Cockpits (Nothing Dirty)

     As you all know, from our social media prolific lead developer Chuck, we have decided to take the Teretrons into the 3rd dimension.  Now, we decided to do this for several reasons which I won't go into here (If you want to know read his article: http://subzerosquirrel.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-new-perspective.html .) So, the questions I asked myself as I started transitioning from a top-down 2d game to a first person 3d layout, were "What shouldn't I see?" & "What should I see?"

What I shouldn't see:

     A frame.  Meaning that in a first person view there would be no frame, no screen that you look down on your world like a god ( I don't know if your god has a frame he or she looks though, but mine does with a score, extra lives... you know the works.) No, I have to see through the eyes of man, and that means I can't just be hangin' out in space.




What I should see:

     A cockpit, and glass, and controls, and displays, and PRETTY LIGHTS!  Almost all of these were sorely missing in our first attempt. Our current look, while pleasing in it's own way... is also sterile and flat.  There is also a lot of screen space wasted.  Waste not, want not right?  The only control that seemed to fit on the screen was the fire button.  The rest were just placeholders, and none of the other options I tried were much better.

My first attempt at a cockpit:

It was really just and chair and a control panel.  Here I was just working with space.  I played for a while with adding and subtracting different components, trying to figure out what was actually necessary.  I didn't like my first chair, so that went.  Chuck and I both thought the control panel got in the way too much, so... gone. I finally added everything to the ship design, and condensed down to a more minimalistic design:



This is the state of it as it stands now. I think I will add yoke controls to the left and right sides of the screen, and move most if not all of the UI elements to look like they are projected on the glass, on the sides of your cockpit glass.  Tune in for future installments of me rambling. :)