Jailbreak Developer Network: JBPanorama

Used to add a scoreboard minimap to a map. See Implementation for implementation details.

Relevant Properties

(Movement) vector Location (Movement) rotator Rotation: Location and orientation of the virtual point of view on the minimap.
(JBPanorama) Texture TexturePanorama: Texture showing a miniature version of the map for display in the Jailbreak scoreboard. (If omitted, a temporary preview texture will be generated on the fly.)
(JBPanorama) float FieldOfView: Field of view of the virtual view on the minimap, in degrees. The default is 90 degrees; higher values produce a zoomed-out fisheye view, lower values a zoomed-in view.

Adding a Scoreboard Minimap

In order to have a minimap show up in the Jailbreak scoreboard when your map is played, you have to place a JBPanorama actor in your map and set it up. Jailbreak has a built-in feature that helps you in doing this.

Play your map. At the game console, enter SetupPanorama and press Enter.

Normal gameplay is interrupted. The normal on-screen display disappears and is replaced by a large crosshair (and a help text guiding you through the process). You can use your mouse and arrow keys to fly through your map, even through solid geometry.

Find a place where you have a nice view on the entire playable area of your map. Jails and arenas can be excluded; players in jail or fighting in an arena aren't displayed on the minimap anyway.
- Use Shift+GrayPlus and Shift+GrayMinus to zoom in or out. The current field of vision (corresponding to the zoom factor) is displayed in the upper-right corner of the screen. The default is 90 degrees.
- If possible, take care that the red team base is on the left side and the blue team base is on the right side.
- It usually looks best when the map is slightly tilted away from the viewer. If your map focuses more on Z-axis movement than on X/Y-axis movement, try to accommodate that in the viewing position you choose.
After finding a nice view, press Shift+S to take a screenshot.

The help text and crosshair are automatically hidden while the screenshot is taken if you use this keyboard shortcut. You will need this screenshot later to create the minimap texture that's displayed on the scoreboard.

After you have taken the screenshot, press Shift+C to copy a preset JBPanorama actor to the clipboard. Be careful not to move the view between taking the screenshot and copying the actor, or the player locations will be misaligned on the minimap.

You can press Shift+X to leave the JBPanorama alignment mode and to continue playing where you left off. Until you exit the game the Jailbreak scoreboard will show a temporary preview of the minimap according to your selected viewpoint so you can get a rough impression of how it will look.

At this point, you're ready to create the minimap image based on the screenshot you took and to set up the JBPanorama actor in your map. The following section explains how:

Exit the game and open your map in UnrealEd if you haven't already.
Reload Jailbreak.u in the actor browser. Then paste the JBPanorama actor into your map. Do not move it away from the position it was pasted to; the JBPanorama actor's location and rotation are crucial for its correct operation.
In your favorite image editor, load the screenshot you took before and make a 512 x 512 pixel alpha-masked texture from it.
- First proportionally resize the texture to a width of 512 pixels.
- Add black space to equal parts at its top and its bottom to make it a square texture with a height of 512 pixels.
- Add an alpha mask to the texture so that only the actual map geometry will be shown in the game.
- Save the texture in 32-bit TGA format.

It's up to you how much you touch up the minimap image before saving it. Except for the basic shape and size of the map you're completely free – if you want, you can edit it to change its appearance from that of an actual screenshot to a holographic display, or a blueprint outline, or an artistic style of your liking.

Back in UnrealEd, import the texture into the MyLevel pseudo-package.
- Leave Masked and Detail Hack unchecked when importing the texture, but do check Alpha and Generate MipMaps.
- After importing the texture it's a good idea to save some memory by compressing it to DXT3 using the Compress command in the texture's right-click menu.
- To make sure that the minimap is displayed in full resolution regardless of the user's world detail settings, open the imported texture's properties and set the LODSet property to LODSET_Interface.
Find the JBPanorama actor you previously pasted (manually or with Edit → Search for Actors). Double-click it to open its properties. Then set its TexturePanorama property to use the minimap texture you previously created and imported.

With that, you're done. Save your map and enjoy your minimap.