Creator Zone — make your own Timeline Levels

You're not just a player. You can be a dungeon master.

The Creator Zone lets you assemble any 5–30 X posts into a Timeline Level, dial in monsters / waves / fonts / weapon limits dungeon-keeper-style, publish it, and have other players blast through it. Every play debits the player up-front, and 25% of that gross lands in your earnings. The other 75% covers X-API calls, our servers, payment fees, and ops.

This is, in spirit, the Roblox model. Players make the content. Other players consume it. The platform takes a cut. Everybody plays.

Three steps

1. Open the editor

In the title screen Options panel, scroll down to the 🎨 CREATOR ZONE section. Click 🎨 CREATE TIMELINE LEVEL. (You need to be connected to X to create — guests can't author.)

2. Curate your posts

Give your level a name (e.g. TPOT vs THE OLD GUARD) and an optional description. Then add 5 to 30 posts using either:

• Paste URLs — paste X post URLs one per line, hit Add posts from URLs. We pull each tweet through the X API and snapshot it into your level.
• My bookmarks — every post you've saved with the Bookmark Gun shows up here. Tick the ones you want and add them in one click.

You can mix and match. Five posts minimum, thirty maximum. Quality over quantity.

3. Configure the level (optional, dungeon-keeper-style)

Below the post list, the LEVEL CONFIG section gives you four optional knobs:

• 🐲 Monsters — choose which monster sprite-tags can spawn (dragon, skull, robot, etc.). Default = full library. Pick a tight set if you want a thematic level.
• 🌊 Wave names — name individual attack waves. Wave 1: TPOT vs THE OLDS / Wave 2: GROK GETS WEIRD. Up to 10. The name flashes as the wave starts.
• 🔠 Giant fonts — schedule huge text overlays at specific moments. (at_wave: 3, ms_into_wave: 0, text: "OUTLAST THE NEXT 60 SECONDS"). Up to 8. Pick text + color + duration. Use sparingly — they hit hard.
• 🔫 Weapons allowed — restrict the player's hotbar. Tick which guns they can equip; everything else is greyed out and won't fire. Default = all 9 slots open.

All four knobs are optional. Skip any of them and the engine uses its full defaults — exactly the behavior of a v1 level.

4. Publish

Click 🚀 PUBLISH and your level lands in 🌐 ALL LEVELS BY ALL USERS — the public marketplace. Other players can find it by sorting on most-played, newest, highest-earning, or by your @-handle.

If you want to keep tweaking before going public, click 💾 SAVE DRAFT instead. Drafts are private — only you can see them in 📋 ALL MY LEVELS. You can publish or unpublish at any time.

How earnings work

Every time another player launches your level, they pay 1 COIN per X-source post in the level. (Bookmarks from non-X sources are free.)

So a level with 10 X posts costs the player 10 COINS to launch. 25% of every COIN landed lands in your earnings.

• A 10-post level played 100 times → 1,000 COINS gross → you earn floor(1,000 × 0.25) = 250 COINS (~$2.50 at the buying rate).
• A 30-post level played 100 times → 3,000 COINS gross → you earn 750 COINS (~$7.50).
• A 30-post level played 1,000 times → 7,500 COINS (~$75).

On top of that, if a player spends COINS in-game (memetic gun analyses, etc.) during your level, 25% of those spends also flow to you as a bonus.

You can play your own levels for free — owners are exempt from the launch debit.

Your earnings show up under Creator earnings in your profile. The number grows forever — there's no decay, no expiry.

When do I get paid in real money?

Not yet. During the friends-only test phase we're tracking earnings server-side but not paying out cash. Once we've validated that the levels are getting played, the spending is real, and the math holds together, we'll wire up Stripe Connect Express so creators can claim weekly payouts at $0.01 per COIN ($5 minimum). That's the same conversion as the buying rate — no spread.

Until then your earnings counter is a flex number — it proves your level is hitting. Build the audience now; cash comes later.

How to find a level to play

In the Options panel, click 🌐 ALL LEVELS BY ALL USERS. Sort by:

• 🔥 Most-played (default) — the levels with the most ▶ PLAY clicks.
• ✨ Newest — published in the last few hours.
• 💰 Highest-earning — the levels other players have spent the most COINS on.
• @ By creator handle — alphabetical sort if you want to find a specific creator.

Click ▶ PLAY on any row and you launch into the level — the cost (N COINS) shows on the row. The level name appears in the top-center HUD chip while you play.

Tips for making a level people will want to play

• Pick a tight theme. Best AI takes from this week. Why San Francisco is dying / not dying. Threads where the comments dunked on the post. Specific beats generic.
• 5–10 posts is the sweet spot. Long levels get abandoned. Make every post earn its slot.
• Mix authors. A level made entirely of Elon tweets gets old fast. Variety wins.
• Lead with your hook. First post sets the tone. Make it the one that'll make a stranger pause.
• Use giant fonts at climax moments. "FINAL WAVE — DON'T BLINK" lands hard if it's the only one in the level.
• Limit weapons for a theme. Bullets-only = old-school. Megaphone-only = chaos mode. Mix it up to make a level feel different.
• Bookmark first, build later. When you see a great post in normal play, bookmark it with the Bookmark Gun. Later you'll have a curated pile to pick from.
• Re-curate. Publishing is not final. Watch which of your levels gets plays, then iterate. Unpublish, edit, re-publish.

Frequently asked

Can I edit a level after publishing? Yes — open ALL MY LEVELS, hit EDIT, change anything (posts, name, config), save. The level updates in place; existing earnings don't reset.

Can I delete a level? Yes — owner-only delete is in the same row. Earnings already accrued to your profile stay. The level is gone forever.

Why does my level cost the player COINS to launch? Because every X-source post in it has a real-money cost behind it (we pay X for that read). v2 makes the player visibly pay for the X-read up-front — and routes 25% of that payment to you. v1 played levels for free and only paid creators when players opted into in-game COIN spends; v2 is more honest about what content costs and rewards creators on every play.

Are there ratings or votes? Not yet. Only play counts and earnings. Ratings come if/when the volume justifies the moderation overhead.

Can I make a level with non-X posts (HN, arxiv, etc.)? v2 supports X URL paste + Bookmark Gun pulls. Bookmarks already include posts from any source, so you can mix sources by bookmarking them first. Non-X posts are launch-free for the player (no X-API cost behind them).

Can guests create levels? No. You need to be connected to X. The author identity = your @-handle, server-resolved from your session — we never trust client-supplied handles.

What happened to "search the corpus"? Removed in v2 by user direction. The corpus is now strictly an internal cost-saving cache, invisible to creators. Use paste URLs or bookmarks instead.