This guide may spoil your game experience, since some tiles are secret or don't appear in the game at all. Modding maps can be used to make easy money, therefore it's not better than cheating.

You have been warned...



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You should be familiar with hexadecimal numbers and know what a binary file is.
A hex editor is required to modify the map file (I used HxD, which was ok).

We don't want to create a map file from scratch, so we open an existing one.
Normally, the maps are stored under All of your saved games have their own directory, called worldXX, where XX is a number that may not necessarily match the number displayed in the game. The easiest way to find the directory of a certain game is to:

• Play the game
  
• Save (e.g. by refueling)
  
• Close
  
• Look at the modification dates of the directories and open the last one

As you open worldXX, you'll find two files: map and progress.
As the names suggest, map contains the map and progress the quests. We want to edit map. Open it with your hex editor.

Make sure that you don't edit the map you're currently playing on (this means, the game is running while editing) or vice versa.

A map file is a binary file and starts with a 48(dec) byte long header, followed by the actual map data. The map is basically a rectangular grid of tiles.

A group of 2 bytes describes a tile. The first byte denotes the foreground of the tile (ores, items and so on) and the second one the background (color of the dirt). The tiles are listed from left to right and top to bottom.

We will speak of horizontal lines as you see them in the game.
A line contains 36 visible tiles and a further one at the beginning and at the end, which are not shown in the game (they always have the same code, which makes it easy to find the beginning of line).
The first line (topmost) isn't shown too. Same applies to the last ones (lowest).






The following numbers are hexadecimal. 2 digits represent 1 byte. Since 1 tile is 2 bytes long, it is represented by 4 digits. The 2 first digits describe the foreground, the 2 last digits the background.


You could make the background of the ruby gray. Just change its two last digits to 02 (that's the code for the gray background). That's it - All you have to do is changing the code of some tiles.

Make sure to override data when editing. Do not insert or remove bytes from the file. Especially removing is critical, because super motherload won't load a too short file. A longer file seems to be ok. I think the deepest lines will be discarded, although I never flew to the bottom of a too long map.

You can't edit the positions of the outposts. They seem to be hardcoded.

Editing the map byte by byte can be painful. Here are some tips to make it more comfortable:

Let h be the height of the wanted line (mind the minus sign, if you're underground!). The following numbers are decimal.
The calculated offset is the start marker of the line with height h. Skip these 2 bytes to edit the first (left) tile of that line.

For a better overview, try following options (if they are supported by your editor):
• Build groups of 2 bytes. It's easier to recognize the tiles now.
  
• Add 28(dec) bytes to the beginning and set the line length to 76(dec) bytes. Now one line in the editor is one line on the map. Don't forget to delete the added bytes before you load your map into the game! Note that you have to add 28 to the formula above.
  
• You don't have to exit the game entirely to edit a map. Just go to the main menu.
  
• It's easier to switch between game and editor when playing in window mode.

These are the codes of all normal tiles. They occur in every official generated map and aren't part of any secrets.

The background of a tile specifies its color and the drill level needed to dig through it.

These are the codes of all secret and unused tiles I could find.
I assume, that the developers planed to integrate them into the game, but discarded them later. But I wouldn't mind, if they were part of a update in the near future :)

* These tiles didn't occur in any official map I played. They have icons from real upgrades, but cannot be destroyed (neither by digging, nor by explosions). When you dig in their neighborhood, they often become grey boxes (this affects only the graphics).

** These tiles behave like * but have symbols which don't occur in any other part of the game.

Maybe I will release further guides for editing the progress or character files.
But it will take some time, since they are annoying to decode (for instance: I would have to play the mission over and over again, to get all information needed to decode the progress file).

• They are stored in
  %AppData%\XGen Studios, Inc\Super Motherload\savedata\common
  Normal mode and hardcore mode have their own file.
  
• Character files are loaded when starting super motherload. You have to exit entirely to edit them.
  
• If a character is unlocked or not is stored in the character files (which means, that you could unlock some characters only in one mode).
  
• There's no way to retrieve a dead character. All values are overwritten with the default values immediately after your dead. All you can do is backup the character files.
  
• Each character has its own block in the file, which is 112(dec)=70(hex) byte long.
  
• Money is stored at offsets 38(hex), A8(hex), ...
  The endian seems a bit odd here (probably 16 bit little endian).
  
• Hull level is stored at offsets 31(hex), A1(hex), ...
  Use values from 0 to 6. More is possible, but not necessarily better (mind possible overflows!).
  
• Smelter level is stored at offsets 34(hex), A4(hex), ...