The minimap HUD and the map inside it

What the HUD controls

Shape and size, position on screen, the frame or border, whether the health and armour bars hug it, the street-name bar under it, and any overlay you draw on top such as a nearest-postal readout or a compass. All of that lives in a HUD resource and none of it is texture.

• Circle, square or rounded frame
• Position, scale and margins
• Health, armour, hunger and thirst rings
• Street name bar, postal readout, compass

What the map controls

Everything inside the frame. The colour of the land, the water and the roads; whether postal numbers and street names are drawn into the art; how the terrain is shaded; and what your logo looks like sitting on it. This is the part you cannot change from Lua at runtime, because it is streamed art.

It also controls the pause-menu map, since both read the same tiles. A HUD resource cannot restyle the pause map; a texture pack restyles both at once.

Making the two agree

Pick one of them to carry the colour. If your HUD frame is a strong brand colour, use a neutral map — graphite or black — and let the frame do the talking. If your HUD is monochrome, take a coloured map and let the map be the identity. Two saturated colours around one small circle is the most common way a good HUD and a good map end up looking bad together.

The second rule is contrast direction. A light HUD over a dark map reads well; a light HUD over the alabaster daylight map does not, because the frame disappears into the ground.

Square versus circle

A square frame shows noticeably more map for the same screen area, which is why it has become the default on custom HUDs. It is also less forgiving: the corners expose more of the map at once, so a noisy texture that got away with it inside a circle stops getting away with it. Flat, drawn maps suit square frames particularly well.