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After answering someone's question about minimaps, I did a search and was suprised that I couldn't find a tutorial for it... I hope I didn't miss anything and this has already been done or something, but here is a quick explaination anyway (if this has been done already, could an admin please lock/delete this thread, thanks):


Step 1: Start by adding a region to your map's base layer. To make aligning the map easier later on, make sure the region is a square and position it so it encapsulates the area your map is going to display.

Step 2: Name this region "mapbounds" and set it's type to "mapbounds".

Step 3: Now for the tough part... You have to draw the map yourself. Open an image editor that can save tga files, and create a square image that is a power of two in size (usually 256x256 or 512x512 pixels). Draw the map, then save it into the same folder as your map's '.wld' file using the name "***_map.tga" (replace the stars with the name of your map). Also, the image must be a 'type 2' tga file, 24bits/pixel, 16 million colours, no compression (Thanks to OGEB1103 for pointing this bit out). If you're not sure how to set these options the easiest thing to do is copy one of the game's original mini-maps, open it, copy-paste your new map over it, save, and then rename the file.

Step 4: It should already be there, but make sure something like this is in your map's '.req' file:
If it isn't there, add it manually. (Again, the stars are the name of your map)

Step 5: Munge the world and that's it.


NOTE!!! To make the map drawing a lot easier try this:
- In ZeroEditor, switch view to "height" mode
- Open the "Camera" menu
- Select "Top-Down view"
- Select "Orthographic view"
- Use the "r" and "t" keys to zoom in/out to see the whole map
- Select "Save screenshot"

Now you can sort of "paint" over this screenshot to get things lined up correctly.

Actually the texture wouldn't work unless you saved it the same type targa as the originals so it might be easier to edit an original map instead of creating a new one...other than that great mini tut. Should be called "Mini Mini-map Tutorial"

open up an exisiting map and copy the colors from it

very good tut!
but 1 question: why must i set the mapbound-region?

Mapbound region because that determines where the edge of the minimap is:)

Nice tutorial, followed it very well! (i'm in the middle of tweaking it right now). thanks!! I'v always wondered how to do this.

what do u mean paint over it

Yeah thats what I did =D
Although you may want to cover up terrain cutters (their purple boxes are still there)

ecusoccerdude wrote:what do u mean paint over it

Tracing.

But why do that when you have a beautiful minimap with color ingame?

What do you mean? It's just a blank map with cps and units unless you do this.

Yes
This adds a picture and region for the game to follow so you can see the mini map
It has no effect on AI, but makes a map look complete

Oh, I put a question mark instead of a period. Sorry for the confusion, I already knew that.

computergeek wrote:But why do that when you have a beautiful minimap with color ingame?

But what if your map has a dark terrain with dark objects? Oh well.

Hey I tried ur tut it worked great for my space assault map xcept that in the top right corner where it should show the capital ships i get a prob What did I do wrong???

Uh, I thought that a line of script in space assault mode LUAs disabled minimaps. Maybe it's those conflicting?

I found that line too "DisableSmallMapMiniMap()" And i just deleted it. It has something to do with the minimap showing up on your hud.

I just tried it and now the minimap appears on top of the green strange boxes.

exactly if you don't want the mini map put that line back if you do then leave it out

what req file do you edit??

Your world's req file (modID.req).

(That's weird, every time I post this message it appears on both the first and second pages, and I can't delete one without deleting them both)