Minecraft AutoMap

If you do not know how to update AutoMap, see the AM Update Guide.

• "Fixed" textures for signs, furnaces, bookshelves, fences, and fence gates. Yes, I know the fences and fence gates glow due to some kind of transparency issue. If you like, make a better image (16x16) with no partially transparent pixels and I'll include it in the next official release.

If you do not know how to update AutoMap, see the AM Update Guide.

• Changed the object from which the texture name is pulled out of the Minecraft process. This should make map textures more accurate all-around. Please report any inaccurate textures or other texture problems that you may encounter.
• Vines and Lily Pads are now green instead of gray.

If you do not know how to update AutoMap, see the AM Update Guide.

• AutoMap no longer uses terrain.png and items.png. If you like, you can delete those files after updating AutoMap if they still exist in your Automap directory.
• Textures are now loaded dynamically from the directories: "tex/blocks" and "tex/items".
  
  • The "tex/blocks" directory already has one file "QMark.png" -- . If you see this on the map, it means AutoMap does not know which texture to draw for a particular block or item type. You will see a lot of question marks for a second or two while AutoMap learns all the textures. If the question mark graphic does not fix itself automatically, please check errordump.txt and report the problem!
  • Be careful what you put in these texture directories! AutoMap will try to load any .png file it finds there, and it will try to read animation data from any .txt file! AutoMap may fail to start if these files are not compatible!
  • Normal textures must be 16x16. HD textures are untested and will probably fail! Sorry!
  • Animated textures must be 16 pixels wide and a multiple of 16 pixels high.
  • Custom block/item textures are untested, but it is possible that they will simply work if you put their textures in the appropriate texture directories before starting AutoMap.
• Dropped item names now use the proper "display name" instead of the unlocalized internal name. If your language uses a different character set that AutoMap doesn't support, this might break things! (Let me know!)
• Fire, lava, water, portals, etc now animate much like they do in-game.
• Changed website font to Sans-Serif for readability.
• NOTICE: You may see some texture handling errors appear in errordump.txt in your AutoMap folder. These happen when AutoMap can't get the correct texture file name from the Minecraft process. Please report these to me via email or the AutoMap forum thread so I can fix them for the next release!

I've thought about it some more and decided that I can still make AutoMap work with MC 1.5. I can get the data I need out of Minecraft in order to properly use Minecraft's new texture files. This is a medium-large task and I can't say when I will finish it.

It may also enable me to add custom block support to AutoMap. If so, it will be a simple manual process requiring you to know each block's ID and have a single .png file containing the block texture. The same should apply to custom items as well (not just blocks).

Minecraft has completely re-done the way block and item textures work internally. It is simply not worth my time to make AutoMap properly compatible with Minecraft 1.5. I will not be updating AutoMap again until Mojang actually releases the modding API that should have been released a year and a half ago.

Just so you all know, if and when the API is released and AutoMap is updated, it might be very different (i.e. AutoMap might not work with internet servers). I apologize for the inconvenience this causes.

UPDATE: See March 15 post.

Updated to work with Minecraft 1.4.7.

Updated to work with Minecraft 1.4.5. Fixed rendering of chests on the map.

As I have mentioned before, Mojang is working on an official API for plugins. I created a proposal in their API proposal system which covers the necessary client-side API features for a minimap plugin like AutoMap.

https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MCAPI-236

Upvotes and positive comments on the API proposal would be much appreciated. It may go a long way toward getting them to implement the needed functionality.

If the features in my proposal do NOT make it into the API, I will basically have two choices:

1. Continue updating AutoMap as a client-side modification. This is a lot of work for me, particularly when features get broken. This happens on a regular basis and I would love to be able to stop spending time on it.
2. Rewrite the Java portion of AutoMap to be a server plugin using their server-side API. This would reduce my workload but it would also mean that AutoMap would not work on multiplayer servers that aren't run by you on your own LAN.

There is also some uncertainty about whether or not Mojang will even implement a client-side API in the first place. That idea seems silly to me. If the official Minecraft API only suppored server-side plugins, it would be little more than a glorified Bukkit rewrite. If that is all we get, then Mojang will have grossly overpaid its API team. I have more faith in them than that.

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I intend to update AutoMap for MC 1.4.3 soon after it is officially released.