Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
5.7M INI M APS & R ADARS
Mini maps and radars are practically identical, the difference is that a mini map provides
us with topographical data and the spatial relationship of nearby objects while a radar only
provides the latter. Land based games typically will feature mini maps while space based
games will generally only provide a radar.
There are many different features that make upamini map orradar anddifferent games will
have different requirements. We will implement the most frequently used set of features for
our minimap.
First it will feature a fixed image background, this will usually be a reasonably detailed tex-
ture that is either hand drawn by an artist or procedurally generated. We will only display a
small portion of this texture. Next we will rotate the map according to the player's orienta-
tion.Noteverygamedoesitthisway,butitdoesappeartobeapopularapproachsowewill
learn how to implement it. We will constrain the icons within the mini map using a circle
(strictly speaking, an ellipse) this way even if there are elements beyond the range of the
mini map, the player still has information about those objects of interest.
Figure 66 - A minimap as a window into a larger space.
There are many more features that can be implemented in a mini map, we can display the
orientation of entities within the map by displaying their cone of vision, we can display dif-
ferent icons that represent whether entities in the world are at higher or lower plane than the
player, fog of war, precise distance to entities, and a lot more.
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