BRIGHTENED WING COMMANDER 2 CROSSHAIR
By "Dondragmer" (www.wcnews.com forum)



INSTALLATION
1. Navigate to your Wing Commander 2 install folder.  If you are using DOSBox (including any GoG release), this needs to be the folder DOSBox mounts.
2. Enter the "GAMEDAT" subfolder.
3. There should be a file called "COCKPIT.VGA".  If it does not exist, you are looking in the wrong place.
4. Back up the existing "COCKPIT.VGA".
5. Copy the "COCKPIT.VGA" found with this zip file into the new location.
6. Launch Wing Commander 2.



EFFECT
The standard (green) crosshair should now be a brighter shade.  The ITTS (red) crosshair will remain the same.  If you have trouble discerning any shade of green, you may need the pixels changed to a completely different hue, using the method described below, but with the new pixel chosen from elsewhere in the WC2 palette.



METHOD
The crosshair graphic is found in COCKPIT.VGA, starting at Offset 0x0038 and ending at about 0x0221.  The shade of green used is 0x5E, which in the WC2 palette is quite dark.  This part of the palette is a green gradient from light to dark, so these pixels could be made a brighter shade of green by reducing their value.  All 0x5E pixels were changed to 0x5C, making them two notches brighter.

Note that this would corrupt the file if any of the bytes indicating run length or other non-pixel bytes happened to have the value 0x5E.  For more sophisticated WC2 file editing, read up on the format specifications at the link below, or talk to the experts at www.wcnews.com.



CREDITS
Edited with aid of the decoding efforts of Mario "HCl" Brito and the Wing Commander Bitmap Navigator by Maciek "Matrix" Korzeniowski, found at:
http://hcl.solsector.net/information/

COCKPIT.VGA remains Copyright (c) 1991 Origin Systems.  This edited file is distributed for accessibility purposes only.  To buy Wing Commander 2, visit one of the sites below:
http://www.gog.com/game/wing_commander_1_2
https://www.origin.com/en-us/store/buy/wing-commander-2-origin/pc-download/base-game/standard-edition