My homebrew tools to help explore the galaxy in early versions.
About Custom Galaxy Maps
Before No Man’s Sky added the modern galactic coordinate and navigation systems we know today, exploring its near-infinite universe was a mystery. Back then, players discovered strange symbols hidden in a buildable planetary item — the signal scanner. After some community sleuthing, those mysterious glyphs turned out to represent 3D coordinates in hexadecimal format, with a bit of extra data thrown in for good measure.
This discovery opened the door to something amazing: players could finally locate themselves within the galaxy and share the coordinates of interesting planets, bases, and phenomena on Reddit, Twitter, and community hubs.
Soon after, a clever player created a small web tool that translated these coordinates into a map view — helping explorers navigate the quintillions of star systems in the game.
While that app was incredibly useful, I wanted to build on the idea — to create something more user-friendly, mobile-ready, and visually intuitive.
At the time (around 2017), I had almost no experience in app or web design. But with patience, endless Google searches, and plenty of trial and error, I managed to craft a working prototype that I’m still proud of today.
I built it using CoffeeScript — it was simpler to read than vanilla JavaScript — and even connected it to a headless WordPress database that stored player-submitted locations from the game.
As both a long-time No Man’s Sky fan and now a designer/web developer, this project remains one of my favorite examples of how curiosity, community, and creativity can collide in the best possible way.