One Year of StellarMaps

Making a tool/toy for Stellaris

Last August, I started working on a program to draw maps of Stellaris saves. It started as just an experiment, a way to play with some technologies. Maybe a few weeks or a couple months. Well, here I am one year and thousands of lines of code later, still working on it, and it's been my main (but not only) non-work project for the duration.

What is StellarMaps?

StellarMaps is a program makes stylized and customizable maps from the sci-fi strategy game Stellaris.

There are some existing programs with this capability, such as RandomComputerUser's Stellaris Map Generator, myaut's Stellaris Galaxy Map, and blubblubblobb's Stellaris Dashboard. However, none of these are as customizable as I would like, and are missing various feature's such as displaying country emblems. I decided to make yet another, partly to address those issues and partly because making maps is simply fun.

The Progress So Far

StellarMaps has come far, from the first screenshot I posted to today:

A prerelease map of StellarMaps, showing blocky borders with bright garish colors A map from v0.10, showing soft borders on a sparkling starscape

This year, I released 11 feature updates:

The Future

I'm currently working on 0.12, the main feature of which is map modes and legends. "Map modes" are options for displaying data on the map, besides borders and locations. For example, coloring countries based on their relation with the player country. Stellaris has a set of map modes in-game. They are moddable, but quite limited. Critically, they can only change the colors of country borders, and cannot display data on anything more granular, like solar systems. With StellarMaps, I can explore map modes that are impossible in-game, such as this WIP population map mode:

A partial map of a galaxy, with colored circles indicating centers of population

After 0.12, I plan to add the ability to generate timelapses of the galaxy. Maps are cool, timelapses are cool, and together they're amazing. Even before the 0.1 release, I posted about how someday I'd love to generate timelapses, so that's definitely been a long-term goal of the project that's gotten pushed back multiple times. I'm committing to 0.13. For real this time.

Beyond that, things get hazier. This could be a never-ending project. There will always be more data that could be displayed, or new ways of displaying that data, or just options for styles. I will definitely implement some of that, but there's also larger features I could explore. Most intriguing to me at the moment, is the possibility of expanding StellarMaps beyond Stellaris. Several people have expressed interest in using StellarMaps to create sci-fi maps for their fiction and world-building projects. That would be a large undertaking, but could bring StellarMaps to a whole new audience.

Personal Reflection

Spending a year (or multiple years?) working on a tool (or toy?) for someone else's game is not something that was ever a goal of mine. From a certain perspective, this project hurts my goals: I aspire to make games (as suggested by username), and working fulltime as a software developer, my free time and mental capacity is limited. I can only substantially make progress on one non-work project at a time. Working on StellarMaps has a large opportunity cost.

However, I need to ask myself why I make games? In rough priority:

StellarMaps actually fulfills all of these:

So StellarMaps will remain my main project at least through 0.13 (timelapses), and perhaps beyond. We'll see what the next year brings.