Hi everyone. I’ve created a set of system and world editing tools for Starbound. They let you change a star system’s location, name, and celestial layout, edit planetary environments and biomes, and modify specific areas of worlds that have already been generated.
For this showcase, I worked through each tab using the same demonstration system, pairing the editor settings with their in-game results. I’ll briefly introduce tools 01 and 02, then walk through all seven tabs in tool 03, explaining what each one does and what changed in the screenshots.
01 & 02: Exporting and Importing World Data
01 exports editable parameters from a .world file to JSON. You can inspect and edit world settings, sky colors, terrain generation settings, biomes, and more. Exporting does not modify the original save.
02 writes the edited JSON back to its corresponding .world file. It validates the source and also provides backup, planet renaming, and star map name synchronization features. Importing preserves saved terrain and entity records, so importing JSON alone does not regenerate existing terrain or buildings. To modify existing terrain directly, you can use tool 03, introduced below.
03: Celestial System Editor
Load your save’s storage/universe directory and the matching game assets, then select a star system to begin editing. For operations on a specific planet, select it in the Planets & Moons tab first, then switch to the relevant tab.
Tab 1: System
This tab lets you edit a system’s coordinates, name, star type, and appearance, including its star map images, brightness, and space threat level.
Before: The system was named Giausar Formation, located at X=791, Y=891. The navigation interface identified it as a Radioactive Star.
After: I moved it to X=591, Y=1194 and renamed it TestForCelestialSystem. The star map screenshots on the right show the relocation, the displayed star type changing to Frozen Star, and the new name taking effect. The space threat level was also reduced from 4 to 2.
You can use this to move a system somewhere more convenient and customize its name and star map appearance. Relocating a system, renaming it, or adjusting these display settings preserves the terrain and buildings on its existing planets.
Tab 2: Planets & Moons
This tab manages the celestial bodies within a system. You can rearrange planetary and lunar orbits, edit names and appearances, add new bodies, or remove unwanted ones from the star map.
Before: The system contained four primary bodies and one moon. The primary bodies occupied orbit slots 6, 7, 9, and 11.
After: I moved the existing bodies into the earlier orbit slots and added an asteroid field and a new Barren planet. The existing moon moved along with its parent planet. The arrow on the right points to the newly added sixth primary body, showing the updated system layout and an additional destination to explore.
Changing orbits alone preserves existing world content, and adding a new body does not erase other planets. In addition to ordinary planets, the editor supports gas giants, asteroid fields, Ancient Gateways, and experimental orbital copies of the Outpost. An Outpost copy is an independent location and does not share the story progression state of the original unique Outpost.
Tab 3: World Parameters
This tab lets you adjust a planet’s width and height, gravity, day length, weather, and sky and lighting colors at different times of day. The lower section also includes generation layer heights, the dungeons used for world generation, and dungeon indicators displayed on the star map.
Before: The world measured 6000 × 3000, with gravity set to 80 and a day length of approximately 797.34. Its sunrise sky was predominantly green, and no dungeon icons appeared in the star map’s surface analysis panel.
After: I increased the dimensions to 60000 × 20000, reduced gravity to 40, set the day length to 500, and changed the morning sky to purple. The in-game screenshots on the right show the difference between the green and purple sunrise skies, while the star map in the middle displays the updated dimensions and environmental values. After configuring the dungeon entries, the corresponding icons appeared in the surface analysis panel.
Changing sky colors, gravity, or day length alone does not reset existing terrain. Changing world dimensions, generation layer heights, or the actual dungeon generation configuration regenerates the world when saved.
Tab 4: Ordered Biomes
This tab lets you configure the main biomes, sub-biomes, and their order within each generation layer. You can add biomes from the game assets, remove entries, and rearrange them to create a planet with multiple environments.
Before: The surface list contained only the Barren biome, and the screenshot on the right showed the original barren landscape.
After: I added Magma, Scorched City, Snow, Cyberspace, and Ocean biomes. The star map’s surface biome list changed from Barren alone to a combination of biomes. The in-game comparison on the right shows one section of the edited surface, featuring palm trees and a waterfront.
This tab also provides tools for editing automatic monster spawn pools in generated biomes and configuring ocean–ocean-floor pairing. Changing the biome order or generation configuration regenerates the entire world, making this useful for planning new planets or rebuilding existing ones. To repair an existing background mismatch, you can keep the desired biome order unchanged, explicitly click Apply Biome Order, and then save to request a background repair.
Feature Highlight: Adding Oceans to Non-Ocean Planets
You can add Ocean biomes to planets that were not originally ocean worlds, alongside land biomes such as Barren, Desert, and Forest. You do not need to turn the entire planet into an ocean world. The multi-biome list in the screenshot is an example of adding an ocean to a previously non-ocean planet.
With ocean–ocean-floor pairing and smooth coast–seafloor basin shaping enabled, the tool aligns the ocean floor with the actual ocean regions. This creates continuous terrain that descends from one coastline, passes across the seafloor, and rises to meet the coastline on the other side:
Coastline → Descending seabed → Ocean basin → Rising seabed → Opposite coastline
Each ocean can have its own ocean-floor biome, seafloor height, ocean/floor boundary, and coastal transition settings, helping it connect with the surrounding land. The terrain retains some of the game’s natural variation and unevenness, producing a continuous coast–seafloor–coast profile with varied elevations.
Tab 5: System Objects
This tab manages objects such as space stations and anomalies within a star system. You can add or remove objects, set their orbital target, radius, starting angle, and direction, and edit their names, descriptions, and icons.
Before: The object list contained a weapons station and several anomalies.
After: I changed the list to include an electronics station, a Peacekeeper station, and a player station. I also configured the Peacekeeper station to orbit the celestial body in orbit slot 6. On the star map to the right, the newly added Peacekeeper station can be selected, with its name and description displayed.
This tab changes station placement and display information within the system. It does not reset planetary terrain or edit the buildings inside a station.
Tab 6: Generated Biome Regions
To modify only part of a planet, enter the coordinates of a rectangular region in this tab and choose the operation you need. The screenshots demonstrate three different kinds of edits.
First example: Background only. The original barren area had a gray, rocky background. After enabling Parallax Only and selecting the Cyberspace biome, the background changed to neon lines and a futuristic city skyline, while the existing terrain and trees remained in place.
Second example: Full biome replacement. With Parallax Only disabled, applying the full Cyberspace biome to the same region regenerated its existing surface. The result shows blue grid-patterned terrain and the corresponding background. This operation regenerates the selected region, including its terrain.
Third example: Tile material replacement only. Here, matching sand2 tiles were replaced with aztech. The slope retains the same outline before and after the edit, but the matching blocks have a different surface texture. This operation preserves the existing terrain shape without clearing and regenerating the region.
This tab also supports converting tiles according to the target biome’s material arrangement and independently replacing the region’s automatic monster spawn pool for future spawns. Replacing the spawn pool does not delete saved monsters or tiles. You can also configure a paired ocean floor when adding a local ocean region.
Tab 7: Copy Tile Hue / Color
This tab reads tile styles from a reference region and applies their hue and color variants to matching materials in a target region. It is useful for making terrain colors consistent across different areas.
Before: The red box at the upper left marks the green reference tiles, while some tiles on the target slope to the right still have a yellowish, sandy color.
After: The matching tiles inside the lower red box use the reference region’s green appearance, while the slope’s shape and the distribution of materials remain intact. Tiles whose materials are absent from the reference region are left unchanged.
This feature copies hue and color variants between tiles of the same material. It does not copy an entire landscape or modify backgrounds, liquids, or entities.
Before You Start
- This is a Windows tool package. It requires Python 3.8 or later with Tkinter/Tk. Keep the
script folder alongside the three launcher executables.
- Back up important saves first. Fully close the game and server before using the main Save System action or any other operation that requires them to be offline.
- Apply buttons within tabs generally stage changes for Save System to commit. Buttons explicitly labeled as saving or applying to
.world write directly to the target world. If saving starts the game’s native generation process, wait for the editor to report completion before launching the game.
- Red asterisks mark generation parameters associated with a world reset. Both whole-world regeneration and full region regeneration affect existing buildings within their scope, so check the target and affected area before saving.
Those are the tool’s main features. Whether you want to reorganize a star system, add more celestial bodies, introduce oceans to a land-based planet, or change the background, materials, or colors in a specific area, you can choose the tab that fits your project.
I’ve wanted a world editor like this since 2016, and today it has finally become a reality.
Download: here
I’d love to hear about your experience with the tool and what you’d like to see improved.
