NOTacMap

A live tactical map for Nuclear Option, for a second monitor. A BepInEx plugin reads game state and serves it to a page in your browser. Nothing to calibrate or set up per map.

Features

• Opens in your browser when the game starts (can be turned off), and closes itself when the game does if the browser allows it. Double-click the map for fullscreen
• Live position, tracked units, airbases and waypoints, with an icon per unit type and a legend. Units are matched by name, mods included, and anything unknown gets a fallback shape. Icons rotate for your aircraft, helicopter, missiles and bombs
• Teammates, AI/structures and enemies each get their own color, and every map color is editable under DISPLAY, from a honeycomb palette or with RGB and hex values
• Incoming-missile warnings with speed and ETA, from the same RWR detection as the cockpit. Friendly missiles in flight are shown for everyone, labeled with the pilot
• Marked targets get an amber reticle, which turns into a spinning "LOST" marker if you lose contact
• Missile locks show as a pink line and ring. With several missiles out, the closest one gets the label and the rest are small rings (+N). If a missile loses its lock on an aircraft, a ring shows where it was and the line snaps
• Weapon range ring: a circle at your weapon's base range that turns into a cone along your heading once you mark a target. The range matches the cockpit HUD
• Runway approach lines, and fading trails behind moving units. FILTER picks which kinds of trails show, and the grid can be switched off too
• FILTER and DISPLAY (top right) control what's shown, how it looks, and the colors. Saved to a settings.json next to the plugin. A dark outline on text keeps labels readable over the terrain (switch it off in DISPLAY). Tap the legend to open or close it, and the Help button next to it explains the symbols and the settings
• The background map comes from the game's own terrain texture, so any map works. Pan, zoom, and a button to recenter on you
• Optional LAN mode to open the map on a phone or tablet on your home network. Off by default, touch works
• Light on frame rate: redraws slowly when idle, speeds up when you pan or zoom, and sleeps while the tab is hidden

Install

Install with r2modman or the Thunderstore app. The map page opens in your default browser when the game starts. Drag it to your second monitor. To stop that, set Server > AutoOpenBrowser to false in the BepInEx config and open http://localhost:8123/ yourself.

Requires BepInEx 5, which the mod manager installs for you.

Phone or tablet

Off by default. To open the map on another device on your home network:

1. Start the game. The map page on your PC first asks where you want to see the map. Pick "On another device".
2. The first time, a prompt says what that opens up. Confirm it, then press "Show QR code and link". Open the link, or scan the code with the camera, on the other device once. The phone remembers the link afterwards.
3. If Windows asks about the firewall, allow it on private networks only.

Tick "Remember my choice" to skip the question and the prompt next time.

Once access from other devices is on, it stays on after a restart until you switch it off. Picking "On this PC" does not turn it off. The DEVICES button (top right) has the switch and the setting for what the page does when it opens. The QR code and the link stay hidden until you press "Show QR code and link", and hide again after 2 minutes. While the PC tab is on that screen it draws no map and keeps no connection open. You can also set Server > AllowLan in the config; the switch keeps that value in step.

Only devices on a private network address (192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, 172.16 to 31.x.x or 169.254.x.x) are accepted, and they need the secret in the link. The New link button in DEVICES makes a new link and cuts off every device that has the old one. Deleting LanToken from the config and restarting the game does the same. Switching access off and on again keeps the same link.

Anyone who has the link can see your map, and the connection isn't encrypted, so use it at home and not on public wifi. Don't forward the port (router port forwarding, WSL2 or netsh portproxy, a reverse proxy): anything forwarded to this PC looks like it comes from the PC itself and needs no secret. Saving settings only works from the PC, so a phone keeps its own display settings.

If Windows won't let the game listen on the network, the page and the log say so, and the map keeps working on the PC. The page can't keep a phone screen awake over plain HTTP, so set a longer screen timeout on the phone.

How it works

The plugin runs inside the game and starts a local HTTP server (http://localhost:8123/ by default). Only this PC can reach it, unless you turn on LAN access (see Phone or tablet). It only reads data your client already has, and never asks the game server for anything extra or sends networked commands. Marked targets and locks only show what the game's own tracker knows. Other websites can't read it or change your settings. The page is a single HTML/JS file that connects over Server-Sent Events and draws on a canvas.

Feedback and bugs

Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/Big-LouDE/NOTacMap/issues (it needs a free GitHub account). Say what you did and what you expected. If something broke, add the NOTacMap lines from BepInEx/LogOutput.log.

About this project

Claude helped out here and there while I was building this, mostly to make sense of how the game's code works.

Source: https://github.com/Big-LouDE/NOTacMap

Credits / third-party components

• BepInEx (LGPL-2.1): mod loader
• Newtonsoft.Json (MIT): JSON serialization
• Mirage (MIT): referenced read-only against the game's own networking types, not redistributed

No in-game assets are bundled. The background map is captured from the game's own terrain texture on your machine each time the plugin loads, and is never stored.

License

MIT