There's a utility in the contrib directory called mapmapper which converts old style maps (1.x) to new style maps (2.x). The new map format is as follows: SYMBOL MEANING x Completely filled block s Upper left half filled w Lower left half filled q Lower right half filled a Upper right half filled b Completely filled decoration block h Upper left half filled y Lower left half filled t Lower right half filled g Upper right half filled # Fuel block r Upwards cannon d Leftwards cannon f Rightwards cannon c Downwards cannon _ Neutral base 0..9 Base belonging to team n * Treasure (belongs to team with closest base) ! Target (belongs to team with closest base) +, - Positive/repelling and negative/attracting grav >, < Clockwise and anti-clockwise grav i Upwards gravity current j Leftwards gravity current k Rightwards gravity current m Downwards gravity current @, (, ) In/out, in and out wormholes respectively A..Z Checks, 'A' = start $ Force the direction of homebases. Players starting on homebases that are adjacent to this symbol will start with the front of their ship pointing to this dollar sign. Clients don't draw this symbol. % Item concentrator. Putting it in a map will determine where items appear. When one or more item concentrators are in a map then itemConcentratorProb (1.0 by default) of all items appear only in an area around the item concentrators; the remainder of the items, or all of them if no item concentrators are defined, popup anywhere. The area is a circle with a radius determined by the server option -itemConcentratorRadius. An item concentrator is drawn on screen as three rotating triangles. z Friction block. Ships in this kind of block have friction acting on them equal to blockFriction, not friction. The option blockFrictionVisible determines whether or not players see the friction block as decor or not at all. ^ Empty Treasure. Belongs to the team with closest base. An empty treasure behaves like a regular treasure, except that it does not own a ball. & Asteroid concentrator. Putting it in a map will determine where asteroids appear. When one or more asteroid concentrators are in a map then asteroidConcentratorProb (1.0 by default) of all asteroids appear only in an area around the asteroid concentrators; the remainder of the asteroids, or all of them if no asteroid concentrators are defined, popup anywhere. The area is a circle with a radius determined by the server option -asteroidConcentratorRadius. An asteroid concentrator is drawn on screen as three rotating squares. any other char Empty block elnopuv~`=[]{}|:;"',.?/ are free for future expansion. In case you are wondering if all the characters for map symbols have any special meaning, they are not abbreviations, but if you take a look at where they are placed on the keyboard, you might grasp the logic behind selecting them. Try imagining the block center between the keys qwas (for the logica behind qwas) and between dfrc (for the logic behind dfrc). 'x' was just chosen since it makes a nice 'fill it all' character.