[EM ] Luxury cockpit and hud skins and some questions

aelfwine · Post by **aelfwine** » Sun Jan 26, 2014 4:56 am

Hi folks. Very new to this game, bought it on a Steam sale around the New Years. After getting frustrated at the first contract race (still can't beat it), I decided to see what mods were out there. I applied many, mixed and matched pieces that I liked from Maximillien, Viper, Dagonet, Onehand, and who knows who else.

I've never made a mod myself, ever. Then I set to work making the skins my own, deciding that I'd rather have a nice luxury feel to a cockpit I would spend most of my waking hours in space in. Burlwood trim, leather panels and dash, uncluttered hud and ship indicators, pics of my girlfriend and newbie controls plastered above. This is a TrackIR dream, since many of you might not appreciate the details that go into the bits around the center screen. Trying to post screenshots but no matter how I resize/compress the stupid thing says they're exceeding the size limit. Perhaps one at a time following this post...

A few questions:
1. When saving the jpegs for packaging up, what size is the best for performance on most machines? My machine runs fine at 'max' where they weigh in at over 1.2 megs in some of the finer textures, but I could get them down around 460k each and really don't know how much loss of fidelity there is. How much perf loss is there if I don't compress these much for a download?

2. I noticed when doing the hud that there is some stretching to the center elements and some slight warping to some elements; I believe this is due to my wide-screen running 1920x1080, and I'm wondering if things will get all weird on other resolutions; the hud has warning/energy/shield/system indicators that are placed inside the hud at angles so alignment is critical, as is hudtape alignment. That seemed off for me when I edited as my hud is wider than all most I encountered.

3. I've also edited most of the other aspects of the game; when editing the gun sound effects, there is gun1.wav all the way through gun15.wav to mess with; I know which guns only a couple of these go to (gun15.wav=flarebeam, gun12.wav=StarGuard) but since I haven't played enough to buy any others, I'm curious of somebody has a listing of what each gun# corresponds to? And yes - I've modded that damn mining sound effect and the jettison sound so that mining is pleasurable

4. Are there templates out there for huds, and the cockpit #2 so that editing these isn't purely by trial and error? I struggled and literally had to start the game a million times to see where things lined up, and many parts of the ship are warped so I had to align textures in odd ways to get them to appear "straight" or "round" (squish them or warp them in the jpeg so they appear correct when applied to the mesh). Or does anybody have a metaseq source for the ship #2 so I can unwrap it and see what makes it tick and do some mods there so I can make an entirely new cockpit and skin?

[Edited on 1-27-2014 by aelfwine]

Post by **Marvin** » Sun Jan 26, 2014 6:05 am

1. Post your screenshot to some place like Photobucket and then link it ... there's a thread around here somewhere showing you how to do it. (But I don't have the link at the moment.) The width should be no greater than 1280 pixels ... if it is, I'll probably reduce it myself to that size.

4. If you haven't done so already, download the Customizing Kit and peruse the ReadMe file for basic information on cockpit and other mods:
http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmerce ... nloads.htm

Busch · Post by **Busch** » Sun Jan 26, 2014 6:12 am

Hello aelfwine! Welcome to the game/sim and the forum community-at-large!

I'm not gifted with being able to use available software for modding either. I have plagiarized the heck out of what's been made available by other artists and craftsmen. However, I'm always mindful to give credit to/for the artist for their special efforts on our/my behalf. If you've not already done so, D/L the EM Customizing Kit from the Evo-Mercs web site downloads page. Some of the information you're looking for may be found within. Most of all of the templates used in game are also in the kit, by game folder assignment. The game/sim uses almost exclusively the *.png graphic format. The *.jpg format starts to loose bits and pieces after a while. Sorry, don't have the technical jargon to describe it any better. Below, is a listing of the gun sound correspondence by particle cannon name. Pilot Shieldwolf did this fine work, I'm merely passing it on.

Banshee = gun1............Kinetic Force Weapon
Phantom = gun2
Atlas = gun3
Trebuchet = gun4..........Depletes Targets Shields
Predator = gun5
Razor = gun6
SunRail = gun7............Depletes Targets Energy
Maxim-R = gun8
StarForge = gun9
Eclipse = gun10...........Kinetic Force Weapon
Stalker = gun11
StarGuard = gun12
Fire Fury = gun13
IceSpear = gun14
FlareBeam = gun15

Most of the gun sound files that I have (also kindly provided by the Shieldwolf, and by pilot Inked Michael) are rather smallish. The largest one (186 kb) is used for the Eclipse/gun10 particle cannon. The smallest one (1.73 kb) is used for the StarGuard/gun12 particle cannon.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Edited on 1-26-2014 by Busch]

[Edited on 1-26-2014 by Busch]

[Edited on 1-26-2014 by Busch]

aelfwine · Post by **aelfwine** » Mon Jan 27, 2014 6:29 am

Thanks Busch, that's *exactly* the list I needed, it's not in the kit (which was the first thing I downloaded, but it wasn't specific at all for which sounds went to which guns). It's also missing some key things, like it doesn't mention b2shieldimpact.png which I discovered quite by accident looking at a very obscure old mod when trying to work on new shield effects.

Dashboard -

Visor -

Inside panel - lit

Inside panel - dark

Hud - full

Hud - minimal

Shield - honeycomb effect

Combat shot (showing placement of some indicators)

Mining beam and non-combat type indicators

I do have one thing that has been bugging me forever; in the front shot, you can see that the outside hood (if you look just above the interior dash) has some texture of blue/white that has wrapped into it that bugs the crap out of me and I haven't figured out just where it's coming from. If anyone figures that out, I'd be grateful. I've removed bits and pieces for a while to figure out just where it's coming from to no avail and might just live with it.

[Edited on 1-27-2014 by aelfwine]

_-Caleb-_ · Post by **_-Caleb-_** » Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:35 am

Hola

looks great

Iron man · Post by **Iron man** » Mon Jan 27, 2014 10:09 am

Question : does it's look like evochron anymore?

Or a fire works?

[Edited on 1-27-2014 by Iron man]

Busch · Post by **Busch** » Mon Jan 27, 2014 3:37 pm

Really excellent work you've done there, aelfwine! If ever I should fly in cockpit mode, I might like something as you've constructed.

aelfwine · Post by **aelfwine** » Mon Jan 27, 2014 6:52 pm

The beach polaroids keep me coming back to the inside view

It's a work in progress, next up is modding the outsides.

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Tue Jan 28, 2014 12:43 am

Very nice work, I wonder how it would look like in 3d!......

aelfwine · Post by **aelfwine** » Tue Jan 28, 2014 2:53 am

I will post it in the next week or two, still have a few things I'd like to improve before getting it all packaged up.

RyanBurnsRed · Post by **RyanBurnsRed** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 11:25 pm

I wonder if he ever finished it. It looks amazing.

aelfwine · Post by **aelfwine** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 12:26 am

I actually did! Then suffered a catastrophic hard-drive failure, but luckily had some backups at work. Just waiting for a new machine to arrive so I can get them back up to date to upload.