Just had this discussion with Brutos about a tool that can auto generate minimaps. Basically it would take what the mapper already has to do (fly to top of map, render flat, take screenshot, edit boundaries, convert texture, set up txt file) and automate it. This would make mapping a slightly less painful process, and how hard can it really be to do this? Brutos says he'll be busy with finals soon, so I'm putting this idea out there in the hope that another dev will like it and that it won't be forgotten, and I'd like to hear comments from other mappers too.
Don't know how easy/hard that would be. But what about making refineries be placed on the minimap without the need of photoshop? Just like the buildings are placed (Vf, barracks etc emp_cap_model) It makes them more precise.
taking the screenshot isn't really the issue the real issues are manually drawing in the water, and having to make it so the minimap shows underground/covered areas in maps that feature a lot of them
Soo you mean the cl_leveloverview console command? Combined with perhaps vtfedit if you are really terrible at everything? Honestly if you can't be bothered to make one texture for your ENTIRE MAP, that's pretty sad.
It's not so much that people can't be bothered, it's the fact that they shouldn't have to do it in the first place. It's clearly possible to do this automatically in the engine, so there's no reason not to have a tool that does it.
