Autumn is here, and development across both 001 Game Creator and Open Dev Kit continues moving forward!
This time around, we have a new 001 Game Creator beta to share, featuring important groundwork for expanded localization support alongside several editor and project-data fixes. We’re also taking another look at some of the major Open Dev Kit features introduced recently, while giving you an early glimpse at several visual and world-building improvements currently in development.
And, of course, the Steam Autumn Sale is here too!
Latest 001 Game Creator Beta
Our newest 001 Game Creator beta primarily focuses on localization groundwork, editor improvements, and reliability fixes.
One of the largest behind-the-scenes developments is the completion of translations throughout the 001 Game Creator editor and resources for 31 languages, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
The underlying systems needed to support this expanded localization are now largely in place, including the ability to localize resource names and descriptions.
We’ve also made further improvements to font support for localization. Font preset groups have been reorganized and simplified to better cover the characters required by different languages while reducing unnecessary character counts. This makes it easier to include the appropriate glyphs for each language without unnecessarily bloating font resources.
Several editor issues have also been addressed. Sprite Sequencer panning is now smoother, graphical script parameters correctly handle asterisks, and location text boxes for actors, fields, lights, pickups, speakers, zones, and spawn/timers no longer snap unexpectedly.
We’ve also fixed visual issues involving lights leaving behind remnants after being removed and field sprites appearing slightly off-center.
Finally, project-data reliability received additional attention, including fixes for loading saved games after collections or tables have been emptied or reordered.
These changes continue laying the groundwork for a more accessible, reliable, and polished 001 Game Creator experience.
Open Dev Kit: Recent Progress
Open Dev Kit has undergone some of its largest technical expansions yet over the past several months.
One of the biggest areas of development has been platform support. Open Dev Kit’s Android support is now largely functional and is already available to developers who have requested access, while work continues on bringing ODK to iOS, macOS, Linux, and HTML5. Together, these efforts are substantially expanding the range of platforms developers will be able to target from a single project.
The rendering pipeline has also been undergoing major modernization. Development has included support for DirectX 12, Vulkan, and Metal, alongside multi-threaded rendering designed to better utilize modern hardware.
Visual capabilities have expanded considerably as well. Recent development has included raytracing, volumetric fog and clouds, lens flares, custom user shaders, and a growing range of post-processing and cinematic effects such as gamma adjustment, saturation, vignette, film grain, and other color and lens stylization controls.
World-building tools have been advancing alongside the rendering work. Multi-texture tile blending provides more natural transitions between terrain materials, while dynamic animated water tools are being developed to make creating oceans, lakes, rivers, flooding effects, and other changing water environments considerably easier.
These systems represent only part of the work happening across Open Dev Kit as we continue expanding both its technical foundation and the kinds of projects developers can build with it.
A Glimpse at What’s Next
Development hasn’t slowed down since those additions.
One area receiving considerable attention right now is reflections, with work continuing on making reflective materials and water surfaces respond more naturally and consistently to their surroundings.
We’re also continuing to expand environmental and world-building functionality, including further terrain manipulation and terraformation similar to 001, but with expanded capabilities to give you greater control over shaping environments directly within the editor.
Sky and environment rendering are progressing as well, including continued work involving skyboxes, atmospheric presentation, water rendering, lighting, and other scene-level visual systems.
The editor interface is also receiving some polish. Tooltips are being refreshed with a new custom hover system built directly into Open Dev Kit, replacing the default Windows tooltip behavior. This gives us much greater control over their appearance, responsiveness, and consistency across the editor, while making contextual information feel more integrated with the rest of the interface.
Many of these features are still actively evolving, so expect additional screenshots and demonstrations as they move closer to release.
Our development with Open Dev Kit continues rapidly, and we’re excited to show much more of what’s been happening behind the scenes.
Steam Autumn Sale!
To celebrate the season, our Steam Autumn Sale is now underway!
From October 1 through October 22, you can save 20% off 001 Game Creator and 75% off all DLCs! Now is a great time to expand your development toolkit with these offers and start creating!
https://001gamecreator.com/product/001-game-creator/
Thank you as always for continuing to support 001 Game Creator and the development of Open Dev Kit. There’s plenty more on the way, and we’re looking forward to sharing it with you!
Best regards,
The SoftWeir Team