My First OnlyWorld

Table of contents

  1. Create a world
    1. Setting up your account
    2. Creating your first world
  2. Create a character, born at a location
    1. Creating your first character
    2. Creating a birthplace
    3. Connecting character to birthplace
    4. Adding possessions
  3. Map your world
    1. Establishing character location
    2. Creating your first map
    3. Placing elements on the map
    4. Spawning elements at locations
    5. Local map stacks
    6. Global map stacks
  4. Expand your world

Create a world

A ‘world’ in OnlyWorlds can be as big as a multidimensional megaverse or as small as a minor ant-hill. Its physical spacing and shape is largely defined by its location elements.

Before you start creating planet or worker tunnel locations, you’ll need to create the world itself. OnlyWorlds.com offers a world creation and management interface for this.

Setting up your account

  • Create an account at onlyworlds.com
  • Navigate to the Profile section
  • A secret PIN value was automatically created with your account. You can change it here by filling the ‘current password’ field and pressing Enter

Security Notice
This PIN is used for authenticating your worlds in external tools. Keep it private and secure.

Creating your first world

  • Navigate to the Worlds section
  • Click the + button to create a new world
  • Change the default ‘OnlyWorld’ to the name of your world

API Key Security
Notice the API key that was automatically created for your world. This unique value identifies your world for external tools.
Anyone with this key and your PIN has full access to your world through external tools. Keep this world key private unless you are explicitly sharing your world.

Additional Features
This section offers more functionality:

  1. Share access with others who have an OnlyWorlds account. This gives them access to the world API key using their own PIN, granting full read and write access. Use with caution and trust. You can revoke access at any time by pressing the ‘x’ in the field that appears.

  2. Export your world and all its content into a JSON file. Use this freely to backup your world and keep it local. Some tools allow direct import and export of this data format, meaning you’re not locked in to using the onlyworlds.com hosting.

  3. Import world data by pasting structured world data into the ‘Overwrite’ box to replace a world. Use with caution as a way to duplicate worlds.

Create a character, born at a location

You can create, modify and delete elements for a world that you have selected in the interface. Press an icon at the top to select an element category.

The interface on onlyworlds.com is functional but, arguably, not quite beautiful. Use it as you like or need, but remember that OnlyWorlds is meant to integrate with other tools and applications. There are other tools, such as the Browse Tool or Obsidian Plugin, that might provide a better UI experience.

Creating your first character

  • Click the person_4 Character icon (first icon)
  • Click the + button to create a new character
  • Change the name of the new character to that of someone who inhabits your world
  • Press the Save button to persist this name change

All elements in OnlyWorlds require a value in their name field. Other fields are always optional.
The description field can hold as much text as you like, as a catch-all for any information that doesn’t fit in other fields.

Creating a birthplace

  • Click the castle Location icon (third icon)
  • Create a new location
  • Change the name of the new location to that of the place where your character was born
  • Press the Save button

Connecting character to birthplace

  • Navigate back to the character you created
  • Write something about the character in the description field or something about their physical or mental qualities in the physicality or mentality fields
  • Scroll down to the birthplace field and select the location you created
  • Save your changes

The birthplace field is a single-link field, which can reference exactly 0 or 1 elements.

Adding possessions

  • Click the webhook Object icon (second icon)

  • Create three objects that currently exist in your world and rename them; make two of these objects that are owned by your character

  • Navigate back to the character you created
  • Scroll down to the objects field and use Ctrl+Click to select the two objects they own
  • Save your changes

The objects field is a multi-link field, which can reference any number of other elements.

Map your world

The Map Tool lets you place your elements on any map that you have at hand. Let’s first place your character at a location to enable some additional map tool functionality.

Establishing character location

You can use the familiar onlyworlds.com interface for this or try other tools: the Browse Tool, Parse Tool, Obsidian Plugin and Mobile Companion all offer field editing.

Creating your first map

  • Open the Map Tool and fill in your world’s API key and your PIN, then click Load World
  • Click the + button, enter a name for what the map represents, then click Create Map
  • Copy your map image URL into the ‘map image url’ field

Image Hosting
OnlyWorlds does not currently offer image hosting. All elements have an image_url field that can link to a single online image.
For most elements, this image can represent a kind of profile picture.
Maps are special elements, for which the image_url should link to an image that can function as a map.
You will have to supply your own image and host it online to use it for an OnlyWorlds map.

Placing elements on the map

  • Click the Load Map button to load the image into the canvas
  • Find the location that your character is at in the sidebar and click it to select it, then click on the canvas to place its pin (or drag it there directly)
  • Save your map using the Save New Map button in the top right

Your map will not be saved to your world until you save the map this way.
This button is available as soon as a map is loaded into the canvas.
Afterwards, make sure to save your map after each change or set of changes.

Spawning elements at locations

You have previously established that your character is at the location that you just pinned.

  • Click this location’s pin to select it
  • Click the little sprout button in the sidebar to spawn all elements that are currently at this location
  • Additionally, you can click the button again to remove all spawned elements. Click the zoom button to its left to max zoom in, then spawn again, to place the pins at near-overlap positions.

Local map stacks

Relations between parent and child locations can also be inferred to create ‘stacks’ of embedded maps.

OnlyWorlds distinguishes between two map types: ‘local’ and ‘global’ maps.
Local maps directly represent a specific location, while global maps exist in a separate hierarchy.
All global maps live in the same ‘stack’, determined by their hierarchy value.
Local maps can form stacks if their locations are embedded.
Click the help icon in the top-left of the map tool for more information.

  • Create a location that represents the map you have created earlier (e.g., a continent, planet, or area of some type)
  • Create, find or placehold a map image that represents the location that your character is at (and which you pinned on above map).

  • In your character’s current location’s parent_location field, assign the location you just created (to represent your original map)

  • Create a new map for your original location, assign the image URL, load it into canvas, then save it
  • For each map, assign the location that it represents in the dropdown that has default value ‘Global Map’, then save it
  • Load the ‘child’ map into the canvas
  • Notice that the ‘parent’ location has a little map icon and click it
  • Because the child and parent locations are linked to each other using the parent_location field, the popup shows the ‘stack’ of ordered maps

This stack can grow deeper if you place locations at another depth tier.
If you were to have two same-tier locations, such as buildings in a city, you can manually order their positions using the hierarchy field next to the map location dropdown.

Global map stacks

  • Create and save two new maps that are not representative of any location (leave the dropdown at default value ‘Global Map’)
  • Assign each of them a hierarchy value and save. This value is relative to the order value: the map that encompasses the other map’s physical space should have a lower hierarchy
  • Load one of the maps into the canvas
  • Click on the Maps section in the sidebar
  • Click on the small map icon in the sidebar next to the other global map
  • Notice that a global stack map is shown, reflecting the hierarchy values of the two global maps

Map Stack Types
You can have any number of local map stacks, depending on inter-location and location-map relationships. Each world only has one global map stack.

Maps Section Rules

  1. The loaded map is never shown here, only other maps
  2. Local maps can NOT be pinned to the canvas because this might conflict with their representation by a location-pin
  3. The global map stack is currently NOT affected by global map pin placement, only by hierarchy values

Expand your world

These steps give you an introduction to some key concepts of the OnlyWorlds language and workflows.

You can try different features and approaches to further building out and visualizing your worlds. Keep an eye on the tool directory for current and upcoming tools. If there are tools or features that you are eager to access, consider following the My First Tool guide to create whatever you want to use yourself.

Please feel free to leave feedback on any aspects of the framework. If there is someting unclear, incorrect, or missing in this guide, that feedback is also welcome.