001 Game Creator: 2025 Edition

I have been using the 001 Engine since I was in middle school long before it was on steam, so my hours put into this engine are far less than reality. Pros: By far the easiest engine for people who cannot code. Easy to animate 2D. Looking at games like Arthurian Legends or the game I've been working on for a while now, 2.5D is is rendered well. Cons: This engine is not powerful (Not a problem if you are making platformers or top down RPGs) Render Distance will always be poor. The visual scripting limits you sometimes. They cap things like holding points to 4. Who is this for: People making 2.5D games, and 2D RPGs and side scrollers. People who have little or no experience coding. Who is this not for: People trying to make the WItcher III. Summary: I think this engine is wonderful for the nitch of Game Devs who aren't the most skilled programmers, but want an engine that gives them either more freedom than RPG Maker or a shorter learning curve than Godot.

I usually don't leave reviews for products, but the 001 developers or community moderators have pushed me to do so by deleting my post on the community forum without providing an answer. The 001 developers don’t use comments in events to explain their logic. This is bad practice. You are building an IDE, yet you don’t document its functionality in as much detail as possible. Instead, you tell us to "just join Discord!" But no—I’m forced to reverse-engineer your DLC or examples to understand the logic behind specific implementations. There are no standards, just trial and error. For example, there are no descriptions or examples of the Math functions. How am I supposed to know the logic behind how Math.Random is executed? When I asked, the "volunteers" replied, "Yes, that’s not in the official wiki. Maybe the developers forgot it… it works similarly to other programming languages." But I know several languages, and they’re not all the same. There is a lack of documentation and developer support. Not exactly the ideal way to engage with your community. Eventually, I dug deeper and discovered something familiar: it all runs on Visual Basic 6 and DirectX 8 (1999). Why would anyone buy this? If you get Visual Basic 17.6.4 (released June 20, 2023), you’ll have DirectX 11, excellent performance, all the same functionality, and even more, including Microsoft support. Why hasn’t the developer updated the 001 engine to a newer version of VB? This should’ve been done 10 years ago. Why fix old issues when you could just upgrade? I’m pretty sure the developer doesn’t document the engine code and has no real motivation to rework certain components, because it's selling anyway. I purchased this product as part of personal training, and it definitely falls under the “don’t do” category. [UPDATE] Thank you for your response, but even in that, you weren’t entirely honest. Regarding the "usevalues" and the links you provided—just check the snapshot of this page in the web archive dated February 8, 2023. You'll find the following there: "Math – Random Number (Wholes) - Math.Random Returns a random whole number from a range of numbers Min – The lowest number in the range to choose from Max – The highest number in the range to choose from" And that's it. It’s great that you added this now, but for how many years were users forced to search for answers on the archived 001 forum? Fine, make me look like a fool. Unfortunately, I prefer C# over VB. :(

I have waaaaaaaay too many hours on this engine making games and apps just for my own personal hobbyist entertainment, I should probably make something to sell at this point. I would recommend this to anyone that wants something that gives you the tools to make something extremely basic and simple, eventually as you get familiar with it and start delving into it deeper you can end up getting into some more advanced forms of design you'd never imagine you'd ever have the capacity to do before you used this, just from hands on experience. Regarding the people making it, SoftWeir Inc. I generally like what they have done with DLCs for the app so far to support themselves, basically you get a bunch of free example games to use, but there are more in depth DLCs that gives you completely revamped game templates to mess around with like a 2-D MMORPG or a 3-D Shooter, lots of variety. In current times I'm a little concerned because it seems like they are putting too much focus on their new fancy Open Dev Kit and I'm guessing we aren't going to get some of the planned features for 001 anymore, some of which are in beta for the patreon people, probably indefinitely, but I'm just gonna stick with this engine instead of their new project anyway solely because I hate the idea of game engines backed by subscriptions and preferred it when they just made DLCs, hard to say you really "own" anything digital but a subscription literally means your just renting time with it, I've enjoyed taking breaks and coming back to 001 whenever I feel like it. I'm a simply guy with simple goals, this engine does exactly what I need it to do and alot more I haven't even thought of yet, you could even still with some time & effort put in all the DLC stuff yourself if you really wanted, they are more just foundations to show you how it works or to build on top of, I just buy into em because I like looking at how they structured them and then try to rewrite it my own way and tweak it, plus 001 is a one time purchase and so are the DLCs, unlike their new engine, it goes on sale for $20 regularly but its worth it at full price in my opinion.

We have a game engine at home.

Has its flaws, although it makes up for it in a robust "You can literally edit everything" focus. Still has some UI jank, but ultimately its not a serious hindrance, maybe just a personal bias since I've known/used it long before owning it on steam. If you want something other than a 2D to semi-3D game your effort will be tested in double. I advise people to check it out only if you're initially intending on messing around with 2D games.

Well, it is extremely expensive, and it is really not a good game maker

Hi I am a Vb net and python programmer. I bought this yesterday, it basically looks like a "good" tool for creating "simple" 2D video games. I've "only" noticed 5 problems(up to now, I've used it about for 3 hours). The first is the Menu', it's strange, not really clear. For example, if I click on Draw (already self-selected fortunately), then I click on the left on "lower objects" everything is very small, close together, it makes no sense to have such ugly and insignificant graphics, among other things there are few things, that is, in the sense you could have put more objects in it (in the bathroom only 8 objects? too little why so poor?). This is the number 1 problem, bad graphics, sticky, very small icons, all POOR. Problem number 2: When you make a mistake and you want to erase something you have to click that crap button, "button" (lol), called "erase", the problem is that it doesn't always work, if you want to erase trees it doesn't work, if you want to erase walls of houses works once yes and once no, it doesn't make sense, what is it? A roulette? It would be better to create a simple BUTTON with a triangle and an arrow that takes you back to the previous state, it would be much more comfortable. This is the second. The third problem is the scarcity of characters, ie I pay and I would like to have at least 30 different characters, instead if I click on "actor" to choose and then I go to change "face" or "hair" everything is miserable, it's worth it. That is, with the ease with which you can put everything, why put nothing? I mean are you kidding? HAIR= "Afro", "Buzz", "Short clean", "Short hair". Are you drunk? There's just no effort on your part in the design. Choice of hair, 4 hair types and cuts? O_o, I'm not saying having 90 hairs, ok, but 4 is absurd. At least make it 20 hair styles. The fourth problem: Let it all start with an excuse map that you have to pray to see something, ok then let's click the light button (this is nonsense). Ok "solved" light. Now why a forest map where to clear trees you have to do some miracle? That is, it makes no sense in such a tool to put an already made map, which is also ugly. This precedent was problem number 4. So the fifth problem: I created the map, I put some characters, oh well apart from a series of errors that appeared by themselves when I went to test the game (I clicked abort and nothing started), ok, after a while with some miracle, we don't know how, he left. Okay. Almost everything "solved". Then I go to build the game for Windows, ie I click on the disk. Ok I created my game setup! I do a test. Continuous LOOP. Ops. That is, I practically enter, start playing, everything is fine, the dialogues, the characters, I quit (to exit), the program gives screen problems, that is, there is a change of resolution Desktop does nothing come on, so much in 2023 see a game zoomed in like we were in 1998 years okay right? Lol. I followed your tutorials on youtube eh.) Let's ignore it, but the problem is that it's in a continuous loop, that is, it doesn't quit the game. Exit and re-enter. But what tool is it? Thank you CTRL ALT CANC.

Really good engine. PROS: - Well optimized in terms of performance, at least with 2D. Games run very well even on a potato PC, regardless of how many assets are on screen. It might sound like 2D should run easily on any PC anyway, but you have no idea how badly some other engines can mess this up. - Lots of tools at your disposal in the node tree editor - No need for coding - Art asset importing is extremely simple - Ability to implement 3D (Even if it is very basic). Good for 3D setpieces in a 2D game. - Creating playable characters has never been easier - Really cool use of lighting in 2D spaces CONS: - Some crashes, a few are random but most come from how you exit the music player for some reason - Limited 3D mentioned earlier can sometimes feel super janky when attempting to make a fully 3D game. I give a 7.7/10

Не рекомендую эту программу. Зря выброшенные деньги. Есть множество бесплатных и более хороших движков. Даже не заморачивайтесь с этим.

Also ich habe mal RPG Maker und 001 Game Creator getestet und ich kann euch die vor und Nachteile zwischen beide Engine sagen: 001 Game Creator: Vorteil * Es hat mehr funktionsmöglichgkeiten wie bei RPG Maker was beim gewünschtes Umsetzung von RPG Spiel besser macht * Man kann nicht nur RPG sondern auch Jump and Run oder auch 3D Spiel entwickeln * Unter RPG kann man auch mit dem Shift Taste auch Springen Leider hat es eine Nachteil: * Das Design sieht veraltet aus wie aus dem 2000er Jahre (bzw. einige Icons Elemente erinnert wie aus dem Windows 98 Zeiten). Eine Design Modernisierung wäre wünschenswert. Weil gerade wenn man damit mit WQHD oder 4K Bildschirm arbeiten möchte, da wird man sonst warscheinlich eine dazu Lupe brauchen. Da ist die Übersicht bei RPG Maker leider der Gewinner. * Vorgefertigte Tileset Resource könnte bisschen mehr sein. Da hat mir die Vorgefertigte Tileset bei RPG Maker leider viel besser gefallen * Die bedienung beim Tileset auswählen könnte von übersicht auch besser machen. Denn die Tileset unter Tabliste wählen ist gerade etwas zu klein. * Leider habe ich es nicht geschaft die RPG Messagebox auf untere Bildschirm rand statt obere zu platzieren ohne dass es vernümpftig gut dargestellt wird * Beim vergrößern * Leider ist es bei Visual Script so, je mehr man Script Elemente enfügt, desto langsamer wird es. (Also man bekommt stück für stück immer weniger FPS in Visual Script beim Bewegen bei immer mehr Elemente). Ich bin deswegen immer wieder mit Sub Script angewiesen damit der Perfomance bedienung möglichst Konstant schnell bleibt. Eine Perfomance Optimierung für Visual Script feld wäre sehr wünschenswert. (z. B. quasi wie eine Chunk funktion, dass alle Elemente die man im Fenster nicht sieht wird entladen um Perfomance konsant zu bleiben ähnlich wie man es bei Minecraft Welten kenn). Weil gerade wenn man manchmal sehr viele Scripte Elemente erstellen möchte, könnte man beim Script erstellen im schlimmstenfall durch starke Perfomance drosselung nicht mehr so gut bedienen. Deshalb hat RPG Maker ein bessere vorteil: * Bessere und schönere vorgefertigte Tilesett Resource als bei 001 Game Creator was viel angenehmer macht damit Welt zu bauen * Das Design übersicht wurde Modernisiert (also Elemente größer gemacht) und lässt sich irgendwie viel bequemer bedienen als bei 001 Game Creator * Das Ergebniss Spiel mit Menü Elemente sieht unter RPG Maker leider besser aus als bei 001 Game Creator. * Man kann die RPG Massagebox unter RPG Maker die Position zwischen oben, mittig oder unten wählen Nachteil bei RPG Maker: * Wenigere verfügbare Funktionsmöglichkeiten als 001 Game Creator. (z. B. bei Spieler Laufbewegung kann man nicht von ausgewählte Koordinaten aus dem Map Welt Ziel wählen * Tilesett erstellen ist unter RPG Maker mehr eingeschränkter. * Lässt sich durch wenigere Funktionsmöglichgkeit schwieriger oder auch unmöglich dein gewünschtes RPG Spiel um zu setzen. So und ich hab auch gelesen, dass bei einem die 001 Game Creator mehrmals abgestürzt ist. Da ich auch heute ganzen Tag 001 Game Creator verwendet habe, ist mir dass Programm bis jetzt noch nicht mal ein einziges mal Abgestürzt. Hat zwar nicht so ganz flüssige Perfomance (also dass bei einem Fenster mit viele Schaltfläche Elemente etwas nachladen muss) Nur meine haupt Kritik ist leider dass der Design etwas wie aus dem 2000er oder 90er jahre aussieht (also warscheinlich von Design nicht wirklich ganz gepflägt) und die vorgefertigte Resource als auch Tileset bedienungs übersicht könnte man besser Lösen. Von daher kann ich sage: Für die Leute die noch mehr anfänger sind und keine Lust haben dazu weitere Tilesets aus dem Internet zu holen, würde ich eher auf RPG Maker greifen. Denn von der Programm und Tilesets Resource Design macht RPG Maker leider bessere eindruck. An 001 Game Creator Entwickler: Bitte erneuere das Design und mach eine bessere Perfomance Optimierung für Visual Script. Ansonsten ist diese Programm gar nicht schlecht, und hatte trotzdem spaß gehabt damit mein eigene kleine RPG Spiel mit NPCs zu Experimentieren.