Journeyman's Minimap - Code Plugin for Minimaps and Fog of War

[Maydie]

This plugin is so awesome. I started a RTS project (all blueprint based) then started to panic when I could not find any well implemented fog of war systems. This is that and more.

Having said that, is there anyway I can do a trace or something similar on the mapfog to see if an area is currently visible (basically, I do not want players to build anything in undiscovered areas). Also, is there a way to exclude specific meshes so they always show 100% through the fog (i.e. on top of the fog).

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[Th120]

I got a small problem with the minimap...
If the root component of my actor is scaled up the icon has a weird offset on the minimap.
I am using UE 4.21.

[Zhi Kang Shao]

This plugin is so awesome. I started a RTS project (all blueprint based) then started to panic when I could not find any well implemented fog of war systems. This is that and more.

Having said that, is there anyway I can do a trace or something similar on the mapfog to see if an area is currently visible (basically, I do not want players to build anything in undiscovered areas). Also, is there a way to exclude specific meshes so they always show 100% through the fog (i.e. on top of the fog).

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Hey Maydie,

Way late response but in case you are still interested. The feature you desire is certainly supported! The fog of war is designed with retrieving values in mind. The function for that is the MapFog actor's "GetFogAtLocation". Because I figured that depending on your game rules, you also may want to differentiate between areas that are currently being revealed (for example you have a unit nearby) or have ever been revealed (a unit explored it in the past), the query also lets you control that.

For a simple check (revealed or not) the function returns a boolean that represents whether the area has been revealed or not. For even more advanced control, since the explored area has a soft edge, you can retrieve the exact revealed factor (which could be for example 50% if its in the center of the soft edge).

[Zhi Kang Shao]

still waiting for a confirmation on this.. if this is already implemented in the asset or I'll need to tweek it.
Basically if you have a fornite map and put this plugin and place two players on each map border they wont be able to see each other in the map or minimap, hence the question if there is a kind of persistant data to send the player coordinates and update the map

Unfortunately there is no out of the box support for net updating icons even though the actors are net culled. A custom solution would be necessary for that. A simple approach would be to host the MapIconComponents on non-net culled actors, at the cost of replicating some actor locations double and the extra actors' memory footprint. There are more elegant solutions, but bottom line this isn't supported out of the box.

[tRuTrIx]

I am having a issue with the 4.22 version. My map reveal texture appears as a half circle with a very misshapen other half.
I did not have this issue in 4.21.

[brian.boettger]

So i just got this from the summer flash sale and within an hour I LOVE IT.
However, i have 3 things that i could some help understanding. It's more the render texture than the plug in itself.
First, my level is dark.. like really dark. So to get the map to be visible, i have to turn the alpha on the texture render up a few pts. is there a better way?
Second, the map is a little pixellated.
Third, for now i'm using the bordered example; i may have missed it in the docs, can i resize the minimap as a whole?

Otherwise, fantastic work, I've wanted your plugin for a while now and I'm so glad I got it.

[NightOwlGamesLLC]

Love this add-on, the fog of war is great!! Just waiting on a 4.23 version of the addon because I'm getting a crash to desktop bug in Unreal 4.22 that supposedly they have fixed in Unreal 4.23.

[RobinZinser]

Hey guys!
We are using the minimap plugin for a top-down ARPG project.
After integrating the plugin we observed that the graphics of the game were not as good as before.
Character hair, for example, looks kind of jittery now as soon as the character moves.
When removing the MapFog Actor from the level everything is back to normal.
Disabling world fog (we anyways use it only on the map) didn't change anything either.
Did anyone also encounter this or have some hint regarding how to debug/fix it?

Best Regards
Robin

[Zhi Kang Shao]

Hey guys!
We are using the minimap plugin for a top-down ARPG project.
After integrating the plugin we observed that the graphics of the game were not as good as before.
Character hair, for example, looks kind of jittery now as soon as the character moves.
When removing the MapFog Actor from the level everything is back to normal.
Disabling world fog (we anyways use it only on the map) didn't change anything either.
Did anyone also encounter this or have some hint regarding how to debug/fix it?

Best Regards
Robin

Hey RobinZinser

Do you tie any gameplay to the minimap's fog values? For example when retrieving fog values from the MapFog actor, it performs a read from the fog render target, which is inherently an expensive operation (though the result is cached for several frames, this duration is tweakable). This is a likely culprit for frame drop, try disabling any calls to those functions (GetFogAt...) to diagnose if that is the cause of the jitter you see. I'm not sure what could have triggered the degradation in performance between engine versions.

[RobinZinser]

Hey RobinZinser

Do you tie any gameplay to the minimap's fog values? For example when retrieving fog values from the MapFog actor, it performs a read from the fog render target, which is inherently an expensive operation (though the result is cached for several frames, this duration is tweakable). This is a likely culprit for frame drop, try disabling any calls to those functions (GetFogAt...) to diagnose if that is the cause of the jitter you see. I'm not sure what could have triggered the degradation in performance between engine versions.

Thanks for answer!
I just checked this again since I did some project related tweaks to the minimap. I completely replaced the plugin with a fresh downloaded copy so everything is back to default. And the same bad results were still there. Its btw also no frame drop / performance issue we are talking about. its for example the character hair which is getting very jittery, moving objects show strange artifact/jitter behavior every now and then and so on.
Removing the MapFog Actor is immediately returning everything to the old, good results. Changing the CacheLifteime also didnt help
Please let me know if you have any idea about what the cause could be

Best Regards

[Namesis]

Zhi Kang Shao
Supposing you have a big map, say a continent, which contain several zones..:
What would be the approach switch between looking at the whole continent and looking at the zone you are currently in?
Think similarly to WoW and any other mmo.

My idea is kinda like having multiple MapBackgrounds on different zones and "SOMEHOW" and just switching the views on the big map. Is this possible? (like selectnig a specific mapbackground to render)

edit:
nevermind, just did it..
ps: support seems to be.. quite slow

[Maydie]

Really need this to be updated to 4.24 please.

[Zhi Kang Shao]

I've submitted the update on Dec 26th. Not sure why it didn't come through yet, perhaps it needs some manual processing by marketplace staff.