How to recreate historical sites:
First off, you need a map of some kind. If it’s an individual building then you really want a copy of the building’s floor plan. If it’s a larger site such as I’ve chosen as an example to use here then it’s easy enough to find a map on the internet.
I chose Caerphilly, a huge castle in Wales. I shamelessly made a screen shot of the map, this will give me a reasonably accurate floor plan to work from.
If I tried to use that map as it is it wouldn’t work very well. The ImageLoader mod in Minetest uses different colours of wool to lay out your map and the above image doesn’t have enough contrast in it. You end up with a mostly white map.
Also ImageLoader can only process one type of image format and it’s quite specific, it’s what is known as a Win98 .bmp file. To recreate one in Gimp you must tick the option “Do not store colourspace information” and it must be saved in 24 bits per pixel mode when exporting the image.
What I ended up with looks like this:
Image size is an important consideration here too, while you’re making your bitmap. ImageLoader turns each individual pixel into 1 node of wool. I set the canvas size in Gimp to 800 x 800 and shifted my map around until I liked how it fitted. This means that the map I make in Minetest is going to be 800 x 800 nodes in area, quite large really.
Importing the image into Minetest:
This can be a little bit tricky the first time you try it, follow this method for the best results.
First up, for some unknown reason ImageLoader rotates your map by 180 degrees, if you want to recreate something historically accurate you will want to turn your map upside down before making your bitmap. I usually forget this step and don’t remember until it’s much too late to change it.
You need to copy your map image into the images folder inside the mod itself. In Bucket_Game this is found in mods/codercore/imageloader/images
That’s the only place ImageLoader will look in for your image.
Naturally you’re going to want to use a flat map for doing this. You’ll also want to have Debug Info showing on your screen because it gives you your location coordinates, use the F5 key to enable it.
You don’t need to worry about trees and other obstacles at the moment, we clear all of them after.
ImageLoader doesn’t use Worldedit functions, it uses it’s own functions and it sets the image from where you are currently standing in the world. I know my map is 800 x 800 pixels, to put it in the middle of the new flat world I’ve just created I want to be standing at -400, 7.5, -400.
In flat maps the ground level is at y=8. If I was standing on top of the ground (y=8.5) then the map will get laid over the top of the ground at y=9. So I dig a 1 node deep hole at -400, -400 and stand in it. Now my map will replace the top layer of ground extending North and East from where I’m standing.
To load your image simply use the command: /loadimage <filename>
So I used: /loadimage Caerphilly.bmp
Cleaning up:
Whenever you import or create a large area only 1 single node deep you get those nasty shadows everywhere. In this respect ImageLoader behaves exactly the same as WorldEdit does, the problem lies in the minetest core itself. But thanks to OldCoder and CoderEdit we can fix that quickly and easily and get rid of all the unwanted trees in the same area at the same time.
Use worldedit to set coordinates that cover your whole map, make Position 1 just the next upper node above one corner, in the opposing corner mark Position 2 high enough to be higher than all the trees. So in my case this looked like:
Position 1: -400, 9, -400
Position 2: 399, 22, 399
Then use the Set Nodes feature to set that whole area to “air”. Doing this will remove all the shadows and all the trees in one hit.
Also later, during your building, you’re likely to create more of those strange shadows around the place now and then. Here’s a quick easy fix for that. Highlite the entire build area in worldedit and use the Replace Nodes feature to replace “air” with “air”. Instant cleanup of the whole worksite for you.
Cheers,
Andrew.