Help with your minimaps

[TheMasterGee]

A way to add icons to your minimaps

Key to this is a nice program called ImageMagick, available from www.imagemagick.org
(I'm not about to give a tutorial on how to use this, there are very very helpful guides, and people, at the site)

Once you have this installed,- I've used this as a basis to help with my mmap.wil. Cos I'm including masses of maps, that include a load that never had minimaps.

(if you're extremely clever, you can make it add shadows to mobs/npcs where there currently aren't any, Heroes etc - I'm not currently that clever , nearly there tho)

Anyways, the attachment can be extracted anywhere on your computer, the bat file will run from where ever you put it.

The files/folders within the 7zip:

Icons - this holds all the masks I've collected from Mir2/3, probably use more as time goes on
Plain - this has the plain bmp maps you've saved from your favorite map editor (remember 25% resizing)
ToWil - is where the resulting map with it's icons will end up
overlays.bat - is the dos file that puts it all together

:: ######################################
::
:: X placement is co-ordinate *1.5, -icon width (round up or down as you wish)
::
:: Y placement is co-ordinate -icon height
::
:: This is for icons on the co-ords, you may want to offset
::
:: ######################################   
@echo off

[COLOR="#000080"]:: ########### MAIN MAP NAME ###########
call :prep "Plain\Bichon Mines D401.bmp" "ToWil\000000.bmp"

::-#-#-#- DUNGEON ICONS -#-#-#-
SET INS=Icons\Cave exit0.bmp

:: -------- Exit1 (76, 15)
call :overlay 98 0
:: -------- Exit2 (179, 109)
call :overlay 253 93

del "%~dp0%MAP%"
move "%~dp0WORKMAP.bmp" "%~dp0%MAP%"
::########################################
[/COLOR]
:: ######## Next Map here, as above ########



:: #### TIDY UP #####
del "%~dp0TEMP.bmp"
GOTO :END

:: ### PREP WORK #####
:prep
SET MAP=%2
SET MAP=%MAP:~1,-1%
SET PAM=%1
SET PAM=%PAM:~1,-1%
copy /Y "%~dp0%PAM%" "%~dp0WORKMAP.bmp"
GOTO :EOF

:: ### IMAGE OVERLAY COMMAND #####
:overlay
convert "%~dp0WORKMAP.bmp" ( "%~dp0%INS%" -transparent black ) -geometry +%1+%2 -compose over -composite "%~dp0TEMP.bmp"
copy /Y "%~dp0TEMP.bmp" "%~dp0WORKMAP.bmp"
GOTO :EOF

:END

.. I'm not a DOS genius either, but I know how to do what I want to do and know how to find out how - the only thing you'd really be interested in is the blue bit. The messy filenaming is due to me wanting to be able to move it around, and be quick.

The map naming conventions are up to you, whatever. I'm using this myself (I had to chop mine down a whole lot so I could upload it to forum), other than the fact I'm rewriting the whole mmap.wil, I'm using all the maps I can find, and this makes it easy to replace maps and change locations of curiosities/directions for the players.

I may adapt it to read from a separate file where just the map names versus co-ords and icons used in a text file. But this works for me now.

Once you have your ToWil folder full of the maps you want, use your favorite data editor to import them to mmap.wil. Remembering minimap.txt has to co-inside with what you're putting in it.

As a further example, here's Bichon Province atm:



Which is done with (just the blue stuff above):

:: ########### MAIN MAP NAME ###########
call :prep "Plain\Bichon Province 0.bmp" "ToWil\000000.bmp"

::-#-#-#- DUNGEON ICONS -#-#-#-

SET INS=Icons\Skull cave0.bmp
:: -------- Natural Cave
call :overlay 49 93
:: -------- Oma Cave
call :overlay 223 18

SET INS=Icons\Mining cave0.bmp
:: -------- Bichon Mines
call :overlay 1002 195

::-#-#-#- Province Walkthroughs -#-#-#-
SET INS=Icons\Serpent0.bmp
:: -------- to Serpent Valley
call :overlay 1000 68

SET INS=Icons\Forest Entrance0.bmp
:: -------- to Woomyon Woods
call :overlay 482 25

SET INS=Icons\Walkway0.bmp
:: -------- to Unknown Province
call :overlay 25 340
:: -------- to Unknown Province
call :overlay 762 65
:: -------- to Unknown Province
call :overlay 476 646

::-#-#-#- Places in the map -#-#-#-
SET INS=Icons\Pointer0.bmp
:: -------- Sailor to Prajin Island
call :overlay 376 673
SET INS=Icons\Bigger Temple0.bmp
:: -------- Bichon Palace
call :overlay 523 169


del "%~dp0%MAP%"
move "%~dp0WORKMAP.bmp" "%~dp0%MAP%"
::########################################

 

[Tai]

Hummmm maybe I'm missing something but can't you just use Paint to put these icons on your minimaps?

 

[TheMasterGee]

Yeah Paint is good if you don't want to do too much, the icons will come in handy if you set background to alpha.

Simple thing I find with this is as opposed to loading Paint for all the maps you want to get involved with, you can just tell the bat to do it for you.

 

[Far]

I agree. I just have a stock photoshop template that contains all the icons i need, I import any mmap, put my icons where i need them - and save. I see no advantage of using a 3rd tool to do something that photoshop / paint already achieves.

 

[Ardbeg]

Fireworks is my preferred choice.
Not got the icons though, are they available anywhere or Far, did you get yours by taking from current maps ?

 

[Far]

most of mine were cut from original maps that had the icons on. I found that a lot of the time the chinese versions of the minimaps had the icons put on them so i just took those, though if someone does have them individually that would be good - a few of mine are a little bodgy cut jobs.

 

[Tai]

MasterGee attached them to his post.