- A text editor slightly more capable than Notepad. I personally use Notepad++, it's free. All the information mentioned in this guide uses commands (break row and add/remote tabs) used in Notepad++, if you're using another editor you might need to look up what it's using for those functions. An option with similar capabilities for Linux seems to be Notepadqq.

- Some patience and a couple of minutes of time.

- Navigate to X:\Users\UserName\AppData\LocalLow\Team17 Digital Ltd\Golf With Your Friends\CustomLevels\MapName (This goes for Windows 10, it should be pretty much the same in earlier/later Windows versions. If you're using Linux the path should be ~/.config/unity3d/Team17 Digital Ltd/Golf With Your Friends/CustomLevels - altough I'm not sure if this is correct in all distros. I have no idea about the location in OSX, if you know it please leave a comment and I'll gladly add it here.)

- Make a backup of the file named 'map'. You can skip this if you want but don't blame me if you ♥♥♥♥ up and ruin you map. ;)

- Open the file in your text editor of choice and you'll find something like this. It's a terrible, unreadable, mess. Don't worry, we'll fix that.


- First, go into Settings>Preferences>Language and change the tab length to 18. This will make it easier to spot broken values later. Also deactivate word wrap in the View menu.


- Now go into the Replace menu (Ctrl+H), enter ]}}, in find what and ]}},\n in replace with. Make sure the Search Mode is set to extended. Now hit Replace all, this might take a few seconds depending on the amount of assets placed. This will put everything into its own line and make it a whole lot easier to read. But it's still not perfect.


- While still in the find/replace enter ," in find what, \t ," in replace with, and hit Replace all again. It now should look something like this. Every value lined up, nice and neat.


- Now scroll trough the file until you find pX/Y/Z-values that are either higher/lower than 350/-350 and/or have decimal values with more than 4 digits after the . (e.g. 0.0000001E8). Simply change them to something reasonable or delete the whole line. Just make sure to fix the syntax in case it's the last line, it ends in }}]} not }}, like the rest.

- Sadly the editor doesn't like tabs and won't load the file as it is right now. So when you're sure everything is good, go back into the find/replace dialog and replace \t ," with ," to remove them. It doesn't care about them being in individual lines so there's no need to revert that.

- Now save the file, make sure the encoding hasn't changed to something other than UTF-8, and open it in the GWYF editor. If everything's alright it should load and work as expected. If you're getting an error while loading it most likely due to a syntax error... a missing , is all it needs. Either start over (you made a backup right?) or try to fix it.

If you're getting an error when opening the load menu in the editor after editing it's most likely a syntax error in one or more map files. So a missing or additional character like a comma, or a bracket that's not closed, is all that's needed to 'break' a map file.

Here's a simple example with everything laid out nice and tidy:

- The Header. This includes the name, description, ... and opens two brackets "{[".

- Any paced asset except the last, all brackets are opened/closed within, always ends with a ','. If that comma is missing you'll get an error.

- The last placed asset, as above but without the ',' at the end. Having one here will also net you a 'corrupt data' error.

- End of file, here the two brackets from the header are closed... that's all.

Q: Why won't the edited map show up in the editor after I'm done?

A: Make sure that the map has no file extension, it most likely saved as a .txt which won't be recognized as a valid map file by the editor. To do this enable "File Name Extensions" in the Windows File Explorer (in Win10, also 7/8/8.1 iirc, no idea about 11), rename the file and remove the extension.


Q: I've published the map ages ago and don't have the map file any more. Can I still fix it?

A: Absolutely. First make sure you're subscribed to your map so a copy will be download to your machine. Then go to your Steam directory folder, navigate into ..\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\431240\ followed by the publishID (a ten digit number) of your map. If needed you can find the ID by looking at the Steam Workshop URL of your map, the publishID is located at the end (e.g. ../filedetails/?id=0123456789).