So now that 1.03 is finally out we finally get all the modifications and improvements made to the game. But it comes with a price. Now all of your saved games, recordings, mods and custom maps seem to be made unvalid.

For me the latter is the most painful, since I really hate to play on random maps, and none of the default scenarios seem to fit me. So after some poking around both in teh forum and in the game files i've come up with solutions to some of the problems people are having with their custom maps and (mainly) GalaxyForge maps.

GalaxyForge:
The version of the GalaxyForge currently in circulation seems to write a 0 in the Version string, which makes all maps made with it invisible to the 1.03 patch. There are two ways to work around this.
1. update the "GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef" file inside teh GalaxyForge directory. This is quite easy. All you have to do is find the new and updated file in your game dir (inside the GameInfo folder) and copy it into the GalaxyForge folder. After this all maps saved should work with 1.03. Not that this will not change any maps made prior to the update, so for that you'll have to do with option 2.
2. Manually update each galaxy file. (Thanks to Netriak for this fix, originally posted here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303740)
All you have to do is open the .galaxy file in notepad (or any text editor you prefer, I use notepad++ myself) and change the line "versionNumber" from 0 to 1. and it's done.
Problems that might occur: Please note that all GalaxyForged maps should be in your game directory, not your user directory (where you put your mods, and where the in-game map editor puts it's file). I don't know why you have to do this, but the maps just doesn't seem to work if you put them there.

There's also a smart trick if you use the SinsPlus mod from Uzii to use the new planets in the Galaxy Forge. You use the same trick as mentioned in option one above, but instead of copying the GalaxyScenarioDef file from your game dir, you copy it from the mods dir this will give you the updated planet list for use in the GalaxyForge (although the icons will just show a greyed out planet). This should work the same with any mod that modifies the planet list. (thanks to MorettiBeer for this tip, originally posted one page 8 of the SinsPlus thread. Please also make sure that you use the latest version of SinsPlus for this, as the old list is probably NOT compatible with v1.03.

In-Game-Editor Custom Maps:
The maps made with v1.02 does not seem to shop up at all, but if you update the version number in the .galaxy file in notepad from "versionNumber" from 0 to 1. It should work. Please report here if they don't so I can update this post with the correct info. (I haven't played around much with the in-game editor myself)

I hope this helps.
//SweZor