Add a Minimap to Vanilla Minecraft (100% Server-Side)

[00:00:00]So, in the big year 2026, there has been this trend ongoing of plugins releasing that add mod-like features to Minecraft servers. You know, things that we initially thought were only possible with mods that you actually install on your client. But, as time goes on, we're discovering that a lot of these things are also possible completely server-side using plugins. And today is a very good example of just that, because we're going to have a look at N Minimap, a Minecraft plugin that fully runs on the server-side that adds a minimap to your Minecraft server that every single player on your server is able to see. It is immensely cool. So, let's go and have a look. But, before we do that, do make sure to double-check if you're a sub to the channel. The vast majority of my daily viewers are still not. So, if you could just double-check if you're actually subscribed, I would appreciate that so extremely much. So, just have a look at my screen right now. You see that very cool minimap there in the top left? Well, if I wouldn't know any better, I would totally say I currently have a minimap mod installed that makes this possible. But, the reality is that this is a server-side plugin, meaning I had to install absolutely nothing on the client-side. And the only thing that happened is a resource pack got applied, which is absolutely unreal. So, let's have a look. So, again, the plugin is called N Minimap. And it is a PaperMC plugin to display a minimap on the vanilla client. No mods required, nothing like that. Now, it is available for the latest version of Minecraft. And for Folia, Paper, and Purpur, there is a Spigot version. It is not recommended to use it, though, as the plugin had to heavily compromise to even get it working on Spigot in the first place.

[00:01:44]But, at this point, please use Paper or one of its forks. Now, to get N Minimap working on your server, you simply want to go and download the applicable version for your platform. After that, you also want to go ahead and download the Envy ORM. This is a dependency for N minimap. A link to this plugin can of course also be found in the description down below. So, make sure to download the latest jar here, too. And last but not least, you also want to download Packet Events, also a mandatory dependency, so make sure to download it.

[00:02:14]After that, drag all into the plugins folder of your Minecraft server and give it a quick little restart. After doing that, you should see an N minimap folder appear inside of your plugins folder.

[00:02:25]This one you simply want to open up and in here you want to look for the built pack.zip. This is the resource pack that needs to be applied to all of your players for everything to work correctly. Now, for testing purposes, I can just go ahead and download this one and then apply it to my own client in order for everything to work. But if you want this to work for all of your players, you of course have to turn this resource pack into a server resource pack. Now, you can do this by, for example, hosting it somewhere in Google Cloud and then putting a link into the server properties file. You can also install a plugin like Resource Pack Manager and do it that way. I've made a separate video on the channel on how to set up a server resource pack, so make sure to watch that one if you do have any questions.

[00:03:06]But after applying the pack to our client, we're now able to type /minimap enable and there we go. The minimap fully works. Now, let's immediately cover the elephant in the room. Kasai, why are you not using your shaders?

[00:03:20]Well, that is because this minimap system fully relies on the core shaders of Minecraft. It uses the core shaders to render this map on my screen and keep it in position, which means if I do enable my shaders, the minimap fully breaks. Yeah, this is not what it's supposed to look like and this is immediately the biggest downside. If you have a Minecraft server and you know that a bunch of people always play with shaders, this minimap will not work for them. Now, you may wonder, Kasai, your game does look kind of shader-like. And yes, it does. The skybox looks incredible, and everything in the world has kind of an outline. But, this is all done with mods that also rely on the core shaders of Minecraft, meaning they work perfectly together. If you want to know how to achieve this look in game, by the way, I've also made a dedicated video about that a while back. But, other than that singular downside, this minimap works perfectly. So, you can see me walking around here in the world. It is showing the exact same interface as a normal map would that you're holding in your hand, and that is also what they're using for this. It is basically just a normal map, the in-game map inside of Minecraft, but then pinpointed to the top left of your screen. Now, it doesn't have to be the top left. We can also change the sides to the right side if we want, and there we go. Now, we've moved the minimap, depending on which side you prefer. We can also change the scale.

[00:04:41]So, right now it is on scale one, which means that I'm only able to see a very limited portion of the world. But, if we set it to scale two, for example, you can see that the map zooms out. We're now able to see a lot more. We can also change it to scale four. Now, we already see a crazy lot. We can even see other biomes on the map right now. But, for the daring ones, you can also change it to eight, which uh yeah, that's very useful. You can, by the way, see the world generating live as we go, cuz this is just a portion of the world I've never been in. And because this relies on the vanilla map system, it has just not been loaded yet. But, it's working on it. Now, you can also change the style. So, by default, it is a square.

[00:05:21]We can also change it to a round map if that is something you prefer. And when we do this, the map will even rotate alongside with you, which, if you ask me, is a very cool addition. I absolutely love that.

[00:05:33]There's, of course, also a command to disable and enable the minimap. So, if there is a player in your server that really wants to play with shaders, you can give them the opportunity to disable this minimap. That way, they can't benefit from using the minimap, but they can at least play with their favorite shader pack. Now, when we type {slash} mini map admin, we can clear the cache in case you're experiencing something that just keeps on breaking. We can reload the plugin, and there are also stats, which just shows the tiles that are currently in the RAM, the cache size, the players with the maps enabled, and a bunch of other potentially useful information. Now, if we dive into the config file of N mini map, we can change a bunch of settings here. For example, if caching should be allowed and what the maximum space is that caching can take. Also, if new chunks should be rendered. So, for example, when we put that mini map to eight, it didn't fully load. Well, if we would have installed Chunky, which I've also made a dedicated video on here on the channel, you can make it so it automatically generates new terrain when it is needed for players. If you want to use a MySQL database instead of just a local database, that is also something which you can do. And here, you can also determine if you should see a marker for yourself and for other players on the mini map. In other words, if there is another player online and you leave this on default, you will also be able to see them on the mini map. So, depending on the type of server you have, you may want to turn this one off, especially if it is PvP focused, cuz it will give away your location. Oh, there's even a max skill setting. This is the first time I'm seeing this. So, what happens when we set this to 20? Will this completely break the plugin? Okay, no, it won't.

[00:07:10]Eight is the max. But, if you don't want players to have a mini map of eight, you can also set the limit to something like two or four, which is probably a bit easier on your server's hardware. So, in my opinion, this is an incredibly cool plugin and a very, very cool addition to any Minecraft server, especially SMP ones. So, do check it out if you're interested. And also, thank you so much to the person who suggested this plugin to me. I recently introduced a suggestion forum on kasai.gg. Link can, of course, be found in the description down below. Over there, you can suggest any plugin, mods, or other project for me to cover on the channel. So, if you want to bring something under my attention, that form is the place to be.

[00:07:46]And with that being said, that's going to be it for today. Do make sure to sub to the channel, join my Discord. Thank you so much, channel members. And then, I will see you in the next one. Bye-bye.

[00:07:57]See you later. Bye-bye.

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