MAP file

MAP files are computer files created by Sword of Moonlight's SOM_MAP editing tool.

Portable MAP files

Prior to version 13 MAP files are restricted to PRT files with names of the form 0000.prt and 1023.prt, and every number between. In order to work within this space, the files must be overwritten, or replaced, and cannot be easily shared, requiring that participants somehow partition their computers' file systems, or dedicate entire computers to each project in progress.

• A version 13 MAP file accepts any profile name that fits both within 30 UTF-8 code units and 10 UTF-16 code units, excluding the dotted file extension.

• The true identity of the profile is understood to be its icon field. This is a secondary 30 byte field which identifies an icon to be displayed in SOM_MAP. Version 13 assumes that no two profiles share the same icon. And it is strongly recommended that a 22 byte base64 encoded 128-bit universally unique identifier be used for this purpose. The remaining 8 bytes can hold a 4 byte addressing scheme, and the 4 byte dotted file extension.

• If a profile is missing, the response is to search within the project for a profile with a matching icon. This is in case the profile was renamed. However, if the icon is of the form icoX.bmp where X is a series of digits 0 through 9 and bmp is anything following . then the search should not be carried out; the profile will not be considered renamed.

Tip: concerning custom profiles the correct workflow is to create an icon with a random serial number as described above, since you do not want to be tempted to change this. From here on out you should have no worries. If you must migrate custom profiles to version 13 map files, what you need to understand is that under no circumstance should the names of the profiles (their file names) and their icons be changed at once. As long as only one of these is changed at at time, followed by saving all of the MAP files involved each time, the maps will survive. All files should be backed up, checked, and double checked thoroughly before moving on.

Furthermore while you can change the icons to prepare for a smooth transition. You cannot change the profile names in advance. You can only rename profiles if your maps have already been saved as version 13 ( To find out what version your map is. Open its MAP file in a text editor. The version number should be the first thing you see.)