Mapcrafter

by Moritz Hilscher

Mapcrafter is a high performance Minecraft map renderer written in C++. It renders Minecraft worlds to a bunch of images which are viewable in any webbrowser using Leaflet.js.

Mapcrafter is free software and available under the GPL license. You can access the latest source code of Mapcrafter on GitHub: http://github.com/mapcrafter/mapcrafter

Thanks to pigmap and Minecraft Overviewer, whose documentations and source code were very helpful. I also used the alpha blending code of pigmap and some maps stuff of the template from Minecraft Overviewer.

Features

• Web output: Render your Minecraft worlds to maps viewable in any webbrowser!
• Different render views: Choose between different perspectives to render your world from! A 2D topdown and a 3D isometric render view are available!
• Different rotations: Choose from four different rotations to render your worlds from!
• Different render modes: Choose between different render modes like day, night and cave for your maps!
• Different overlays: Show additional information on your map! For example: Where can slimes spawn? Where can monsters spawn at night?
• Configuration files: Highly-customizable which worlds are rendered with which render view and other render parameters!
• Markers: Automatically generated markers from your Minecraft world data!
• Other stuff: Biome colors, incremental rendering, multithreading

Requirements

• A Linux-based or Unix-like operating system like Mac OS
• A decent C++ compiler (preferable gcc >= 4.4, or clang), CMake and make if you want to build Mapcrafter from source
• Some libraries:
  • libpng
  • libjpeg (but you should use libjpeg-turbo as drop in replacement)
  • libboost-iostreams
  • libboost-system
  • libboost-filesystem (>= 1.42)
  • libboost-program-options
  • (libboost-test if you want to use the tests)
• For your Minecraft worlds:
  • Anvil world format
  • Minecraft 1.6 resource packs

Examples

There are a few example maps of the renderer on the GitHub Wiki. Please feel free to add your own map to this list.

Documentation and Help

The documentation is in the docs/ directory and you can build it yourself with Sphinx. You can read a built version of the documentation on docs.mapcrafter.org and you can also download other builds.

If you find bugs or problems when using Mapcrafter or if you have ideas for new features, then please feel free to add an issue to the GitHub issue tracker.

You can contact me in IRC (#mapcrafter on Freenode). Use the webclient if you are new to IRC. I will be there most of the time, but please bear in mind that I can't be available all the time. If I'm not there, wait some time or try another time of the day.

You can also ask questions in the Minecraft Forum thread.

Version history

v.2.1

• Added support for corner stairs (thanks for some Minecraft Overviewer code!)
• Added signs to isometric and topdown render view
• Fixed a lighting bug that appeared using some Debian packages
• Fixed wrong slime overlay
• Fixed rotation of pumpkins in isometric render view

v.2.0

• Huge internal code refactoring™
• Support for multiple rendering engines: A 2D topdown and the usual 3D isometric render view are available
• Support for indexed png images, reducing size of output images drastically
• New overlay render modes (slime chunks, show where monsters can spawn at day/night)
• Configurable tile sizes (to improve performance for small texture sizes)
• Configurable water opacity/transparency
• Restructured internal render management components to allow integration of Mapcrafter rendering core into different applications
• Further integration of Mapcrafter into a graphical user interface (mapcrafter-gui)
• There is a new repository for Debian/Ubuntu packages. Please have a look at the documentation and update your apt source listings!

v.1.5.4

• Added a detection in the CMake files which compiler C++11 flag to use (for newer compilers which do not support the older -std=c++0x flag)
• Fixed bug with the marker tool (new json sign text format was not parsed properly)
• Fixed bug in texture extraction script (convert command was not properly detected)
• Fixed bug with some textures (#122) by making Mapcrafter able to read indexed PNG images and PNG images with different other color formats

v.1.5.3

• Better handling of corrupt world files (for now, bigger refactoring of that probably later)
• Added a fix using imagemagick in texture extraction script to prevent libpng warnings
• Fixed bug with boost program options which made it unable to use paths containing spaces for the --config command line option
• Fixed wrong error messages when loading configuration files (Mapcrafter tried to read not existing files and even directories if specified as configuration file)

v.1.5.2

• Fixed the marker tool to work with the new internal Minecraft 1.8 sign format
• Fixed bug with global logging configuration file installed and searched in wrong directory
• Fixed bug causing the Leaflet map being stuck
• Fixed some small issues with new 1.8 blocks

v.1.5.1

• Added ability to configure logging facility with configuration files
• Added colored terminal output for warning/error log messages
• Improved cave rendermode with a new high contrast block coloring (thanks to dtfinch, #100), old behavior is still available with a configuration option for compatibility reasons
• Added support for Minecraft 1.8
  • Since the structure of the textures has changed a bit (especially chest textures), you should extract the texture files from a 1.8 Minecraft Jar file to a new, clean texture directory.

v.1.5

• Started internal refactoring to improve integration with possible Mapcrafter GUI or other programs using Mapcrafter's functionality
• Added own logging facility, further configuration with different log sinks will follow soon™
• Changed global sections from [global:sections] to [global:section] to simplify internal parsing procedures
• Added option to specify a block mask and render only specific blocks
• Added option to hide chunks that are not populated yet

v.1.4.3

• Fixed a lighting bug on FreeBSD and Windows
• Improved build support on Windows for MinGW and Visual C++

v.1.4.2

• Fixed a small problem with the multi threading

v.1.4.1

• Fixed mapcrafter_markers not being installed
• Fixed debian package dependency issues with libjpeg-turbo
• Fixed issue with CMake not finding libjpeg outside the default search path

v.1.4

• Added option to use JPEGs as image output format
• Added option to change the background color of the map

v.1.3.2

• Added option to hide specific marker groups in the web interface by default
• Added a way to add more user-defined markers using the Leaflet API (#71)
• Changed markers.js file attribute icon_size to iconSize
  • You should update your markers.js file and re-run mapcrafter_markers if you use markers.
• Fixed a bug causing Mapcrafter not to use the data/ directory as resource directory (#70)

v.1.3.1

• Added simple progress output to marker generation program (optional)
• Added option to hide empty signs by default
• Fixed a bug (#65) causing invalid Javascript being generated
• Markers use the world section name to distinguish between the worlds, not the world_name attribute

v.1.3

• Added ability to automatically generate markers from signs in the Minecraft world
  • The format to specify markers has changed, please have a look at the documentation and update your markers.js file.

v.1.2

• Started refactoring the web template
  • **Since some files were split up and are now in a separate static/ directory, you should manually delete the old .js .css files in your map directories and update the maps with mapcrafter to prevent a mess with old files.
• Added new options to specify the default view of a map
• Added new option to specify the dimension of a world
• Fixed lighting of The End
• Fixed a texture bug (#61) causing segfaults

v.1.1.3

• Fixed the batch mode showing an animated progress bar

v.1.1.2

• Fixed a bug (#58) with mapcrafter hanging when there are no tiles to render

v.1.1.1

• Refactored multi threading and some other things
• Fixed some small block issues:
  • Fixed downward spreading lava
  • Fixed not rendered nether portal blocks
  • Improved appearance of flat snow
  • Added some special (not used in the game) slabs
• Fixed a configuration bug

v.1.1

• Added ability to crop the world and render only a specific part of it

v.1.0.1

• Fixed jungle wooden planks rendering as birch planks
• Changed worldName attribute in template from part of the world path to the name of the world section
• Added hint about rendering the Nether/End to documentation

v.1.0

• Added new configuration file format (consult the documentation for more information):
  • Different section types for Minecraft Worlds/rendered maps
  • Better validation of configuration files
• Some internal reworkings

v.0.6

• Added support for Minecraft 1.7 blocks and biomes
• Added some more blocks such as trip wire, trip wire hook and magic floating cocoa beans

v.0.5.1

• Added support for Minecraft 1.6 Resource Packs
  • (You have to delete your old textures and get them new from a new Minecraft Jar file)
• Added some new blocks from Minecraft 1.6
• Better compatibility for older gcc (4.4 +) and boost versions
• Some code reworkings, replaced plain Makefile with CMake

v.0.5

• Added a new configuration file format to specify worlds to render
• Added different rendermodes: default, lighting (day/night), cave
• Added ability to render different worlds/rotations/rendermodes into one output file
• Added new blocks: dragon egg, redstone wires, some redstone/quartz stuff from Minecraft 1.5
• Added alternative way to check if tiles are required when rendering incremental (image file timestamps)
• Added alternative Leaflet template

v.0.4.1

• Fixed a bug preventing rotated worlds
• Fixed a small compiler error for some gcc versions
• Fixed the problem with the world scanning (world scanning seems to be stuck) when the max zoom level is higher
• Added compatibility for older boost filesystem versions

v.0.4

• Added support for biomes
• Added support for Minecraft 1.5 texture packs
• Added some new blocks
• Some template things: url hash with current view, better support for markers

v.0.3

• Reworked multithreading
• Added possibility to render the world rotated
• Reworked block image generation to work with the rotated worlds, fixed rotation of blocks
• Added nicer beacon, fixed wrong stone slab texture

v.0.2

• Added support for chests, fences, fence gates
• Added option --batch, to render without the animated progress bar
• Small fixes for end portal frame, enchantment table to work with all texture sizes
• Some code reworking, more comments

v.0.1 (December 2012)

• First version on GitHub
• Features:
  • Render Minecraft Worlds to tiles and an HTML-File to view them like a Google Map
  • Incremental rendering, multithreading