Raptor Map Editor

A level and enemy editor for Raptor: Call of the Shadows (1994), rebuilt from scratch ~32 years after the original in-house editor's source code was lost. Published with the blessing of Raptor's creator, Scott Host.

The editor is one HTML file with zero dependencies: open index.html in a browser, drop in your own game data files, and edit. Nothing is uploaded anywhere — everything runs locally in the tab, and your original files are never modified (saving downloads patched copies).

What it does

• Edit all 27 levels — paint tiles (with destructible-tile markers and a right-click eyedropper), edit destructible-tile break targets/HP/bounties, place/move/delete enemies, set per-enemy difficulty (easy / medium / hard / secret), full-level view. Selecting a placed enemy also makes that type the active choice for repeated placement.
• Catch level mistakes early — a collapsible warnings strip identifies unused difficulty values, stalled spawn groups, empty maps, and missing tile or sprite-library references; click a warning to jump to it.
• Undo and redo safely — separate 100-step histories for each map and enemy-library bank, with buttons plus Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y, and Ctrl+Shift+Z.
• Find enemy variants quickly — optionally group placement and library entries by their shared graphic without changing their engine-facing indices.
• Edit groups efficiently — rectangle-select enemies, move or change their difficulty together, and copy complete spawn groups across maps and banks.
• Recover interrupted work — versioned local IndexedDB autosave restores maps, libraries, destructible tiles, music, undo history, and dirty state.
• Work directly in the game folder where supported — Chromium browsers on a secure origin can open and save the GLBs in place while preserving an immutable first-save .bak. The first direct write requires confirmation; downloads remain the default and universal fallback.
• Import and create artwork — PNGs are quantized locally to Raptor's VGA palette. Replace tiles or sprite graphics in place, or append consecutive multi-frame sprites without shifting existing positional item IDs.
• Edit combat effects visually — the Library canvas switches between flight paths, gun mounts, and engine flares; drag/add/delete points and edit shot types or flame widths over the actual sprite graphic.
• Share compact mods without base-game records — .rapmod export stores only changed cells, spawn groups, record fields/appends, and replacement MUS or PIC data. Import verifies item-level SHA-256 hashes, previews affected content, validates the complete result, and applies it transactionally with one-click rollback. It emits compatible v1 unless embedded artwork requires v2.
• Change soundtrack slots — choose another built-in track, import a DMX .MUS file, or import Standard MIDI format 0/1 for local conversion to MUS. The original engine hard-codes eight shared slots, so the editor shows every other level affected before a slot is changed.
• Edit the enemies themselves — every enemy definition in the game: hit points, bounty, speed, fire rate, flight AI type, and the flight path on a visual waypoint canvas (drag, click to add, right-click to delete). Select a placed enemy and its flight path overlays the map.
• Create new enemies — Duplicate appends a copy as a brand-new entry. The engine derives the enemy count from the data size, so new enemies work in the unmodified original game — DOS, Steam, or the 2015 Edition.
• Round-trip safe — every file format was validated byte-for-byte against the shipped data; re-saving an untouched map reproduces the archive byte-identically. The engine's spawn-order invariant (see FORMATS.md) is enforced automatically.

Quick start

1. Open index.html in any modern browser.
2. Drag FILE0000.GLB–FILE0004.GLB from your Raptor install onto the page (v1.2+ data; the shareware's FILE0000+FILE0001 also works).
3. Pick a map. The ? button covers the rest.
4. Download GLB saves patched copies. Back up your originals, drop the patched files into your game folder, and play. Where the browser exposes folder access, Open game folder… can save directly after creating first-save .bak files.

Which game version? The classic 1994 game and the 2015 Edition ship the same file0000–file0004.glb (SHA-256 identical), so the editor reads either. For playing your edits, use the 1994 engine — DOS Raptor under DOSBox, the Steam 1994 release, or the open-source port — where patched GLBs are confirmed working. The 2015 Edition is a different engine and is untested with modified files (its extra file0005/0006.glb aren't used by this editor). Work-in-progress or modified GLBs from newer builds are not supported.

Command-line tools

tools/ contains companion format functionality as scriptable Python (3.10+; pip install -r requirements.txt installs Pillow for the graphics commands):

python tools/glbtool.py list      <FILE000n.GLB>          # inspect archives
python tools/glbtool.py verify    <FILE000n.GLB>          # prove lossless round trip
python tools/glbtool.py map2json  <datadir> MAP1G1        # level  <-> editable JSON
python tools/glbtool.py json2map  <datadir> map1g1.json
python tools/glbtool.py lib2json  <datadir> 1             # enemies <-> editable JSON
python tools/glbtool.py json2lib  <datadir> lib.json
python tools/glbtool.py mod2glb   <datadir> mod.rapmod -o patched  # apply a mod safely
python tools/glbtool.py pic2png   <datadir> SHIP01G1_PIC  # any graphic -> PNG
python tools/glbtool.py png2pic   <datadir> art.png --name MYSHIP_PIC   # PNG -> game
python tools/render_map.py <datadir> --all                # render all 27 levels to PNG

png2pic quantizes to the game palette and encodes either graphic format; the encoder reproduces the original tool's output byte-for-byte on re-encoded sprites.

Sharing mods

Use Export .rapmod after editing to create a versioned, human-readable patch. A .rapmod contains item hashes and author-created differences rather than complete unchanged maps or sprite/tile-property records. Version 2 can also carry replaced or appended PIC artwork addressed by archive and item index, which safely handles unnamed and duplicate-name graphics. Mods without artwork use version 1, and both versions remain importable. Recipients load their own GLBs, choose Import .rapmod, review the affected maps, banks, artwork, and music slots, and confirm. A hash mismatch or invalid reference rejects the whole import without applying a partial change; Undo mod import restores the complete pre-import session.

The equivalent non-destructive command-line workflow writes patched GLBs into a separate directory:

python tools/glbtool.py mod2glb /path/to/raptor mod.rapmod -o patched

Keep .rapmod files to changes you have the right to distribute. The format design reduces accidental redistribution of unchanged game data; it is not a legal determination about a particular mod.

Delta Sector — editing the community 4th campaign

Raptor Enhanced is a native Windows build of the open-source engine that supports Delta Sector, an optional community-made 4th campaign (9 new waves remixed from the game's own three sectors). Because its installer patches your FILE0001/FILE0004, the new MAP1G4–MAP9G4 levels are ordinary map items — and this editor picks them up automatically:

1. Install Raptor Enhanced into your game folder. For the campaign data, either run the bundled DeltaSector-optional installer — or skip Python entirely: load your GLBs in this editor and click Add Delta Sector to download patched FILE0001/FILE0004 (byte-identical to the installer's output; keep backups of your originals).
2. Load your now-patched GLBs here. The nine G4 maps appear in the map list next to the original 27.
3. Edit them like any level — tiles from all three tilesets on one map, enemies from any bank, flight paths, difficulty, and music (Delta has its own soundtrack slot table in the Enhanced engine).
4. Save FILE0004.GLB back to the game folder, launch raptor.exe, and press D in the hangar's Ship Computer to play your changes.
5. Share Delta redesigns as .rapmod — the Delta installer is deterministic, so every Delta install has identical base data and imports verify cleanly.

Tests

Fixture-independent codec and validation tests run without game data:

node tests/test_editor_core.mjs
python -m unittest discover -s tests -p "test_*.py"

The synthetic browser smoke test also uses no game data:

npm ci
npx playwright install chromium
npm run test:browser

Pass a GLB directory to the Node test to additionally run the proprietary-data round-trip checks: node tests/test_editor_core.mjs <datadir>.

Legality

This repository contains no game data and no game code — you supply your own GLB files from a copy of the game you own (Steam, GOG). The file formats were reverse-engineered from the released DOS source code and the GPL-2 skynettx/raptor port, then validated against the shipped data. Don't redistribute game files or archives containing them. JSON export contains complete map data and is intended for personal backup and tooling. For sharing author-created changes, use the base-hashed .rapmod patch format described above, which omits unchanged base map cells and library records.

Credits

• Scott Host — for Raptor, the released source, and the go-ahead to publish. Buy his games: mking.com.
• Built by Alexbeav with Claude (Fable), Anthropic's AI agent — the format recovery, the editor, and these tools came out of one long session of reading 1994 C code together.
• nukeykt and skynettx — the reverse-engineered source port that made format validation possible.
• The DOS Game Modding Wiki — prior GLB format documentation.

MIT licensed. See FORMATS.md for the complete file-format reference recovered during this project.