Custom Galaxies

With the Proteus game type we introduced an all new custom galaxy system. Its more complicated to use, but more powerful. In Triton we allowed you to place each players home star, but in Proteus you can place every Star in the Galaxy.

Proteus

In Proteus, you must proved a properly formatted JSON string, that contains an array of stars. (Simply paste the string into the text area provided.)

When you use this method to specify the starting Galaxy, all other Galaxy customization options are ignored.

Each Star must provide the following properties

• uid - a unique integer > 0
• name - the stars name
• x - x pos
• y - y pos
• r - resource value (5-60)
• ga - warpgate (0 or 1)
• e - pre-built economy
• i - pre-built economy
• s - pre-built economy
• st - pre-built ship strength
• puid - the uid of the owning player (optional)
• wh - the uid of a wormhole connection (optional)

Scale is 0.0625 / light year. Players will be able to jump 0.25 units at the start of the game. (Range Tech Level 3 = 4 Light Years.)

Each player in the game needs be be provided with at least one star, and when creating the game to run your custom galaxy, you must select the same number of players as you have built the custom galaxy for.

Below is a sample galaxy of 4 stars for 2 players

Note: Hand writing JSON strings can be difficult, and the game doesn't provide any feedback about what might be wrong with your JSON. Using an editor of some kind recommended.

We hope to have a built-in Galaxy editor soon.

Triton

By choosing custom galaxy, you can provide a list of the starting position of each player.

You must provide a coordinate for the home star of every player. Each player home star is defined by a set of two integers in square brackets separated by a comma. These in turn need to be separated by commas and enclosed in square brackets.

Example: 3 player home stars in a row.
[[0, 0], [0, 12], [0, 24]]

Each player home star should be approximately 12 units apart. The distance between each player start will be scaled by the Starting Distance setting.

When using a medium starting distance, 1 unit will be 1 light year in game. When using a close starting distance, 1 unit will be 0.66 light years, and when using a far starting distance, 1 unit will 1.33 light years.

Once each player home star is placed, a number of stars will be automatically placed around it. The number of stars created is defined by the Stars Per Player setting, and how they are placed is defined by the Star Scatter setting.

Please keep in mind that it is very easy to create a galaxy that is unplayable or not fun. If your home stars are too far apart, or there are not enough stars scattered randomly between them, carriers may not be able to reach some stars and players may find themselves cut-off from the rest of the galaxy.

Please test your custom settings before inviting players to your game!

Head on over to the forums and share you designs and round up players for your game.