On the right here you can see the work I've done on the minimap in War Worlds (click for a bigger view). I'm not entirely sure it's exactly the way I like it, but it's pretty close. Here's the features:
- The centre of the map is where the camera is pointing. As you move around the map, the minimap scrolls. This emphasizes the fact that the world repeats and has no "edges"
- As you rotate the view, the map rotates as well. That is, "up" on the minimap is always the direction the camera is facing.
- Units on the map show up as coloured dots on the minimap.
The main thing I'm not so sure about is point #2 above, the main problem with rotating the map is that you lose your sense of direction - there's no "north, south, east, west" if you know what I mean. I could add a little compass or something to provide a direction, but I'm not really sure. I think I'll leave it as-is and let some playtesting figure out whether a compass/direction is even important.
Some other features I've been working on:
- Entities have the concept of "ownership", and each player has a unique colour assigned to them when the game starts (you will be able to change your colour in the "New Game" window)
- Entities are displayed in their colour. This is achieved using the alpha channel in the model's texture. Alpha=1.0 is whatever the texture's colour is, alpha=0.0 is the player's colour
- I've updated the editor and added some new brushes. The main one is a "levelling" brush which remembers what the height of the terrain was when you left-click and then you can drag that height around. It works really well for creating cliffs and mountains.
Anyway, that's about it for now, I'm sure there'll be more updates in the future!