End of Year Review & Future Plans
2023 was an unbelievably exciting and flourishing year as we have managed to accomplish some incredible feats! From delivering new content for 001 Game Creator, to unveiling our groundbreaking and most significant project to date — Open Dev Kit! We take a moment to reflect on those remarkable milestones, and showcase the grandeur of our advancements throughout the year in this End-of-Year review.
Right as 2023 was beginning we began teasing the existence of our brand new project. As time went on, those teases became more and more specific until we started gradually revealing actual content in the form of video teasers to our Patreon community.
At that same time, we updated 001 with incredible new features such as HTTPS support, new events, enhanced full-screen support, and also launched our brand new SoftWeir Video Game Design Workbook — a huge book packed with various resources featuring multiple worksheets, explanations and tools for kickstarting project planning in a fun and easy way.
A month later was when we dropped our first not 1, not 2... but 3 whole teasers for Open Dev Kit to our Patreon community, showcasing things such as multiple simultaneous grid sizes, multi-selection of instances, and infinitely stackable tiles!
Later on, a major update of our Wiki rolled out. Essentially, two additional sections dedicated entirely to Events and Use Values were added, with each and every single one of them being a separate entry on the wiki. Some entries had links to other similar/related entries, with some having acquired additional notes, and a few others link to our video tutorials or game recipes where applicable. So users now could quickly see how an event or use value that they're interested in knowing more about is utilized.
Then May came along with a new 001 version, which was being accompanied by a fresh and completely revamped version of our "Tower Defense" demo. Completely overhauled and rebuilt from the ground up with new, streamlined scripts and enhanced gameplay mechanics. Even today this updated demo is an excellent source of learning material and a great foundation for those planning to develop such a game.
About a week later, the first teaser went public, and we finally dropped the name of our long-teased super secret project — Open Dev Kit! It certainly was a heart-raising and exciting moment for both us on the team, as well as the public, which reacted positively to the reveal. Following this, about 3 teasers were being revealed every week, until Open Dev Kit was fully unveiled right as June was creeping in.
At last, Open Dev Kit (aka ODK) officially greets the public in a huge announcement while also declaring the beginning of its private Alpha testing phase. In that post we strived to inform the people as much as we possibly could about this completely new piece of software; what it is, what it does, how it works, what people can expect from it and us in the near future, and of course what this meant for the future of our other tool, 001 Game Creator.
A month later near the end of June, we updated ODK with OpenAI integration (Chat AI and Text Completion AI, Image Generation & Variation etc.), with some of these features including loading and saving external image files via a save/load dialog, streaming resources (images) over the web and image manipulation.
Additionally, a video was also dropped showcasing ODK's ability to handle 2D physics like a breeze, something which was near impossible in 001 along with all the previously mentioned features!
Then in September we announced the (early-access) release of a brand new DLC for 001 Game Creator — our 3D Step Dungeon Maze Kit! A grid-based movement type template, featuring an easy-to-use Map/Maze Builder interface for effortlessly creating interactive mazes, a dynamic mini-map with fog of war, customizable enemy spawn and loot tables for incredible variability, and more recently with 2 brand new maze themes and building tiles!
Following that, Open Dev Kit finally entered the public alpha phase, accompanied by an exciting teaser for it, showcasing something that 001 users were exhilarated to see, and that was dynamic lighting (spot and directional) as well as dynamic shadows. Due to limitations, something like this couldn't be a thing in 001, but with ODK's native C++ base it became very much a possibility and is now well implemented.
Other updates during that time included a dedicated custom theme editor (allowing people to design their very own themes and create themes from existing ones), a sweet toolbar reminiscent to the one from 001. Based on community feedback, we also implemented the ability to export projects by saving a copy of a project's data locally for archival purposes, as well as share projects via a .zip file with any other Open Dev Kit account in only a few clicks. Both of which were highly requested.
Later on, PayPal eventually became an acceptable payment method, providing an easier and more convenient way to access ODK. And with ODK supporting networking right out the box, a demo project also became available showcasing the functionality with an HTTP server, as well as how it enables you to easily host a local server that sends HTML/JSON responses. There's no longer any need for PHP, Python or node.js again for basic server tasks. And unlike most easy-to-use development platforms you aren't limited to just HTTP responses either; you get unrestricted networking capabilities to create or connect to servers of all types, including streaming various data types!
And lastly and more recently, our community witnessed yet another incredible and major ODK feature that was teased... the full integration of 3D physics. 001 users, rejoice! ODK will soon have everything that you wished for PLUS a lot more that are yet to come soon! A couple more exciting things happened such as ODK's website receiving an About and FAQ page, informing people about the software to a greater extent, and another page dedicated to our 001 users to help them familiarize themselves with Open Dev Kit by drawing parallels between it and 001 — the 001 to ODK Cheatsheet.
Join The Alpha Now: Opendevkit.com
Thank you for your support!
Wow! What a year 2023 has been! Yet, we're thrilled to share that this is just a glimpse of the incredible journey that lies ahead in 2024 — for us and for you! Lots more stuff to come for both Open Dev Kit and 001 Game Creator, with the roadmap for Open Dev Kit especially brimming with exciting possibilities!
As we wrap up this year, we'd like to extend a huge and heartfelt "Thank you!" to our exceptional community. None of these achievements would have been possible without the outstanding support of our Patreon members, dedicated translators, and the entire community. Your valuable feedback has been instrumental in shaping the way forward for our products!
On behalf of the entire team, we wish you a very Happy New Year! Thank you for your unwavering support, and we can't wait to witness the amazing projects that will come from your hands in 2024 (and rest assured, there's much more excitement in store from us as well)!
With gratitude and sincere appreciation,
The SoftWeir Team
