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