Real-time, Overhead-view, 2D Map - Is It Possible?

[LazyJ]

A real-time, ingame map would be nice to have but the file size of the minetestmapper images alone would make it impractical.

Do you remember "Doom" from the late 1990's?

That was a 3D, immersive world game that came on three or four floppy disks. The game had a real-time map function. Granted, the world map was pre-designed so that made things a lot easier. Minetest would require an adaptive worldmap.

Back on point... the ingame map of Doom was a very basic, colored, single-line, 2D shapes on a black background. The player and their facing direction was represented by an arrow.




I wonder if such a map would be possible in Minetest with some front work by the players?

Sokomine's Travelnet mod sets up a network of linked booths that players can use to travel from one booth to another.

Take that particular network concept, apply it so a special node or set of nodes (depending on what they would represent in the map) that can be placed, and all those nodes "network" to create two or more points in a line that the ingame mapper would detect and use to generate the 2D, above-view map.

That's the rough idea, anyway.

[RHR]

Honestly I don't know how minetestmapper work and if a real-time ingame map is possible, but a comparison of minetest and doom is irrelevant.
Minetest is a full 3D game while Doom is a pseudo-3D game (maps, tiles, sprites are 2D but the game looks like 3D because of smart mathematics ^^ ). In Doom maps are looking like this which is very simple to convert to a map (e.g. 1 is a solid wall which is a red pixel)

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

map={
  {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,2,2,2,2,2,0,0,0,0,3,0,3,0,3,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,2,2,0,2,2,0,0,0,0,3,0,3,0,3,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,4,0,4,0,0,0,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,4,0,0,0,0,5,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,4,0,4,0,0,0,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,4,0,4,4,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
};


Minetest doesn't store it's mapdata that simple, so it is more dificult to create a map. For example which nodes should be defined as walls? You can use all solid nodes to create a building and walls.
You should also remember that most games have a map, which does not change. So they only have to update player and enemy positions. A minetest map can be changed entirely, so the map has to update everything.
Another point is that the minetestmapper I tested was quite slow. I tooks several seconds to render a map of ~1500x1500px if that would happen ingame the game would be not playable, because of lags.
I hope this answer is a bit helpfull. Maybe minetest developers find a nice way to create ingame maps! ^^

[Evergreen]

Use gsmapper.

[Calinou]

It's possible for sure.

You may start looking at a Minecraft mod which does it and has available source code, for reference.

There's also the gsmapper C++ mod for Minetest.

Do you remember "Doom" from the late 1990's?

Late 1993, actually.

[Inocudom]

gsmapper build, 2014-07-01
With a minimap on the screen.

Download (Dropbox)

Post nr 1337! Enjoy.

Try this build that Krock made.

[Sokomine]

The trouble with the nice overview images minetestmapper generates is not limited to their size alone. They're far too detailed to act as maps. Maps are abstractions, not sattelite photos of the world. What players need to know is where they can find points of intrest: Villages, roads, their own structures, entrances to mines, noteworthy buildings, shops, other players (which tend to move around), ..

Marking roads with a special block (or special tool?) and displaying those on the overview map sounds like a good idea. Perhaps showing protected areas might help as well (many protected areas = high probability that it's something worth looking at).

The background image for all those dynamically added lines, points and rectangles could be a very scaled-down and blurred image generated by Minetestmapper and updated whenever the server is restarted.

[Inocudom]

I am guessing that there won't be any activity with this until autumn comes around. Too bad this feature isn't talked about very much. I guess most people either don't know about this, or don't care. Don't they know that this will make navigating worlds easier, or is that why they don't know/care about it?

I guess what I said in the topic for gsmapper really is true.

[Calinou]

The trouble with the nice overview images minetestmapper generates is not limited to their size alone. They're far too detailed to act as maps. Maps are abstractions, not sattelite photos of the world. What players need to know is where they can find points of intrest: Villages, roads, their own structures, entrances to mines, noteworthy buildings, shops, other players (which tend to move around), ..

Marking roads with a special block (or special tool?) and displaying those on the overview map sounds like a good idea. Perhaps showing protected areas might help as well (many protected areas = high probability that it's something worth looking at).

The background image for all those dynamically added lines, points and rectangles could be a very scaled-down and blurred image generated by Minetestmapper and updated whenever the server is restarted.

Resize a generated map to a smaller size, maybe?

[Sokomine]

Resize a generated map to a smaller size, maybe?

That might help, yes. Can anyone try on a large server map?

[Evergreen]

I am guessing that there won't be any activity with this until autumn comes around. Too bad this feature isn't talked about very much. I guess most people either don't know about this, or don't care. Don't they know that this will make navigating worlds easier, or is that why they don't know/care about it?

I guess what I said in the topic for gsmapper really is true.

Why is everyone discussing about how to do it when It's already been done? Grr.

[Inocudom]

This happened in the topic for gsmapper today:

Still works for me, though I'm dropping this. It seems that there's just not enough interest in this, which is a shame. Feel free to fork it or whatever. It is open source and I honestly don't care what you do with it.

I knew that this would be the fate of gsmapper. I don't know of anyone who could or would continue work on it.

To me, this is bad news, but to some, this is good news.

[emugod]

A big problem in minetest would be, where's the 'top'? It's a fully 3D environment, and gameplay is highly vertical. A map showing just a top-down view of the surface (from worldheight cast down to the first solid block), would be very possible, and in fact exists (a few different mods for minecraft, plus the official maps which work this way, plus i'm pretty sure this is how gsmapper works?). But it wouldn't actually be very useful or good. Most true full-3D games even with prebuilt maps struggle with this problem. You could do something like casting out from the player to solve this, maybe, but I suspect that would be far too resource intensive.

[thetoon]

gameplay is highly vertical

{{Citation needed}}

[Sokomine]

It's a fully 3D environment, and gameplay is highly vertical.

Only in theory. For most players and maps, 2d overview maps work quite well. If in doubt, add an additional layer for that sky town overthere and figure out a way to map that cave town. But overall, only a slim slice of the height is actually used.

[Calinou]

Depth mapping can be done, to show higher areas as brighter and lower areas as darker. Such a thing should be configurable by the player.

[Inocudom]

This happened in the topic for gsmapper today:

Still works for me, though I'm dropping this. It seems that there's just not enough interest in this, which is a shame. Feel free to fork it or whatever. It is open source and I honestly don't care what you do with it.

I knew that this would be the fate of gsmapper. I don't know of anyone who could or would continue work on it.

To me, this is bad news, but to some, this is good news.

Depth mapping can be done because gsmapper can be configured to do it:

To show caves, add hud_map_above = false to minetest.conf, rather buggy... Not sure if you mean it doesn't scroll when you move, if so, hud_map_tracking=1 in minetest.conf (Even buggier!)
And it seems to update the map without scrolling, for me...

See?