Essential Cockpit 0.0.5

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Rain
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Re: Essential Cockpit 0.0.5

Post by Rain »

Greetings Programs,

I have been offline for some years and I thought to check how was AA going. It is nice to see the game is still alive, and played. Also I was glad to meet some players from my time, still addicted. :)

Back to topic. I had a chance to try my old cockpit with the most recent Mac OS X alpha I could find on SourceForge, namely 0.4_alpha_z1965, and it was a pleasure to see it working exactly as it did on the 0.3.
It would be great if someone running a more recent alpha could confirm the well-being of the cockpit. Thank you in advance.

(A side note for Z-Man at al.: as far as I could tell the aforementioned alpha version works flawlessly on OS X 10.11.3, if it is of any interest.)

I had to change my repository account from rain to Rain to reconcile with my forums username, thus the folder in which the cockpit is stored too. You should not experience any problem loading the cockpit (unless some newer versions are case-sensitive, but they are not, are they?), but if you do, just change:

Code: Select all

COCKPIT_FILE rain/essential-0.0.5.aacockpit.xml
to

Code: Select all

COCKPIT_FILE Rain/essential-0.0.5.aacockpit.xml
in your user.cfg.

I am also considering freshening it up, particularly after reading the 0.4 Cockpit Discussion, so if anyone is using it, or would like to, and have any suggestion or complaint, please make your voice heard.

Lastly, to answer the poor biobern with just 5 years of delay (apologies): yes, the font is in fact condensed a little within the cockpit file to make the debug tools' texts shorter. If anyone would like to retouch it, I can point them to the concerning lines.
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sinewav
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Re: Essential Cockpit 0.0.5

Post by sinewav »

Glad to see you back, Rain. I would love your input on cockpits since yours has been pivotal in shaping popular designs. We already know what your perfect cockpit looks like. Maybe one day you can tell us why it looks that way?
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Rain
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Re: Essential Cockpit 0.0.5

Post by Rain »

Hello sinwave, your message made me think a lot, thank you for it.
I will contribute with my input on cockpits in the 0.4 Cockpit Discussion thread, which seems more appropriate.

As for why my cockpit looks like it does. It is readily explained.

RUBBER
Having played fortress more than anything else I value rubber more than any other cockpit tool. You have not got enough to not worry about when you are grinding trying to seal a potential passage for the enemy, and you have too much to expect players to act as if they should not touch one another. You definitely want to know how much you dug into a wall, and develop a sensibility for how long you can face a wall without exploding depending on your speed. Rubber gives you an approximate trustable feedback of it.
If you use a gauge instead of a number, you can watch it with your peripheral vision, id est you can keep watching the actual game. The longer the gauge is, the more precisely it can render the numbers it signifies. And using a three-colour representation of those values (which non-incidentally uses the same colours of traffic lights) makes the feedback even more effective.

BRAKES (on by default, toggle-able off with speed)
Brakes can be a game changer in many occasions: slower speed means more precise grinding or turning, also affecting the relative speed between you and an enemy can spoil their plans if they expect you to be somewhere at a certain point in time and you are not.
But you do not really need a gauge for it, because it is not a function curve, you either have reserve of it or not. And that is all you want to know. A simple glance at the counter and you know if you can brake or not, for how long or how many times.

SPEED (on by default, toggle-able off with brakes)
A speed counter is there because some players told me once it was very important, and since it graphically balanced the brakes counter on the left side, I decided to put it in. I cannot remember of using it once.

FRIENDS/ENEMIES
Self-evident. Two simple numbers, a quick glance, and you know if you should be attacking or defending, if you can relax or if you are ******.

CLOCK
I play fullscreen. I need something to tell me when it is time to sleep (or to wake up).

DEBUG TOOLS (off by default, toggle-able)
Self-explanatory. If I knew more valuable values to developers or servers maintainers, I would add them. If asked I will.

SCORE & PING (TAB)
If I want to know the score, or want an idea of how much I could lag, I press TAB. And it happens in-between games.

I guess this is it.

Oh, blimey, the MINI_MAP!
Well, I have never used it and I cannot really figure out how to. I suppose there lies my familiarity bias. I would be happy to add it (off by default, toggle-able), as soon as I can find a proper place and size for it.
Last edited by Rain on Wed Feb 03, 2016 2:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Monkey
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Re: Essential Cockpit 0.0.5

Post by Monkey »

Welcome back to the game Rain :)

I'll have to try your cockpit and compare it to Flex's (when I can get Arma working again).
Playing since December 2006
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