Hey there, it has been a while

I think everyone knows what I mean. A simple circular minimap showing the current environment and some icons of interesting places.

An example:



I ran into the problem that 3d gamestudio doesn't seem to support circular windows on panels.

My question is, how do I achieve something like that? I want a circular cut-out of a rectangle map image on screen which moves accordingly to my character. I'm not asking for the math equation, but if you answer this question accidentally I won't complain =)

Does anyone have any ideas? Panels and Windows, alpha transparency, shaders, anything?

Thanks for your replies in advance
and
Cheers

Dekurian

show your Minimap Bitmap or View on a second bitmap with target_map, and just blit a circular mask over it
or use a circular view entity and use its skin as target_map

You could use a circular view entity and render a panel with a window element into its skin (bmap_for_entity, panel.target_map). Then iterate over all entites, calculate their 2D/ xy-distance to the center of the minimap in world coordinates and use draw_bmap to draw the entity icons.

EDIT: Ninja'd...

Hey thanks for your replies so far,

I finally had the time to try your suggestions, but neither of them worked as expected.

Maybe I misunderstood you or I've done something wrong.. could you please explain it a bit further, I don't quite get how to use that target_map. I also tried to use a circular mask tga with alpha channel but either the circle or the corners of the rectangle mask is shown, but not the map itself. Or Is there a way to set an alpha channel for a certain bitmap?

Thanks in Advance as always
an
Cheers

Dekurian

PANEL* pnl_minimap =
{
window(...);
...
}

ENTITY* ent_minimap =
{
type = "circle.mdl";
...
}

...
pnl_minimap.target_map = bmap_for_entity(ent_minimap,0);

Now you just have to set the window variables in relation to the player's position.

Also Check out AUM 95 under questions and answers. George gives an example.

Hey thanks for your replies again,

I tried some of your suggestions and the solution with the view entity does work after all, but honestly I don't want to use a view entity, because I need to fade it out, move it accordingly to the rest of my interface etc. A view entity is more difficult to handle in comparison to panels.

It's affected by lighting, and the map is pixelated..

I tried several other things for example a per pixel solution where I iterated trough the pixels of a mask image and set the minimap pixel alpha values accordingly to the mask so that it got a circular map. But this isn't fast enough for a minimap , because it'll move all the time. I don't want to waste frames per second for a tiny thing like a minimap.

Isn't there any possible solution for bmaps and/or panels?

Thanks for your replies in advance
and
Cheers

Dekurian

bmap_process

Thanks for your reply,

But I don't have A8, bmap_process is A8 only.

So do you have another idea how to solve this problem? I just want to use
panels and bmaps, there has to be a solution. I hardly believe that I'm the only person who wants to create a circular minimap of his game environment.


Cheers
Dekurian

What about this fixed function effect?

http://www.opserver.de/wiki/index.php/UVShiftingAndAlphaClamp