Thinking of Minimaps

I want to talk about situation with minimaps in the game at the moment. In my opinion they need some love.

The main problems with minimaps:
1. They to minimalistic. Biggest part of the minimaps shows only road, houses and water. Don't forget, minimap is also a tactical map. It should give more information about battlefield.
2. They don't have a common design. It is ok for custom maps, but even official minimaps have different design of minimaps. I have mentioned it in QoL thread some mounth ago:
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I have made a try and accumulated some rules how to make minimaps in term of design and usabillity. For example i have taken minimap from vCoH Montargis Region.
Variant with marks (connected with rules)
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Variant without marks
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Variant from CoH 2
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Rule 1 – Show elevation changes. For now player can’t see them, because of that some areas looks like plain. On minimap example they marked red.

Rule 2 – Show fences. This is very important due to help players to see, where they can’t go. It makes a real impact on the game. They marked blue.

Rule 3 – Show insuperable areas on the minimap. It also help to better planning and see, from where you don’t need to wait attack, or where you can easily close the flank. They marked green.

Rule 4 – Show big covers. It help better to see, where player can place his units. They marked orange.

Rule 5 – Try to make minimaps in one common design. At the moment exist 4 or 5 variants of minimaps designs. It looks inaccurate and fail in beauty.

This thread works like all other my threads - i am open to your suggestions! If you think, that minimap need something else to include - say about it. The most interesting and usefull variants i will add to the first post!

Let's make minimaps great again!

If you have played one map long enough you already know all the things about it. If you haven't you surely have no time to learn it through the minimap's image while in a battle. I think it could hurt to overload minimap with details.

If I remember right, an image is generated everytime you save your map. That image is a screenshot of the map taken from some attitude above it and it is photorealistic.

What I believe was done in the past, by Relic and others, is that the image was then used as a base by an artist to create the current minimaps.

So, it is possible to include the things you suggest, Osinyagov. The problem is that the minimap is static. Showing fences, cover or other destructable things would mean that they would not disappear as they are destroyed.

As for elevation changes, how would that be done? Just red is not enough. What if there are several elevations?

A common design for minimaps? That would mean redoing all the current ones. Not impossible, but it would require a lot of work and an art direction.

Have you watched the tactical map production guide? I was surprised at how much extra effort went into making one.

https://www.coh2.org/guides/52026/tactical-map-production

What's the difference that you refer to in the EFA vs. WFA style? Ok, one has a hatched outer part, the other doesn't. If you are referring to the color, that's different because Westwall is a winter map while Bombarded Refinery is a summer map.

As you say, the third style doesn't appear in game, and the fourth isn't too different to the first to (yeah, the shaping around the streets is somewhat different, but then again the setting is different, so...).

I'm with Yukiko on adding more information:

- Elevations are not relevant (yeah, the engine has issues with shooting up or down an elevation but that's kind of random in how it plays out) up to a point where units can't pass through anymore. But painting those areas (which could be tiny) in different colors I feel would look weird as the map in normal view doesn't look anything like that.

- Adding colored parts for impassable terrain is tricky: Depending on what unit you control, it may or may not be able to cross a certain part of the map (foot soldiers vs. team weapons vs. heavy crush vehicles). So, you want five different colors? And then, once an obstacle is crush, the previously impassable area suddenly becomes accessible e.g. by a team-weapon crew...

Apart from that, I'd feel that adding brightly colored elements would be against the artstyle of the minimaps in general...

Most importantly: I would agree that more information would be useful if most of the game would be played on the minimap. However, it seems to be mostly used to get a quick overview of the situation so it shouldn't be too cluttered.

1. Why colors?
It is only for forum post to show, how this rule was released in vCoH minimap style. Let's take rule 1 for example. With shadows was shown,that here is slope. And i marked this shadows with red color. You will see this method on non-edited minimap. I don't mean to add colored areas on the minimap.

2. What is the difference between WFA and EFA style?
First one have dashed offmap territory, and iirc use different base color* (edited)

3. Why showing destructable fences and big covers?
Because it is important for first part of the game, untill vehicle enter the battlefield. It helps to see, where and how you can move your infantry. Or at leastto show fences, which can be destroyed only sith medium or bigger crash.
About cover - i suggest to add only undestructable covers like shell craters, undestructable trees and other objects, which are on the map from the start. Sorry, i shoulded explain it more clear.

4. Do you know, that bring all maps to common design reqire a lot of work?
Of course i do. But it is possible at least hold common design for new maps in the maps list, which will be (maybe) added later.

5. Have you watched a guide how produce tactical map?
Nope, just spreading my opinion about minimaps. But thank you for the link! I will read it with pleasure, because i have a plans to learn, how to make minimaps and, maybe, do this work by myself.

6. Third one variant does not appear in the game and forth has no difference with first one.
Third variant has Minsk Pocket, Rails and Metal, Crossroads, Road to Kharkov and some other maps.
Fourth variant looks different due to darker colors. EFA minimaps looks like old paper with roads and houses on it, and MB minimap looks like grey paper with added non-road areas on it, and offmap territory take a lot of space on the minimap sometimes.

Have you watched the tactical map production guide? I was surprised at how much extra effort went into making one.

https://www.coh2.org/guides/52026/tactical-map-production

This, they also completely fucked up the generation of the images. In vcoh, you exported your map. It made all the files for you outside the .options file. All you had to do was put a border on the exported image. Now it is entirely convoluted and people with different software will produce different results following the same guides.

This has to be one of the biggest things that were fucked up from essence v.2 to v.3. That and the out right removal of DCA variable states.