v1.0.0-alpha.2 is here — the first update since Closed Alpha went out. This one is less about new things to play and more about making what’s already there solid: a rebuilt graphics backend, the first real batch of modding documentation, and a long sweep of crash and correctness fixes. Here’s what changed.

A new graphics backend

The biggest change under the hood: Creation’s renderer has been rebuilt to run natively on modern graphics APIs — Vulkan, Metal, or DirectX 12, depending on your platform. This replaces the older OpenGL-based renderer.

For you, the goal is simple: it should look exactly the same as before. Same lighting, same colors, same animations, same UI — just running on a more modern, better-supported foundation that we can build on going forward.

That said, a change this deep can shift things in ways we don’t expect. If anything looks off — lighting, colors, animations, the UI, anything — please tell us. That kind of report is exactly what this alpha is for.

Docs for modders

If you’ve wanted to start modding Creation, this update is a good place to jump in. We’ve added a first wave of modder-facing documentation covering the things you’ll actually configure:

• Control bindings and keybindings
• Items, crafting recipes, and loot tables
• Health, oxygen, and interactables
• Mobs, vehicles, and trees
• Area-of-effect zones and projectile configuration

These live alongside the game’s config files and describe the real, supported options — no guessing from examples.

A note if you ship custom shaders

Mod shader overrides are now written in WGSL instead of GLSL. Each override is a single shader file (with vs_main and fs_main entry points) pointed to by one source: path in shaders.yaml, replacing the old vertex/fragment file pairs. Everything else about how overrides work is unchanged, and an invalid shader now gets rejected at load time with a clear message instead of failing later while drawing.

This is a breaking change for any mod that shipped GLSL shaders — but since Creation is still pre-mods, we don’t expect this to affect anyone. Check the updated Shader Configuration docs for the new format.

A big stability and correctness pass

A lot of quiet work went into making the engine harder to crash and more faithful to your config. The highlights:

Config files fail gracefully now. Empty or comment-only config files — mod manifests, world saves, world-type files, item/mob/vehicle/sound configs, splash text, the startup config, and more — used to be able to crash the game on startup or while loading a mod or save. They now fail with a clear log message instead of taking everything down. Several other bad-config cases were hardened too: loot tables with a backwards amount range, weather with a max duration shorter than its min, structures that reference a missing folder, and missing or wrong-typed startup settings.

Tooltips tell the truth. Client-side tooltips for tools, projectile launchers, and ammo were showing placeholder stats instead of real ones — power level, mining speed, accepted ammo types, launch velocity, and projectile names now all reflect what’s actually configured.

Config values behave the way you’d expect:

• Mobs and vehicles no longer regenerate health when their config says they shouldn’t.
• Items with a custom max stack size no longer desync between client and server.
• Armor marked non-stackable is actually non-stackable now.
• A mob with a partial oxygen setup no longer silently becomes able to drown unless suffocation damage is explicitly turned on.
• Items using the SummonVehicle type can finally load at all.
• Crafting recipes with an unrecognized crafting type now report an error instead of quietly falling back to a default.
• Fixed a handful of content-config typos affecting crafting ingredient matching, a weapon type, a tool type (shears), a light falloff setting, IRON ORE’s drop chance, and ambient particles in the FOREST biome.

Two visual bugs squashed:

• A hard vertical seam in daylight at the world origin — where terrain just east of x=0 came out noticeably darker — is gone. That one had been around since before the renderer rebuild.
• A weather/biome backdrop animation that could run roughly 1000× too fast when a duration setting was left out now behaves.

What’s next

alpha.2 is a foundation update — a cleaner renderer, the start of real docs, and a lot fewer sharp edges. With that groundwork in place, the road ahead is more content, more modding tools, and the steady stream of fixes that comes with an alpha.

If you’re testing with us: keep the reports coming. Tell us what breaks, and — especially with the new graphics backend — tell us if anything looks even slightly different. Thank you.