A mini-map or minimap is a miniature map that is often placed at a screen corner in video games to aid players in orienting themselves within the game world. They are often only a small portion of the screen and thus must be selective in what details they display. Elements usually included on Mini-maps vary by video game genre. However, commonly included features are the position of the player character, allied units or structures, enemies, objectives and surrounding terrain. Mini-maps have become very common in real-time strategy andMMORPG video games because they serve as an indication of where the current screen lies within the scope of the game world. Most first person shooter games also have some version or variant of the mini map, with the odd exception of, often showing enemy and teammates locations in real time.
Features
Many mini-maps make use of similar features. Common features are:
Fog of war
In many games using a mini-map, the mini-map begins completely blank, while the map is automatically drawn as the player discovers new areas of the game world. After players discover new areas, the terrain of the discovered area often remains visible on the mini-map. If the player's characters or units cease being able to see the area, the area might be covered by a fog of war, so that unit or structure movements in that area will not be shown. Things in a fog of war portion of a mini-map may not be updated until they are rediscovered.
Layers
Similar to custom layers in Google Earth, some team-oriented multi-player games, such as Age of Empires II or Empire Earth, allow players to draw temporary lines, signals or markings on the mini-map for others to see. This allows for quick communication over large distances in games.
Rotation and zoom
In some 3D video games the mini-map rotates when the player character or game camera faces different directions, to keep the top of the map always corresponding to forward from the cameras point of view. This is common for games in the Grand Theft Auto series, and many racing games which show the track in a mini-map. Other games such as many in The Legend of Zelda series, the map does not rotate but features an arrow that moves about and rotates to show the position of the player character and the direction they're facing. In some games mini-maps that only show the close surrounding area often have icons on the edge to show the direction of locations or characters that are outside of the area shown on the map. Some games also have a feature where the mini-map zooms out when the player character is travelling at high speed, and zooms back in when they slow down.
Automap
An Automap is similar to a mini-map but traces its origin back to early role-playing games. In early dungeon crawl video games players were expected to draw maps by hand as they played the game so they could solve complex mazes and explore large dungeons. Game boxes such as those for early 1980s Wizardry games included graph paper for this purpose. Games featuring automapping simulate the creation of a map, typically showing an abstract top-down view of nearby areas of the game world that is automatically updated as the player character gains knowledge of the environment. Automaps typically display doors, terrain types, and important locations or items. When discussing The Bard's Tale IIIs role as one of the first CRPGs with automapping, Computer Gaming World in 1994 wondered "How did we ever play without it?". Early automaps typically found in role-playing video games were pause screens that stopped gameplay when opened. Early examples of video games to feature a real-time automap include Namco's Rally-X in 1980, Gebelli Software's Horizon V in 1982, and Arsys Software's WiBArm in 1986. When the feature became popular with action-oriented games such as Doom and Diablo, the automap feature in these games did not pause the game and allowed the player to continue gameplay while the map was on screen. MUDs which were popular multiplayer virtual worlds in the mid 1990s rarely provided an automap. This resulted in MUD clients adding automapping as a feature, notably zMUD in September 1996.
Code Minimap in Text editors and IDEs
A code minimap in a Text editor or Integrated development environment is a reduced overview of the entire file in its own view pane, typically next to the main editor pane. The portion of the file visible in the main editor pane is highlighted and clicking or dragging in this view scrolls the editor through the file.
