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javaimagemasking

"Masking over" a minimap

I'm not really sure how to explain what I'm trying to do. I'm making an overhead shooter and it consists of a minimap in the top left corner of the screen.

Here is what I'm trying to do (Edited image)

In this case, I need only the portion of the map in the yellow box to be shown, and the portion highlighted in red to be completely invisible. As the player moves, (In this case lets say right), in response the map image would pan to the left.

Again, Inside yellow box = visible

Red highlighted = invisible

It's pretty much like cutting a hole in a piece of paper and putting a picture under it, except that the piece of paper and anything outside the hole is invisible.

I think this is called "Masking", not sure though.

I feel like an idiot trying this hard to explain this.

Solution

  • BufferedImage has a method getSubimage. It should be possible to draw the entire mini-map to a BufferedImage, and then use getSubimage to get only the part that you need.