🚀 ED5 MMO Studio 0.5.1 — “Ship It” is here

0.5.1 is one of the biggest production-focused updates to MMO Studio so far.

The goal of this release is simple:

You can now build a game in MMO Studio and actually ship it.

This update adds standalone single-player exporting, custom launchers, automatic updates, hundreds of built-in assets, major RPG Maker import improvements, huge performance gains, and a long list of gameplay/editor fixes.

📦 Ship Your Game

Standalone single-player games

• Export games that require no external host and no internet
• The game server is bundled directly into the exported game and runs locally on the player’s machine

Custom game launchers

• Desktop games can launch through a launcher you author
• Launcher news uses a rich-text editor
• Launcher functionality can be enabled or disabled per project

Automatic updates

• Desktop games can now auto-update
• MMO Studio generates the update feed used by the launcher

Full game branding

• Your game name
• Your title bar
• Your update feed
• Your app icon
• No more exported games presenting themselves as “ED5 MMO Studio”

Set your icon under:

Build → Export Game → Config → App Icon

Game server exporting

• Export your server as a proper package
• No more manually digging through hidden folders for dependencies and manifests

Local asset caching

• Desktop games cache world assets locally
• Large tilesets, sprites, and audio files no longer need to be streamed again every session

🎨 600 Built-In Objects

MMO Studio now ships with 600 built-in objects.

New packs include:

Fantasy Props

• 100 MMO-focused props
• Portals
• Waypoint crystals
• Quest boards
• Auction stalls
• Crafting stations
• World decorations

Epic Structures

• 38 large multi-tile structures
• Some up to 4x8 tiles

Interiors & Housing

• 70 indoor and housing props

Biome Wilds

• 56 environment props across desert, swamp, coast, volcanic, and enchanted forest themes

The built-in catalog also received over 100 additional RPG Maker-style props.

🧱 New Built-In Terrain Library

MMO Studio now includes 118 painted autotile blocks, including:

• Ground
• Animated liquids
• Overlays
• Fences
• Roofs
• Walls
• Cliff faces
• Tree trunks
• Wall tops
• Plateau surfaces

There are also 20 built-in ground terrains across several biomes, including:

• Meadow Grass
• Wild Grass
• Packed Dirt
• Lake Water
• Desert
• Snow
• Volcanic
• Swamp

Terrain can include blend decals so biomes transition naturally instead of meeting at hard tile edges.

New projects can now start with:

• A full starter world
• A blank world

with separate toggles for built-in tiles and object packs.

🗺️ Full World Map + Fast Travel

0.5.1 adds a proper world map screen.

The map fills the viewport and includes an index of discovered locations grouped by map.

Creators can also define who is allowed to fast travel.

Regions can now:

• Be discovered
• Reveal an entire biome
• Clear fog
• Become fast-travel destinations

🏰 Guild Improvements

Guilds now support:

• Founding level requirements
• Founding currency costs
• Quest requirements
• Mob taxes
• Bank-funded upgrades
• Increased member caps
• Guild alliances

❤️ Relation-Based Nameplates

Player names and health bars can now change based on relationship.

Examples:

• Self
• Party
• Guild
• Alliance
• Attackable
• Neutral

Each can be authored separately.

🎒 Loadout Kits

You can now author complete starting builds as a single package.

Players can also save loadouts and see:

• Which pieces they’re missing
• The total cost of those missing pieces
• An option to buy what they need

⚔️ Character Power Rating

Characters now have a Power rating.

This gives players one overall combat-strength number derived from MMO Studio’s actual combat math.

🛡️ Character-Specific Equipment Sprites

The same armor or weapon can now use different equipped visuals depending on the character body.

Useful for:

• Different body types
• Different races
• Male/female variants
• Special character-specific gear appearances

🔮 Status Effect Improvements

Status effects can now resize the creature or character carrying them.

Possible uses:

• Shrink
• Giant form
• Transformations
• Enrage growth

Level-up effects can also repeat on a cadence and optionally stop after a configured level.

💥 Monster Spawn VFX

Monster spawns can now trigger authored VFX.

For example:

• Portal
• Smoke burst
• Lightning strike
• Summoning circle
• Ground explosion

Great for bosses, hordes, summons, and world events.

🐺 Better Mob Behavior

Mobs now have their own Move Frequency.

Patrolling creatures can pause at waypoints instead of endlessly marching.

Mob spawning across large biomes has also been improved so creatures don’t all bunch into one corner.

📚 Skill Discovery Notifications

Discovering a new skill now displays a notification card, similar to skill level-up notifications.

⚙️ Settings Panel Overhaul

The in-game Settings panel now uses a seven-tab layout and can be authored by creators.

🛒 Faster Shops

Players can right-click to buy or sell one item immediately without opening a quantity dialog.

📥 RPG Maker Import Expansion

0.5.1 significantly expands RPG Maker support.

RPG Maker VX Ace

VX Ace projects can now import:

• Terrain art
• Collision
• Events
• Map data

RPG Maker VX

Original VX projects can now be imported using the older Ruby Marshal format and VX-era collision data.

Hosted RPG Maker Import

Whole-project RPG Maker importing now works from the hosted editor.

Regions → Biomes

RPG Maker regions import as MMO Studio biomes and keep their authored color information.

Passage Flags

Imported objects can retain flags such as:

• Passage
• Ladder
• Bush

Icon Sheets

MMO Studio now supports RPG Maker-style icon sheets.

One image can contain many icons addressed by cell.

That means item, skill, and status icons survive import much more cleanly.

Bulk Character Import

Point Import Sheet at a folder of RPG Maker character sheets and MMO Studio can generate separate sprite assets automatically.

🛠️ Editor Improvements

The Asset Manager can now:

• Delete assets
• Delete multiple assets at once
• Open the selected image directly in the pixel editor

Locations are now accessible from the Database menu.

Location markers can properly select landmarks.

The map tree now:

• Drags correctly
• Remembers where you were
• Supports multi-select

💾 New Media Storage System

Built-in art is no longer stored directly inside every project database.

Previously, new projects could carry around roughly 120 MB of built-in artwork as inline base64 data.

That has been moved to content-addressed media storage.

Local project media now lives under:

assets/.ed5-media/

Existing projects migrate during publishing.

This reduces project bloat and makes media-heavy projects much healthier.

⚡ Major Performance Improvements

This update includes some of the largest performance work in MMO Studio so far.

Monster AI

Previously, many mobs could make AI decisions on the same server frame.

With hundreds or thousands of mobs, that caused major frame spikes.

AI decisions are now spread across frames and idle movement uses bounded search budgets.

Large Imported Maps

A major slowdown affecting imported maps has been fixed.

Animated-terrain rebake jobs could previously stack faster than they were processed.

Now:

• Chunk building is time-sliced across frames
• Animated overlays avoid unnecessary full-chunk rebuilds
• Rebake cadence is cost-aware
• Sprite-sheet cell objects can join packed texture atlases

Better Memory Management

Chunks now release things like scrolling water and object shadows after the player leaves the area.

Memory no longer keeps climbing simply because you traveled farther through the world.

Incremental Publishing

Publishing now sends only what changed.

Unchanged terrain and already-synced event data are skipped.

Publishing batches are also based on actual payload size rather than just row count.

Faster Editor Sync

Editor saves push only changed rows to the local server.

Definition-heavy projects no longer freeze the game-server tick loop during sync.

Event Sprite Storage

Event sprites are no longer repeatedly stored as base64 data inside map events.

In one real project, duplicated event sprite data accounted for almost 50 MB.

Faster New Projects

The engine template now ships with a pre-migrated and pre-seeded snapshot.

New projects can open much faster instead of replaying the entire migration/seed pipeline.

Faster Project Open → Play

One measured project previously took around 4 minutes 55 seconds from open to playable.

Several startup systems now run in parallel.

Smaller Object Palette

The object palette no longer sends around 11.5 MB of inline thumbnails in its list response.

The editor also stops re-downloading the entire palette every time you open a map.

Faster Bulk Operations

Bulk delete now finishes in one round trip instead of sending one request per row.

Sprite-sheet animation cuts are also written in batches.

🗺️ GPU Renderer & Map Editor Fixes

The beta GPU renderer has reached much closer parity with the traditional renderer for isometric maps.

It now properly supports:

• Full autotile terrain
• RPG Maker quarter autotiles
• Wall autotiles
• Cliff wall faces
• Building system rendering
• Animated objects
• Passability markers
• Multi-tile objects
• Editor cursors
• Paint previews
• Selection outlines
• Map markers

GPU maps no longer open as checkerboards that only appear after you start painting.

Paint previews track the cursor again.

Terrain rendering fixes include:

• No more hard dark tile lines
• No more hairline seams in animated water
• Built-in ground terrain no longer renders blank
• Duplicate palette entries cleaned up

Event editing is better too:

• Clicking an event detects the actual sprite
• New events open correctly
• Ctrl+A no longer selects the entire map

Region/biome mode also now looks more like a strategy-game territory map, with smoother borders, glow, and labels.

⚔️ Gameplay Fixes

A large batch of gameplay issues were fixed in 0.5.1.

Highlights:

• Kills award XP correctly again
• Crafting no longer destroys materials when inventory is full
• Picking up items no longer removes equipped armor
• Sheathing weapons no longer strips equipment
• Players can’t slip diagonally through solid scenery
• Bridges, docks, and staircases can be walked on properly
• Holding movement keys now produces continuous movement
• Arena matches correctly load waves, rules, announcements, and scoreboards
• Mobs spawn across entire biomes instead of clustering in one area
• Multiple placements of the same NPC template spawn multiple NPCs
• Deleting an NPC properly removes it from the game
• Disabling day/night actually stops the clock
• Weather and ground-cover systems follow game time instead of wall-clock time
• Minimap and world map correctly show the full world
• Guest players correctly see character data, level, silver, and playtime
• NPC dialogue no longer hangs after quest turn-ins
• Player Inspect now shows actual equipped gear
• Moving events animate and face correctly
• Show Choices works correctly with message boxes
• Multi-tile props cast one shadow instead of one per tile
• Above-player objects render above the player
• Built-in UI panels correctly obey their enabled toggle
• Missing animations fall back instead of making sprites disappear
• Authored Loadout Kits can actually be purchased
• Inventory layout gives equipment and bag space more evenly
• Cone, line, wave, and rectangle attacks correctly follow the aimed point
• Treasure-rule chests are take-only
• Pet battles now support speed-ordered 2v2 and 3v3
• Enchant and Upgrade appear in the default top bar

🧪 Valcoma Playtest Fixes

Several issues found during Valcoma testing were fixed, including:

• Separate Legs slot from Boots
• Per-item handedness poses
• Quest items consumed correctly on turn-in
• Renamed NPCs syncing properly
• XP bar fixes

🌐 Platform & Stability

0.5.1 also includes a large infrastructure cleanup.

Improvements include:

• Corrupted embedded server stores are detected, quarantined, and rebuilt
• Media checksum failures fail safely instead of endlessly re-sending large files
• Brief database hiccups no longer take playtest servers down for long periods
• Server startup waits longer for slow connections
• Hosted projects can’t access local project databases
• Local desktop mode can only push to the local game server
• Localhost playtests can’t silently fall back to production servers
• Deploy Latest actually deploys the latest build
• Engine extraction fails visibly instead of silently skipping files
• New hosted projects correctly receive built-in objects, terrain, and media
• Atlas textures travel with the definitions that need them
• The purchase flow now asks for legal consent at the Buy action

📚 Documentation

New and expanded docs include:

• Deployment → The Game Launcher
• Custom app icons
• Weather
• Snow buildup
• Footprints
• Ground cover
• Light-based snow melting

The public roadmap has also been updated to match the actual state of MMO Studio.

🚀 MMO Studio 0.5.1

This release pushes MMO Studio closer to the full pipeline:

Build → Test → Export → Ship → Update

Whether you’re building an MMO, online RPG, multiplayer game, or standalone single-player RPG, the same project can now go much further toward an actual finished release.

📥 Download MMO Studio 0.5.1:

https://mmo.ed5enterprise.com/download

Thanks to everyone testing MMO Studio, reporting bugs, sharing projects, and helping push the engine forward. 💛