The Cockpit

Today I'm going to talk about the cockpit in the game as it is right now. When you're playing you see everything as if you're the pilot sitting in the cockpit of a starfighter. What I hope to do is display all information relating to the state of a player's fighter as part of the fighter's cockpit. This dictated that the cockpit be one of the first things to be coded since it will be critically important to the player's in-game experience. The fundamentals (code-wise) are there now but they're not much to look at currently since I don't have much of any artwork done.


I was motivated to do the cockpit this way by a pet peeve I have with space combat games like, for example, Freespace. The in-flight displays are just sprites, they're not part of the fighter! While this is primarily an aesthetic complaint it's something I feel is a major detriment to the immersion factor of games that often purport themselves as simulators.

There are a number of challenges with building the game's displays this way. Foremost is layout. The displays need to be placed such that they make sense and all of the information on them can be read easily. Also I need to decide how many displays there are, and what each should contain. Finally, I need to decide if there are to be any controls which change a display's appearance, for example switching between text and visual diagnostics. And, just for extra spice, the layout must fit completely within the "title safe" area which is the area visible on all TVs. If the displays don't fit then they'll be cut off for some players on the X-Box. Oops.

Currently I'm drawing inspiration from the F-16 fighter for a general layout of the cockpit. The F-16 features a HUD and three large displays for various tactical data.

In the game the cockpit will be somewhat similar. The HUD will display navagational and targeting data. The left screen will display sensory data and weapon status (e.g. ammo.) The right screen will display diagnostic data (i.e. what is, and what is not damaged.) The central screen will display tactical data. Additional information, such as score, is still displayed as text and graphics on the screen outside of game space.