Map creator

## Overview

    The map creator is available to players who buy the **Creator** add-on for $9.99 USD. The map creator allows you to create maps using all the objects in the game and submit them for review to be placed on the community tab. Map creator button is currently located at the bottom left of the main lobby menu.

Map creator can be bought without buying **Ultra** first. If you have **Creator** but don't have **Ultra** you do not have access to any Ultra exclusive features but you are able to play any of your own maps which have been approved for the community maps page.

## The basics

**Game objects** = planets, moons, stars, orbits, black hole, asteroid belt

### **How to use**

    **Game objects** can be spawned from the **left controller**, it has a menu of currently 4 game objects: **Star, Blackhole, Planet and Moon**. To spawn these use your **right controller** to **point at the object on the menu** displayed on your left controller, **press and hold trigger** then **release trigger where you want to place it**.

Each game object can be selected by **holding the right controller** to the object and **pressing trigger**. This will open up a menu where you can select properties such as ship count and power ranges (see **chapter 3** for more about object properties).

From this menu you can also **create orbits** by selecting 'create orbit'. You can place an object on an orbit. You can **create asteroid belts** by selecting the object in the center of the map. **Asteroid belts and orbits can be dragged to increase the diameter**. The center of the map is defined by a **small purple sphere** on a blank map.

The **save button** is on the top right of the menu on the left wand, **if too many objects or orbits are present** then the **map will not save**. **Remember to save regularly as crashes can make you lose progress**. The **playtest button** is on the bottom right of the menu on the left wand, **map must be saved to playtest**.

You can have a maximum of **80 celestial bodies** and **35 orbits**.

### Tips

* If you are not sure what you want to make, just mess around and experiment. You don't have to make a map for the community tab, it can just be something fun you can play with your friends on.
* Having a key design or concept in mind can help with creating your map. You could try basing your map off of a shape or object that you can create with the orbit lines.
* Good ship progression helps make or break a map, read the section below.

#### **Related pages**

* Go to this page for the list of all map modifiers
* Go to this page to learn about the lock button
* More related pages at the bottom of this one

#### **Tutorials**

* Trailer - Official trailer for the map creator.
* Official guide - Official tutorial on how to use the map creator.

***Need more help?*** Feel free to ask a creator or reviewer in the gods of gravity discord server, there is a message channel called map creator. If you want even more help and want to improve / show off your maps, go to Celestial Genesis (<-click link for server invite). Its a community run server made specifically for map creation. There you can get help from top map creators, showcase your maps and compete in map creator competitions with real in game rewards.

## Object properties

**Game objects** = planets, moons, stars, orbits, black hole, asteroid belt

This category will only tell you about **how game objects can be manipulated** and will NOT give a full overview of each object, if you want to learn more about an object in this category go to its respective page on the wiki. Object placing limits are: **Maximum of 80 celestial bodies** and **35 orbits**.

Here are all the options in the properties menu of each object. To open the properties menu put your **right wand on the object and press trigger**.

### Planets

* **Switch Type** - Changes the planet type from 3 options: special production, home base and stealth.
* **Team** - Changes what team the planet belongs to at the beginning of the game (grey is neutral).
* **Turrets** - Changes how many turrets the planet has to defend it from 0-50.
* **Ships** - Changes how many ships the planet starts with.
* **Miners** - Changes how many miners a planet has from 0-3. This miners increase production speed, instead of mining moons they min the planet so are quicker.
* **Special production** - Changes what ships the planet can produce, can be any ship in the game or none at all.
* **Shattered** - Whether the planet starts of shattered or not.
* **Hit by Meteor** - Selects what time the planet will be hit by a meteor from 1-15 minutes or never.
* **Untakable** - Whether the planet is untakable or not.
* **Neutral Shield** - Whether the planet has a neutral shield (will only have a shield when the planet is neutral).
* **Power Range** - Changes the range of power a planet has from 1-30
* **+ Add Orbit** - Adds an orbit.
* **Duplicate** - Copies the planet including all orbits connected to it.
* **Delete** - Removes the planet and all orbits attached.

*Specific to home team base:*

* **Bonus fleet size** - Increase fleet capacity from 0-80.
* **Home team shield** - Adds a shield to the home base

### Stars

*Normal Star and Black Hole:*

* **Switch Type** - Changes star type from 3 options: star, unstable star and harnessed star.
* **+ Add orbit** - Adds orbit.
* **Duplicate** - Copies the star and all orbits attached to it.
* **Delete** - Removes the star and all orbits attached.

*Specific to Unstable Star:*

* **Turrets** - Change number of turrets from 0-50.
* **Power Range** - Change power rangefrom 1-50.

*Specific to Harnessed Star:*

* **Turrets** - Change number of turrets from 0-50.
* **Ships to Charge** - Change amount of ships needed to charge the star from 10-200 in increments of 5.
* **Targeting delay** - Changes the delay between targeting from none to 30 seconds.
* **No voice lines** - Toggles voice lines on or off.

### Moons

* **Team** - Changes the team the moon belongs to at the start of the game (grey is neutral).
* **Turrets** - Change number of turrets from 0-50.
* **+ Add Orbit** - Adds an orbit.
* **Duplicate** - Copies the moon and all orbits attached to it.
* **Delete** - Removes the moon and all orbits attached.

### Orbits

* **Symmetry** - Changes symmetry of the orbit from 0-5.
* **Speed** - Changes the speed of the orbit from 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 4.
* **Radius** - Changes the radius of the orbit from 1.3-19.0.
* **Circleness** - Makes orbit more elliptical from 1.0-0.2.
* **Delete** - Removes the orbit and anything on it.

### Asteroid belt

* **Radius** - Changes radius of the orbit from 1.3-19.0.
* **Spawn asteroids** - Toggles weather or not it spawns asteroids.
* **Frequency** - The frequency at which they spawn. From 1-5 mins.
* **First** - The time at which the first asteroid spawns. From 2-10 mins.

*All values increment by 1 unless otherwise stated, radius increments by 0.1*

## Submitting to the community

Once you have created your map **you can submit it** to be featured with community made maps. To submit a map **select the 'submit map' button** on the console to the right.

##### **Rules for submission**

All that matters is that the map is **playable**. However, **reviewers do take quality into account** when approving maps, **if a map is badly designed it will likely be rejected**. If your map gets rejected and you want to know why, **you can message the reviewer** who rejected your map directly **in the discord**. They will be able to tell you why it was rejected and how you could improve it.

* You must be sharing the map and it must at least 2 plays, make sure you play test it thoroughly.
* Can't have too many orbits\*
* Can't have too many objects\*
* Max fleet size cant be too big (limits how many bases can be placed)\*
* Bases shouldn't collide or go out of bounds without reasonable intent (be careful of asteroid belt placement)
* At least one home base or owned base per team
* Power ranges shouldn't be overly restrictive and unintuitive
* Don't make it too laggy
* Don't spam objects (map should be intentionally designed)
* No profanity or offensive content
* Correct tags

*Maps that use bugs or exploits to bypass requirements are likely to be rejected by map reviewers upon submission.*

*\*you cannot save a map if you exceed these boundaries*

## Images

map creatormap creation selectionMap settingsmap creation menugame objects
## Related pages

* Map modifiers
* Lock Button
* Map Selection
* God Creator
* Official Maps
* Bases
* Stars
* Black Holes
* Asteroids
* Meteors
* Power
* Turrets
* Ships
* Troops

## Ship Progression - WIP

**This section is still a WORK IN PROGRESS, some information may be misleading or incorrect and much information will be missing.**

Ship progression is a big part of what makes maps fun and what makes maps boring. If you give players op ships at the start, the game can be quite stale and boring. Good ship progression can make a map more enjoyable and repayable, just look at 'Race Of The Gods' for example.

This section will give you a guide and some rules to base your ship progression off, but that doesn't mean you have to stick to them! Many maps do well without good ship progression, and for some maps its part of the design to give op ships at the start eg: boss battles.

First off, lets group ship types into 3 separate classes:

* **Basic** - Laser, Shield, Missile
* **Standard** - Point Defense, Torpedo, Heavy Laser
* **Elite** - Heavy Laser Battleship, Explosive Battleship, Sniper, Nuke

1. **Linear** - Linear ship progression is the simplest and easiest to implement and is the kind you see in many race maps such as 'Race Of The Gods'. It moves up in ship types from **Basic** to **Standard** to **Elite**. EG: Laser, Shield, Missile | Point Defense, Torpedo, Heavy Laser | Heavy Laser Battleship, Explosive Battleship, Sniper, Nuke. (Ships can change position within their class, especially elite ships because its hard to rank them from worst to best).
2. **Mixed** - Most likely you probably aren't making a linear style map and its more akin to an actual solar system. You want to give players choices for what planets they should take first,