I would think being able to choose between the textured / untextured models would be a cool feature, even if this was a feature to be implemented later on. (Also, FekLeyrTarg: loved that old-style TIE model, it gave me chills to see it rendered in high res and with a specular map. :) )

When you say a textured/untextured cockpit, do you mean potentially having a TIE94-style gouraud-shaded model with 2D information overlays, and an optional textured high-poly version in the style of the XWAUP?

I might be in the minority opinion on this one, but perhaps having an optional 2D cockpit that is a direct up-res and filtered version of the original DOS cockpit (or I suppose the 640x480 XvT assets could be an alternative starting point) with the 3D overlay already demonstrated (from the previous screenshot showing the lambda shuttle wireframe in the targeting box). This might serve as an easier first-pass route, with the option of adding the fancier full 3D models later on? Something along the lines of this perhaps?

I have been experimenting with having a direct copy of the 2D cockpits to have something running as fast as possible.

In that case, I would need to basically place the 2D cockpit art on a flat 3D panel that stays in front of the camera, no mater where the camera looks at. Then, I will need to replicate each of the little instruments as additional flat but 3D objects on top of the flat cockpit art. For example, the targetting computer will render in front of the computer screen in the art, then the same for the throttle line, the laser power lines, the ELS charge lines, targetting reticle, scopes, ordnance counters, etc...
In the end, we would have a lot of little flat 3d objects placed in front of the camera trying to replicate the 2D behavior of the old games. With the added problem that the 2D art has an aspect ratio of 4:3 and it would look like a square in the middle of today's 16:9 screens. I think it would look like a poster placed in front of the player.

Because of that, I kind of prefer that we could have a primitive 3D cockpit that closely mimics the 2D art. Because we would need to have to make a 3D cockpit anyway for the 2D version (even if it is really flat), with all its inconveniences. So I don't really see much work saved, in the end, by using the flat 2D art.
It doesn't need to be as fancy as those in the XWAU project. In fact, better if it isn't any of those, because those were 100% cosmetic renders of the cockpit, without functional instruments, and not fit to house the big instruments we have in X-Wing or TIE Fighter.

Since I am using a Y-Wing mission as boilerplate for developing the game around it, I think I could create something fast in sketchup or blender (or someone else, if you have the interest and time :) ) that mimics in 3D what the Y-Wing cockpit looks like from the 2D art, even maybe using the 2D art as a low-res test texture for it. Then that could fix the aspect ratio problem, and I could place all the 3D instruments on that 3D model. Then, the pilot could seamlessly look around the cockpit for extra controls (like damage control, map, options, mission notes and objectives, etc).
What do you think?


Oh, and no. I wasn't thinking on having 2D overlays and a functionless 3D cockpit like in XWA. I prefer all controls to be 3D and on the cockpit, a lot like it is in the original X.Wing and TIE Fighter or today in Elite: Dangerous.

Ahh, I understand - I like the full 3D idea and being able to look around for the different displays - increasing immersion is a good goal since X-Wing is much more at the 'sim' end of gaming :) I seem to remember a similar feature (virtual cockpit) on some of Novalogic's games like F22 Raptor, and it was pretty neat.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear on what I meant, I was thinking along the same lines as you in this case. As much as I enjoy XWA, I do think the floating overlay is one of it's weaknesses and can be a distraction (reduces immersion).

It's a similar case with "Frontier: Elite II". Even at higher resolutions, the cartoony graphics of "Elite II" look awesome.

I've managed to extract the models from the resource files. They're inside "species.lfd". At least I think these are the models. They are extensionless and I haven't found a way to import them into Blender yet.
If anyone wishes to give converting the models a shot: You can extract them using the Code Alliance Game Explorer (CAGE).
Maybe anyone from the Emperor's Hammer's science office may be of assistance.
If everything else fails, I'd still be happy to rebuild the cartoony models from scratch, which shouldn't be that hard since those are low-poly models. :-)

Thank you. I'm also working on the original Advanced TIE. It's almost finished but there are some texture issues I need to figure out. :-)

I undestand why they did the overlays in XWA. There were many more flyble ships in that game, with a customizable loadout of weapons, ordnance, beam systems and countermeasures, and rigging all those cockpits with working instruments for allowing all those configurations in 3D was a lot more work and at the low resolutions of 3D in the early 2000s, it wouldn't have looked very good at all.

Besides, having overlays gave them the option to allow almost any ship to be made flyable, automatically giving it the generic lambda cockpit.

Since our focus is much more limited to the 4 rebel ships, and we don't aim at making everything flyable, I think we can afford to at least attempt to create some working 3D cockpits with functional instruments.

I am a little bit concerned about the Y-Wing cockpit. It seems so claustrophobic with not really good visibility if we want to keep the viewport as big as possible, while having room for showing all the needed instruments...

Hi again, long time without updates, but finally I have got rid of that project that has swamped me since last summer.
I am back at programming this XWVM with full energy.

Progress:
- I have finally completed a couple more AI routines for escorting. AI ships know where to form with their escortees and react to the proximity of threats.
- Lasers are now rendered at a minimum width of one pixel to mimic this feature from the original X-Wing and TIE Fighter flight engines and that was lost with the series jumped over to DirectX.
- I have created a mockup 3D cockpit for the Y-Wing. It took me many hours of fighting with learning Blender and the outcome is two items: 1. I have realized that I better stay at programming and leave modelling to someone with better artistic skils. 2. Now I have a placeholder cockpit where I can put the different instruments and start testing the player ship.
It is supposed to be the Y-Wing cockpit (not yet made the top of it). The side panels being underused in the original, plus the fact that todays 16:9 screens show them even more, encorages me to fill them up with extra instruments showing the message log, the damage assesment screen, or the goal list.
- Ships now properly make use of the knowledge of the attributes of their weapons to select the optimal attack distance.
- AI ships can now completely avoid accidental collisions with other ships by swerving away from the danger. Some AI routines disable this to mimic how they work in X-Wing (flying in formation, boarding, escorting, etc).
- I have created a Google doc with all the facts and findings that all of us have gathered in this thread. Please visit it and comment if I have forgotten something or I got something wrong.

This is definitely going somewhere. :-)

Regarding the "Success" theme:
It also kicks in when each and every hostile ship (inclusing all waves) in the mission is destroyed.

Have you considered opening up a page on ModDB or IndieDB to reach a wider audience for XWVM?

Hi!
I think you are referring to the event fragment that sounds when you destroy a ship. There are 4 different of those fragments, played at random.
The "success" theme is different. It's the music that sounds when you jump to hyperspace and the view changes to outside 3/4 view of your ship departing are arriving.

Once I have something playable that can be downloaded, I will start looking at those platforms for mods. :)

I'll try to write it differently:

Each mission has a certain number of enemy ships in a certain number of waves.
When there is no hostile ship left to pop up in the mission, the success theme kicks in without engaging the hyperdrive.
It is best observed in historical missions.

ModDB and IndieDB are great platforms for those kind of things. They can also be used to show audio-visual progress of your project. But it would only make sense if you actually have something to show, especially screenshots or videos.

Also, how will you handle cockpit-less view (by pressing the period-key)? Will it be like X-Wing and TIE Fighter (sensors and crosshair only) or more like XvT?

I had not noticed that the success theme played also when all enemy flight groups had been destroyed. Nice catch!

Until there is something pretty to show, I will keep screenshots and sneak peeks to this thread. I want to make sure that there is something solid before airing it publicly.

Sincerely, I had not thought on the cockpitless view at all. My first run through X-Wing in the 90s was with the cockpitless view. But after that, and also in TIE Fighter and XvT I always played with the cockpit on for "realism".
XvT has a virtual cockpit, much like XWA, but it is extra work. My first instinct is to leave it be like it was with X-Wing and TIE Fighter. No intruments at all other than the scopes on the upper corners.

Another alternative is to make the 3D cockpit transparent and only leave on the UI elements. Definitely that is something that I will deal with once other more important things are in place.

I have given another pass to the placeholder Y-Wing cockpit. It is still untextured and the laser charge and warhead instruments are still missing, but at least it gives an idea of the visibility of the ship. Making the viewport struts thinner has, in my opinion, improved a lot the ability to see where your target is.
Compare with the original.

Just a little update. All the effort to learn Blender convinced me to at least put a temporary texture on the model so that not everying looks grey.
A screenshot. From now on I'll focus on the programming.

That's very nice, although I never had issues with the original Y-wing cockpit, in the end the radar was good enough to compensate the lack of visibility.

Creating the interior has certainly several problems that you don't find while creating the exterior.
First, the interior needs to match the exterior in geometry, because the interior will be placed in the exterior model, and they need to match.

Then, not just any interior layout would do. It needs to mimic what you could see in the original X-Wing game, that used 2D cockpits. Now, the 2D cockpits were designed to improve usability in a 320x200 resolution monitor from the '90s.
So for example the targetting computer screen needed to be of a minimum size to allow enough readable text inside.

You can see that the developers had problems with the rebel fighters' 2D cockpits when they reused them for XvT. In X-Wing, the computer screen showed little text, and a big static ship icon with some bogus unreadable text lines, but in TIE Fighter they improved the computer screen by showing a 3D model of the targetted ship, along with detailed information.
In order to allow for this, the imperial computer screens were much bigger, taking most of the dashboard space.
However, when they tried to reuse the rebel cockpits in XvT, those screens were too little to be able to show a 3D model and several stats and make it all readable. So they needed to chop away some instruments and enlarge the screen art as much as they could.

I have opted to return to the original proportions because nowadays' screen resolution allow us to display basically whatever we need on the smaller rebel computer screen while keeping it readable.

Still, you need to "translate" the positions of the instruments in the original 2D cockpits into shapes, angles and positions in 3D space for the 3D cockpit.
I needed a lot of trial and error, because at the beginning I tried to make the 3D cockpit resemble the real layout the ship had in the movies. Check here.
I think the original 2D cockpits kind of attempted to keep the looks of the original movie props. For example, the Y-Wing in-game cockpit shows the shields display inside a white circle that reminds that funnel thing on the movie set dashboard. I tried to keep that in my 3D design, even when you can barely distingish the 3D funnel shape in the original 2D cockpit.

But you cannot just copy the 3D shape of the movie sets, because the actor sat really far from those instruments. If we want to keep the viewports' pillars as a reference of what the pilot sees, those instruments would look tiny in our screen, and even todays higher resolution would not help much.
So I needed to "bring" those instruments closer to the pilot eyes, so that the instruments good look ingame.

Also, the Y-Wing has an isolated set of instruments apart from the others: the two directional scopes and the laser/warhead munition counter. These are placed over the pilot's head, at the particular junction between the frontal viewport pillars and the middle section.
If the camera needs to see both sets of instruments, you cannot cheat by moving the pilot's seating position forward towards the dashboard...

I think I am happy enough with what I got done for my skill level.
In restrospect, I think the front viewport pillars should have been maybe thicker. And of course more detail and proper texturing needs to be done. But it serves its purpose for now as a placeholder.

My focus is now on making the player's ship "playable", so that this stops being a simulation to look at, and instead you can actually start flying around and killing stuff.
Most AI behaviors and triggers are still missing. But that is just matter of iterating over a working playable program.

Of all the mods and projects I've played for various games in the past, nothing has made me regret not learning coding/modeling more than seeing your work here.

Have you found anyone to help you out at all to lessen your work load? I really wish I could contribute in some way, but I don't have any of the necessary skills unfortunately. I can contribute $$$, but unfortunately that doesn't exactly speed progress on this along at any rate :)