How Do I Make Overviews?

Comments

• Ollj our themepark-stalking nightmare Fade Join Date: 2002-12-12 Member: 10696Members

  January 2003 edited January 2003

  buildminimap ?
  
  no the other kind of found something in other old forum - guess it needs dedicated server...
  
  ************************
  * Creating Overviews *
  ************************
  
  The way to make overview files doesnt work completely like it says anymore. Valve changed things slightly.
  The new way is more fiddly, in order to prevent script kiddies hacking the code I think...
  
  Heres how it works, (basically)
  
  Start a half-life DEDICATED server (dedicated is important!!). Make sure bots are turned off
  Start a hltv proxy, and point it at your server.
  On the server, change level to the level you want to make an overview for (changelevel ahl_xx)
  Then start a half-life game, and connect to the proxy, using the hltv slot (its the one that has no text on it at the moment).
  
  type developer 1
  change views a couple of times, this should get rid of the "help text borders". Keep going until you are come to a big green grid.
  
  type dev_overview 1
  This should put you in the top down mode, if all you get is a green screen, you probably didnt switch to overview mode before typing dev_overview, type dev_overview 0, and cycle through the different views again and it should work.
  
  Cut and paste from the doc here (coz its still the same)
  
  You can move the map around with keys FORWARD,BACKWARD, RIGHT & LEFT. Maps will be automatically rotated to fit optimally onto the screen. If they are rotated, FORWARD and RIGHT are swapped, etc. Use the keys ATTACK and ATTACK2 to change the zoom. With zmin and zmax you can choose which parts of the map should be drawn. Only polygons between these two values are shown. This can be used to cut off ceilings or other unwanted objects. Origin is your viewpoint projected into the map. The map will be rotated around this point if you move the mouse in overview mode. Zmin can be changed with UP & DOWN and zmax with JUMP & DUCK. If you think you've found the correct values for the new map, simply make a screenshot and remember all of the values, which are needed for the overview description file (to avoid console text on the screenshot set developer 0).
  
  /end cut&paste
  
  Align your map to fit the screen. Note down all of the numbers to do with the position of the camera
  
  Grab screenshots of the map. If necessary, move up and down to grab screen shots of the different levels of the map, then use photoshop to merge them together (use layers and the eraser tool) or add neat effects (eg, no-credit could be re-done to look like a sketch of the map, as seen in the petrol station, or other maps could be changed to look like security blue-prints or something).
  
  Save it as the mapname.tga, and place it into the overviews directory. Take one of the map.txt files from one of the other mods (DMC, TFC, HL), rename it to your maps name.txt, open it, and fill out the values with the ones you noted down earlier...
  
  cut and paste again...
  
  Next, you have to create an overview description file that will be parsed by the client DLL to get the map image filename and the correct view parameters. This file must be in the overviews\ directory and must have the same name as the current BSP file, but with TXT as its extension. Here is an example (overviews\de_vegas.txt):
  
  // overview description file for de_vegas.bsp
  
  global
  {
  ZOOM 1.63
  ORIGIN 1903 -1283 -1088
  ROTATED 0
  }
  
  layer
  {
  IMAGE "overviews/de_vegas.tga"
  HEIGHT -1088
  }
  
  The global section describes zoom, the origin point the map is rotated around, and a boolean to indicate if the map image is rotated or not. The layer section describes the map image filename and at which height (z-axis) the map should be shown. The overview mode uses the some coordinate space as the game world and all icons are drawn at the same position as their corresponding entities
  
  /end cut&paste
  
  Then when you join a hltv server, you should find when you switch to a map view there is a picture of the map, rather than a green grid.
  
  I have to say, the biggest problem I've found is that the entities on the map sometimes didn't relate to the position of the entities in the world. The worst one for this is hondos maps (I tried doing a no-credit one. It seems ok now..), because the secrets make the maps much larger than the overviews are. I think the best bet is to make sure the HEIGHT field has the correct value for whatever you used as zmax. Then watch the game with some bots or something to see if you have the origin set up correctly, if not, adjust the origin, and reload the level. (this is where running the game in a window comes in useful, add -window 640 480 to your commandline)

  0 Off Topic Disagree Agree Awesome
• Lucid Join Date: 2002-12-11 Member: 10534Members, Constellation

  January 2003 edited January 2003

  hey thanks for all the info. But is that for making the overviews that you see in couterstrike while playing the game? I just want to make it look like this:
  
  <img src='http://damagenetworks.gotdns.com/nancy_overview.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
  
  not for use in the game just for studying the maps. I have one of these for each of the original maps but not for "aftermarket" maps.

  0 Off Topic Disagree Agree Awesome
• EnemyWithin Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 5572Members

  January 2003

  Not sure how current this is, but I made an overview tutorial for TFC. You can see it <a href='http://www.cg-dev.com/hltv/?section=tutorials&sub=overviews' target='_blank'>here</a>.

  0 Off Topic Disagree Agree Awesome
• gorthaur Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2628Members

  January 2003

  Maybe it's something-dependent, but I don't really need to start dedicated server to make overview maps screenshots. All I do is to run Hl.exe from a particular link (.lnk) which has its target like this:
  <!--c1--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->C:\Games\Half-Life\hl.exe -console -game <mod directory> -dev -toconsole -32bpp<!--c2--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
  the -dev parameter is essential to enable the dev_overview command
  -toconsole is good for when Hl.exe starts, it goes right into the console and then I just type "map <mapname>" and I am in
  -32bpp produces nicer screenshots without dithering (maybe it doesn't really matter for the final oveviews, because they are converted to 256 colors anyway, but I prefer having non-dithered screenshots)
  So after I run the link, i type "map <mapname>" and after the map loads "dev_overview 1", make some screenshot with my bound key and then "dev_overview 2" to make screenshot without the numbers.
  Btw: Do you know, that when drawing the map from overhead perspective, the engine draws only entities, which are in located in hulls visible from your current position? So if you want to have the overview contain all the entities, you must make multiple screenshots (not missing any hull!) and compose them together.

  0 Off Topic Disagree Agree Awesome