Getting Started

This chapter gets you from nothing to an open editor: creating a project, uploading your map image, and learning the eight tabs.

Creating a project

Open the editor from the home screen and tap New Project. You’ll be asked for a map image — the background players see during a game. It must be a PNG, JPEG, or WebP between 1080 and 3840 pixels on each side, no larger than 10 MB.

Choose the image with care: it’s your map’s whole visual identity, and the canvas you’ll place everything on. Satellite photos, hand-drawn landscapes, stylised illustrations, abstract patterns — the editor doesn’t impose a style. Once uploaded, you’re dropped into the editor.

Maps made by the Backchannel studio carry an orange verified badge wherever they appear. Your own maps don’t get one — it marks studio maps, not quality.

The editor

On desktop the editor splits in two: the canvas on the left, the panel on the right. On phones the panel rides in a bottom sheet over the canvas, with a floating button to show or hide it.

The canvas is your map image with everything drawn on top. Pan and zoom to move around; all placement happens here — double-tap to create, drag to connect.

The panel runs through eight icon tabs:

Tabs 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8 are the path every map walks. Tabs 3–5 are the optional objectives layer: you can ship a complete, playable map without ever opening them. Reach for them when you want win conditions richer than “last player standing”. They aren’t panel-only, either — the three objectives tabs light the canvas up with the footprint of whatever you select, and the SAVE tab paints validation problems right on the map.

The flow

A typical map walks the tabs in order:

1. Place territories and connect them. (TERRITORIES)
2. Define bonus zones. (BONUSES)
3. Optional: build Bonus Groups. (BONUS GROUPS)
4. Optional: group Constellations into categories. (CATEGORIES)
5. Optional: author the Constellations themselves. (VICTORY OBJECTIVES)
6. Paint starting positions. (SPAWNS)
7. Name it, set the player count, dial in defaults. (SETTINGS)
8. Validate and publish. (SAVE)

Move between tabs freely; revisit anything. Nothing is final until you publish. A domination-only map collapses to steps 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 — and that’s a complete game.

Checking your work

A read-only map viewer opens from the Save tab. It draws your current draft exactly the way players will see it. Tap a bonus row, spawn group, or neighbour chip in its sidebar and the canvas flies to the region and pulses the territories — the quickest way to catch a mistaken bonus assignment or a mis-painted spawn before you publish.

Published maps also get a share link: open it in a fresh tab and it lands straight in the viewer on your map, no lobby needed. See Validation & Publishing.

Where to go next