How to create minimaps for your maps

• Create and compile the map
• Click 'capture minimap image' from the tools menu
• The game will do everything to make your minimap for you.
• You will end up with a minimap DDS file in the map folder, and a minimap PNG file.

In other words, push button receive minimap. The minimap is not going to be as good as a professional artist-done manual one, but its quite usable. Feel free to hand edit the PNG file it makes, and save over the DDS. Just don't scale things. Minimaps should be saved as 1024x1024 DXT5 images with alpha.

If your video card does not support DXT5 conversion

Some computers do not have a video card equipped with DXT5 capability. In this situation, the Map Editor should still save the PNG file in the folder for you, but will be unable to automatically convert it to DDS. This you will have to do yourself. Luckily, there are completely free DDS plugins for photoshop, which, once installed, will appear in the 'save as' dialog. Choose DXT5 as the format. link to completely free nVidia DDS plugin pack for photoshop

• Make sure its a 1024x1024 image with alpha (either checkerboard style or real alpha but NOT BOTH)

• Heres a screenshot of the settings:

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• Save it as mapname_mm.dds and place it in the map folder.
• So like hyperbol\data\maps\a_convergence\a_convergence_mm.dds

There are also similar plugins for The GIMP (completely free image manipulation package), and others as well. Some can even use the above Photoshop DDS plugins for themselves.

Minimaps should always be in the same folder as your map.

Minimaps must always be called <mapname>_mm.dds(Although we might change this to also accept PNG and TGA in the near future).

--- OLD INFORMATION IS BELOW ---- Do not use except for curiosity's sake ----

It is recommended that you only create a final minimap when you’re done with the map and intend it to be played properly (Else you’d have to remake one each time).

Making a minimap is currently always done manually. The most important thing is to get the image correctly captured and scaled so that positions of objects match up with their positions in the game world.

We’ll use a screenshot taken of your map in the map editor to make sure everything perfectly lines up.

Step 1: Capture the map overhead image

• Prepare the minimap area. This means, in your map, alter the map properties (minimap area) until the minimap area top left and bottom right corners suits the map.
  • There must be a bit of extra room around the map for this minimap area, especially if the map is square instead of circular. The map must fit inside a circle inscribed inside the minimap area, so you might have to grow the area considerably so that no corners are outside the minimap area in the GUI once you’re done.
• Save your map, compile it, etc, then shut down and restart the map editor.

• Now, we’re lining the camera up for a perfect screenshot, so do not at any point use the mouse or keyboard to move the view except as directed in this HOWTO. We need a directly overhead picture of the map, without any rotation or anything.

• Once it has started, load your map. Still don’t use any camera controls.

• Maximize the view to get as much viewing area as possible for the screenshot.

• Roll the mouse wheel to zoom out until you see the entire minimap area you have defined. You can also use keyboard keys WASD, but don’t rotate the camera or allow it to do anything except look straight down.

• Once you have a good top down view of the entire minimap area, take a screenshot of the map.

  • There are many ways to do this. There are capture programs that do it for you. But the easiest way is to just press PRINTSCREEN on the keyboard. The screenshot is now in your clipboard, and if you open up an image processing tool like Photoshop or Gimp or even MSPaint, pressing PASTE (CTRL+V) will paste the screenshot.
  • Note that if you are using printscreen button, don't hover the mouse over the 3d view, just in case that swallows the input. hover it over the toolbar instead.

Step 2: Make the minimap based on the overhead image.

• Open up Photoshop or Gimp, create a nice big blank image and paste your image in there. It should just be a screenshot of the map captured in step 1.
• CROP the image to only be the green square of the minimap area. For accuracy sake, the actual area is the very center of the lines that make up the green square (if they are more than one pixel wide).
• Uniformly scale the image up until the longest side measures 1024 pixels. This means that you should scale your image up until whatever the longest side is, is exactly 1024.

  • So for example, if your image is 256 by 100 pixels (not square), you will need to scale it up by 400% (so that the 256 becomes 1024) in both directions. (this will cause the 100 pixels to become 400). This is very important. The rectangle must remain rectangular! Do not scale by a different scale vertically and horizontally.

• Once you have the longest side to 1024, expand the canvas (DO NOT SCALE) so that the other side is also 1024.
  • So for example, if your image was 256x100 pixels, you will have scaled it to 1024x400 pixels. Now you would expand the canvas vertically so that it became 1024x1024 pixels. Do not scale. Simply add the extra space on.
  • You will end up with a 1024x1024 pixel image of your minimap area, with the correct aspect ratio.

• Now use your artistic skills to make the minimap look as cool as possible.

  • Use transparency – for example, in photoshop, make sure you have no alpha channel, then use the eraser tool and layers to map the parts of the map you don’t want in your minimap ‘checkerboard’ transparent.

  • In GIMP and other tools you might have to use ‘alpha’ channels to achieve the same effect

  • You generally want the map to be translucent where there is no geometry, and completely translucent byond the ‘circular’ edges or it will overlap the minimap GUI in game and look ugly.

• Save the Map

  • The map must be a DXT5 compressed image. In photoshop, this can be achieved with the completely free nVidia DDS plugin pack. Once installed, just ‘save as’ ‘dds’.

  • Choose ‘DDS’ as the format file type
  • Choose ‘DXT5’ as the compression type
  • If you have the choice, do not generate ‘mipmaps’
  • The minimap must be named the same as your map folder, with _mm.dds applied. So for example for a map called o_joes, the minimap must be in a folder in hyperbol like this: hyperbol/data/maps/o_joes/o_joes_mm.dds
• When you run the game now, you should see the minimap working correctly in it. You are done!

Things that will break your minimap

• Altering the minimap bounds of the map after making the minamp (except if you simply shift the entire map around)
• Scaling your minimap non-uniformly at any time.
• Minimap being off center (when you expand the canvas this could happen).