==================== Minecraft Overviewer ==================== By Andrew Brown http://github.com/brownan/Minecraft-Overviewer Generates large resolution images of a Minecraft map. In short, this program reads in Minecraft world files and renders very large resolution images. It performs a similar function to the existing Minecraft Cartographer program. I wrote this with an additional goal in mind: to generate large images that I could zoom in and see details. **New**: gmap.py generates tiles for a Google Map interface, so that people with large worlds can still benefit! Requirements ============ This program requires: * Python 2.6 or 2.7 * PIL (Python Imaging Library) * Numpy I developed and tested this on Linux. It has been reported to work on Windows and Mac, but if something doesn't, let me know. Using the Google Map Tile Generator =================================== This is the new and preferred way to generate images of your map. Disclaimers ----------- Before you dive into using this, let it be known that there are a few minor problems. First, it's slow. If your map is really large, this could take at least half an hour, and for really large maps, several hours. Second, there's no progress bar. You can watch the tiles get generated, but the program gives no feedback at this time on how far it is. There are probably some other minor glitches along the way, hopefully they will be fixed soon. See the `Bugs`_ section below. Running ------- To generate a set of Google Map tiles, use the gmap.py script like this: python gmap.py The output directory must already exist. This will generate a set of image tiles for your world. When it's done, it will put an index.html file in the same directory that you can use to view it. Note that this program renders each chunk of your world as an intermediate step and stores the images in your world directory as a cache. You usually don't need to worry about this, but if you want to delete them, see the section below about `Deleting the Cache`_. Using the Large Image Renderer ============================== The Large Image Renderer creates one large image of your world. This was originally the only option, but would crash and use too much memory for very large worlds. You may still find a use for it though. Right now there's only a console interface. Here's how to use it: To render a world, run the renderer.py script like this: python renderer.py The is the path to the directory containing your world files. Cave mode --------- Cave mode renders all blocks that have no sunlight hitting them. Additionally, blocks are given a colored tint according to how deep they are. Red are closest to bedrock, green is close to sea level, and blue is close to the sky. Cave mode is like normal mode, but give it the "-c" flag. Like this: python renderer.py -c Deleting the Cache ------------------ The Overviewer keeps a cache of each world chunk it renders stored within your world directory. When you generate a new image of the same world, it will only re-render chunks that have changed, speeding things up a lot. If you want to delete these images, run the renderer.py script with the -d flag: python renderer.py -d To delete the cave mode images, run it with -d and -c python renderer.py -d -c You may want to do this for example to save space. Or perhaps you've changed texture packs and want to force it to re-render all chunks. Using More Cores ---------------- The Overviewer will render each chunk separately in parallel. You can tell it how many processes to start with the -p option. This is set to a default of 2, which will use 2 processes to render chunks, and 1 to render the final image. To bump that up to 3 processes, use a command in this form: python renderer.py -p 3 Bugs ==== This program has bugs. They are mostly minor things, I wouldn't have released a completely useless program. However, there are a number of things that I want to fix or improve. For a current list of issues, visit http://github.com/brownan/Minecraft-Overviewer/issues Feel free to comment on issues, report new issues, and vote on issues that are important to you, so I can prioritize accordingly. An incomplete list of things I want to fix soon is: * Rendering non-cube blocks, such as torches, flowers, mine tracks, fences, doors, and the like. Right now they are either not rendered at all, or rendered as if they were a cube, so it looks funny. * Water transparency. There are a couple issues involved with that, and I want to fix them. * Add lighting * Speed up the tile rendering. I can parallelize that process, and add more caches to the tiles so subsequent renderings go faster. * I want to add some indication of progress to the tile generation.