the 'SE' version of the game. Link in opening post.
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