Cockpit Tutorial

This document describes canonically how to create a cockpit resource file. Hopefully it'll be easy to read, too.

'At this time, the material presented here is only partially implemented, if at all'

A Cockpit - The Concept

The cockpit is where you're sitting when you play the game. There is the concept of a virtual cockpit which is implemented in the internal camera view, but we'll ignore that, for the most part. Otherwise, the cockpit is where you're sitting and what you're using.

A cockpit resource file provides the layout of some of the visual items you see while you're playing. Traditionally, these were referred to as the HUD, and the HUD is still the main information that's carried in a cockpit file.

In the resource file, gauges and other things have been abstracted to a Widget. Each Widget is capable of displaying all of the information you're used to seeing, and is likely capable of displaying the same information in different formats...thanks to the cockpit resource file.

Overview of the Cockpit file

The cockpit file consists of two sections. Technically they're just one, but you don't really have to worry about that. The two sections are pretty simple. The first just hooks it into the resource system for the whole game, using tags and stuff you may already know from the map files. The second section contains all the beautful cockpit stuff.

In the Cockpit section you'll find a series of Widget tags that contain Data tags to hook the widget into some game data. There's a caption, some position and size parameters, and so forth. You can also specify background and foreground colors, with gradiants, and with graphics, to provide a really custom gauge. Additionally, widgets can be associated with a camera, or made for all cameras, with the option of excluding specific cameras, offering the possibility to give a completely custom view for each camera you use. All of this gets mixed together and rendered to screen as your cockpit.