Minimaps for all A decent minimap from a large custom war map is a bit more involved. The best way is to use the method for a small map above, but shooting it a quarter piece at a time, moving the map within the minimap frame before each shot. At magnification #6 you can easily get it in four shots. You then have to stitch it together in a graphics program. You'll have four screen area bounding boxes to paint out with this method. All very time consuming, but it makes the best quality map. Magnification #6 gives you approximately a 233x233 pixel minimap, slightly smaller than that taken directly from the skirmish screens in both Legends and SH2, which are 255x255 pixels. These dimensions are based on 1024x768 screen resolution. Different resolutions will yield different sized minimaps. The second method for getting a minimap for a large custom war map is much faster, but results are not quite as good. First load your map in the game editor, click on "Edit Scenario", and change its type from "Custom Map" to "Skirmish Map". Resave it under a different, temporary name. Now go to either the Single Player...Custom Skirmish screen, or the Multiplayer...Host screen. Both these screens display skirmish minimaps, but with castle icons, estate flags, and your home estate colored red. Castle and estate icons are very appropriate for skirmish minimaps, but the red estate color not so since you can move it and play any keep you wish. For custom war maps I don't find minimaps with these icons as nice, but that's really a subjective, personal opinion. To get rid of the red highlighting refer to the first paragraph above. You can create minimaps for Standard Skirmish (Deathmatch and Economic War) and King of the Hill Maps, on the Single Player...Custom Skirmish screen. For Capture the Flag maps you'll have to use the Multiplayer...Host screen. You can get minimaps of all three skirmish map types on the Multiplayer...Host screen. Be sure to type in a password so you won't have players trying to join your nonexistent game. I recommend not using minimaps larger than the 255x255 pixel ones you get directly from the skirmish screen (at 1024x768 resolution). The 233x233 pixel in-game one from the #6 magnification at screen resolution of 1024x768 looks quite good. Going larger than 255x255 really starts to squeeze the description text that runs around the left side of the minimap on the downloads page. The available space is severely limited by left and right navigation bars and a column of blank space under the author's name. Consider that not everybody is running a large screen monitor, or very high screen resolutions, and those that do, do not necessarily use overly large windows for their browser. Using a 255x255 minimap your descriptive text will be a very narrow sliver in an 800 pixel wide browser, narrow but comfortable at 900 pixels, and very pleasing at 1000 pixels. One extra note. It's unfortunate that the "Enclosed Castle", "Show/Toggle Estates", and "Zoom/Magnify" icons are located inside and on top of the minimap. This makes minimap creation a bit harder. However if you have the skills and the desire you can quite easily get rid of all three of them for a clean minimap box. The clickable hot spots for show estates and zoom will still be there and functioning. Simply edit out the appropriate icons in the images.png and the images_2.png files located in the \interface\ folder under your main game folder. You must have a graphics program capable of erasing to transparency and be able to save 24 bit PNG files. And a final thought. Yes minimaps are a pain to create in SH2 and Legends. Ah for a PNGer type utility for these games. But if you spend a lot of time creating your map and you'd like to see maximum downloads of you wonderful creation, it's really worth the extra effort to create a nice minimap. [This message has been edited by Sparrow (edited 12-22-2006 @ 04:42 PM).]
Skirmish Screen - Note red highlighting
Skirmish Map - Final result
Magnification Level #7 - for Small Maps
Upper left quarter set to capture at level #6
Final composite of a War Map - 233x233 pixels
Same War Map as above - Converted to skirmish for screen shot