A high-resolution Minecraft world renderer with a Google Maps interface | Hacker News Reader

A high-resolution Minecraft world renderer with a Google Maps interface

overviewer.org

95 pointstvvocold25 comments

Reddit's MCPublic server map: http://nerd.nu/maps/pve/#/18/64/2/-8/0/0

We've been playing on this revision of the map for about 2 months now. It's a survival map with PvP disabled, so all materials seen were collected by people.

Another one, a town/economy focused server (also survival / no-PvP). Map has 12000 block radius and current map has been around for 6 months:

http://imdeity.com/map/

Two of ~30 player-made towns:

http://imdeity.com/map/#main/0/6/-3960/672/64

... there are even highway exchanges. Wow.

There's a discontinuity square around the center of the map. I suppose a different terrain generating algorithm was used for that center area when the map was created?

Pretty much.

The spawn is one that was built on the terrain of the previous map (different seed/generation) and was transferred to the new map. The edges of the spawn are currently being smoothed out to fit.

I am new to mine craft. How would you join and play on such a server?

http://reddit.com/r/mcpublic

In Minecraft, go to your multiplayer options and add these addresses:

p.nerd.nu - Player versus Environment. It's normal mode minus PvP

s.nerd.nu - Player versus Player. Full on PvP.

c.nerd.nu - Creative mode.

What the hell is that humongous funnel west of the center.

I'm always amazed by the size of the constructions people make in Minecraft (without the use of external editors). Myself, I once undertook to dig a 16x16 hole to the bottom of the world and build a tower to the sky. Never again, that was way too much useless work.

Then again, this is multiplayer, so there's extra motivation of group effort.

We do giant group builds called UberProjects. Big digs and big builds.

My favorite was the first one called Hall of Pillars.

http://imgur.com/a/AltOY

Examples: https://github.com/overviewer/Minecraft-Overviewer/wiki/Map-...

Overviewer is great, but I've found Mapcrafter to be much more efficient.

Check it out on http://pickaxe.club - a weekend-only, Vanilla Minecraft server. (and please sign up to play next weekend!)

(And here I was about to turn around and ask you if you had seen this)

Anyone knows how does it compare to dynmap, another well-known renderer? Key differences (I remember that it didn't allow showing players location and chat and such stuff)?

Full disclosure, my experience is with a bit older version of both Overviewer and dynmap, but a quick glance at them suggests they haven't changed much.

Key differences:

Overviewer's web interface is much better. Smoother & faster. And the rendering quality is also superior to dynmap's.

Dynamp is, however, dynamic. Overviewer is an offline renderer, basically. You need to cron-job it or whatever, so there are delays in the map updating. Dynmap, on the other hand, is a plugin to the server itself, so it updates whenever a chunk in the game updates. This is how it also is able to have player locations and chat and stuff.

But this also requires plugin support to use dynmap. Overviewer can easily work with hosted solutions. You can pull down a copy of the world from your hosted minecraft instance and run overviewer on it nightly, so you don't have to take on hosting minecraft yourself.

However, if you are going the modded-minecraft route (FTB or whatever), dynamp is low-effort and since it uses the game engine itself to render has built-in support for all the crazy textures & blocks that mods add. Overviewer does not.

tl;dr: If you're running vanilla Minecraft, use Overviewer. If you're running modded Minecraft (FTB, Technic, etc...) use Dynmap.

Latest FTB uses journeymap

http://journeymap.techbrew.net/

Its more similar to dynmap than to overviewer. It combines the concepts of an in game minimap and the web map. That means a waypoint made on the minimap shows up online and vice versa.

Next stop: Street-view.

Yeah, some kind of first person view would be cool.

They have that, it's called Minecraft :p

That's so awesome. I don't play Minecraft for like 2 years and suddenly I want to play just after seeing the examples.

Depending on your server, it can be a blessing and a curse.

Some players where I play have resorted to building things in ways that aren't visible on the map so that other players can't find them. Adding the map to the server made for some interesting dynamics.

Yeah, I really like building "hidden" structures that blend into the landscape. You might only see a door and stairs in the side of a cliff, but the inside is my masterpiece :)

Live example can be seen here, I ran it on my private Minecraft server few months ago: http://map.turshija.com/

Pity it doesn't support mod blocks; if it did I think I know what I'd be installing this evening…

I wonder if he could figure out the blocks' textures from the mods themselves, somehow.

Overviewer relies on a Minecraft client JAR file to pull the textures out of. It also supports pulling the textures out of a filesystem directory, so in theory you could just un-jar all of your mods, fish out the assets directories, and put them all where Overviewer can see them.

Amazing!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com