Decided to touch-up and publish one of my custom maps with this.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3540984513

@FunnelVortex when you have the stars section open, click the map to add/remove a star. When you have the hyperlanes section open, click one star then another to add/remove hyperlane between them. Nothing too advanced, meant for small tweaks after randomly generating, not for a fully handmade map.

If that's not working, yeah try hard-refreshing. (I'm not sure how aggressively GitHub caches the pages.)

Yeah TBF I did point out the limitations with Nro's it's good if you wanna set up a consistent "board game" scenario though.

Oh you can tweak those now? Do I need to hard refresh the page or something? Because I still see the standard tools.

@FunnelVortex yeah, I called out AI-coded so folks can apply their own judgement there (I still write my code the old-fashioned way). However, Nro's Galaxy Editor doesn't do the same thing. You can use Nro's for editing the galaxy map of a save file (btw, you can now manually tweak stars and hyperlanes in Paint a Galaxy, before starting a game). The other tool I posted is for creating custom solar systems mods, eg the stars, planets, asteroids etc inside a system. I don't know of any other GUI tool for that

Actually download Nros's from here, the link I posted in my other comment is outdated
https://github.com/Nro001/Nro-Galaxy-Editor

Instead of supporting AI use Nro's Galaxy Editor (https://www.nexusmods.com/stellaris/mods/133) to make tweaks and adjustments to your galaxy instead. You can load it from a save and use it to set up custom scenarios as long as you're fine with everyone having fixed starting points (using this with that tool can be good for setting up RP and challenge maps).

@Zenthesize woohoo, more modders more mods! You can't directly specify the star, but you can specify the solar system initializer, by adding, for example, "initialzer = special_init_01" (this one is always a black hole) inside the "system = { ... }" lines. You can view the available solar system initializers in the common/solar_system_initializers folder of your Stellaris install (or any mods). You could also mod your own initializers and use those. See https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/System_modding if you want to dive into that, or you can try out this AI-coded graphical tool for it https://github.com/KillyBlame/Stellaris_Solarsystem_Editor (I don't know how well that works).

I'm happy to help and answer questions. Discord is probably better for that -- link to Modding Den at the bottom of the mod description; other folks there are generally helpful and friendly too

this mod is good. it helped me learn about modding the game, i love making my own maps in other games, and this is so easy. thank you, also how would you change star type from different types like black holes? it that random. can i do that in Notepad ++?

That would be fine - I'd probably have to turn off generated wormholes anyways if I wanted to make a 'fully custom' layout.

@G4R5vb5r3H It should be possible to do something with wormholes. I suspect though that there would be a very small chance for it to fail (since there can only be one wormhole per system, if the game randomly spawns a wormhole in the system you designated, then the designated wormhole would fail), but that depends on the timing of things. Anyway, it's something I want to look into

@Natsu_Zirok core highlight, L-cluster highlight, and image upload are all on my todo :)

A couple of thoughts for the editor:
Highlight the center with a separate color for Giga and Azilash (Rift), you can use it as a switch.
Highlight the L-Cluster zone.
Add uploading of your own images (convert RGB to BW). I know that you can't upload to GitHub, but there is a File Api in JS, although it is a bit buggy.

Thank you for the quick fix!

And now another question/request, if I may: would it be possible to add preset wormholes to the generation, or is that now how Stellaris works? I want to know because I've been trying to make disconnected clusters of stars connected by wormholes, but it seems to me that with natural generation, wormholes only connect within their own cluster.

@Sleep I've had an initial conversation with the author, and they are open to coordinating some changes, but are busy currently. If anyone wants to maintain an external patch in the meantime, they are welcome to and I can provide guidance.

Hello, i absolutely love the idea of this mod, but you said its not compatible with ACOT. Any idea when the two of them will have compatiblity? No stress at all, just curious since i really wanna play with this

@G4R5vb5r3H sorry about that! I have dark theme enabled globally, so I missed that bug. That should be fixed now!

@ElSantoAleman no short-term plans for a mobile friendly version, but I do plan to add circles, ellipses and other drawing tools

Slight problem: the new web app is just plain white for me on my PC, so I can't actually see what I'm drawing anymore.

Will you make the website, mobile friendly? Or add a function to put in basic shapes? I only ask because drawing with a mouse is not exactly my forte. Otherwise, thank you for the amazing and innovative mod, nothing else like it anywhere for this game or others!

The web app now lets to place stars and hyperlanes individually, so you can tweak the map and get those chokepoints just right . Technically you can, but please do not try to create a whole galaxy that way -- I don't want to be responsible for your RSI.

@Ula247 by the way, if you still have you're galaxy in the app, you don't need to create from scratch. Just hit the browser refresh button (in case you kept the tab open), then the download map button

@Oatmeal Problem Ah okay I'll have to download a new one then. Thank you very much.

@Ula247 I fixed that issue a couple days ago, but the fix only applies to new downloads from the web app. (If you're experiencing this with e recent download, then I consider that a bug! Please send your painted_galaxy.txt file.)

@Orphan yes! You can simply share the .txt file you downloaded (eg in Discord, Google Drive, pastebin, whatever), or you can upload the mod you created to the workshop using the Stellaris launcher

Is it possible for people to share their maps galaxy creation ?

Would there be a way to make the spawn positions for empire player or ai random. The mod is great but spawning in the same location all the time is tiresome after awhile.

If my emoji spam didn't make it obvious, i'm quite happy about this.

Thank you king!

Crazy guy, good job

the best mod author I know, very quick and efficient help in problem situations

@FunnelVortex I plan to add controls for editing lanes and home system locations. I will not add ability to customize star type / specific systems. That's beyond the scope of this project, especially when you consider mod support. You can, however, manually edit the downloaded txt file with the full power of Stellaris modding. Add `initializer = ...` would let customize the exact system that spawns.

@breedableboy761 I will add more drawing tools over time (circles, ellipses, spirals)

Just wanna say a thanks to oatmeal, helped me walk through it and was supportive on the help

Would love a pre-set galaxy type tool with options like elliptical, spiral etc. I'm awful at drawing these and would love to use them as a base for my custom edits to the galaxy!

This could become something so big in the future, especially if you can edit star types, lanes, and designate habitable/capital systems and generated systems

Someone FINALLY made a GUI galaxy creation tool!

THANK YOU!

Performance with blur enabled in Chrome/Edge/Brave should be much better now!
There's also a new opacity slider that can be used instead of along with blur

@Awww manx thanks! not exactly that, but I have idea to help with that issue

for the mapping site, I think there should be options to change the colors of the hyperlanes so we can see where the hyperlanes are being generated, however very cool and easy site

@Jam reach out on discord (link at the bottom of the mod description) and I'll help troubleshoot

Hello, great mod and thank you for doing this I've always wanted to have a way to design a galaxy to genocide Aliens. I am having an issue though, I've done exactly steps 1 to 8, but its not allowing me to select the galaxy type as painted? I am all up to do date with the game, verified the files etc. However, not sure what way to fix this please? I may literally be doing something dumb, but I've followed the entire process so any help would be appreciated please. Thank you.

Thank you very much!

@Captain Bart yeah, I'll add more drawing tools and guides over time

@Der Integrator some things are too specific to be worth adding controls for. But, you can always edit the downloaded .txt file. Look for the line that says "num_empires" near the top, and change the numbers there. You'll be a modder in no time ;) That said, I do plan on adding controls to specify where random empires can spawn and to specify where the player spawns.

Also could there be an grid on the painting area?

Will there be a way to add specific shapes to the map, I'm terrible at drawing with a mouse.

And another great feature would be to have the ability at which stars or cluster a specific or random empire should be spawned at. This could make so many role playing fantasies come true.

Hey, thank you very much for this mod! This is probably the dream of many players! I have waited for something like this since the game has launched. :D

One slight adjustment that would be very nice to have is a slider on the amount of empires that are spawned, because right now it is a bit limited... a dynamic setting would be nice to have :)

Thank you very much again for your work, you are doing the job that the studio should have done years ago lol

@4koptics if you reach out on discord, I can help troubleshoot (but not right now, I'm headed to bed)

@Oatmeal Problem i finally got it created and setup but when im in game (4.0.21) no option for painted galaxy exists and when i choose any of the galaxy shapes it is just a random galaxy for that shape. I had seen another comment about this and you had said choose elliptical but that did not work for me.

@4koptiks agreed :) that's somewhat complicated by the fact that I use Linux though, so if I record on my computer, it will look different than for most people, which could just introduce more confusion :/ I'll need to set up recording on someone else's Windows computer

To address your question now: this is in step 3, after you've clicked "Create a Mod" and then you're unsure what values to enter? The mod directory is the mod folder name ("folder" and "directory" are the same). You can use any value you want, but best avoid special symbols (exactly which symbols to avoid depends on your operating system... letters and numbers are safe!)

it would be really helpful to have a short tutorial video showing step by step how to get this working. I tried to create the mod through the launcher and get stuck at the mod directory part. Really cool idea for the game though.

I fixed an issue where the player always starts in the same system (if you play the same map multiple times). This fix only applies to new downloads from the web app

THANK YOU

@Douglas135 on my to-do list :)