RPG Maker 2003 news & patch notes

Celebrate RPG Maker Day! RPG Maker Festival 2026 is Now Live!

February 15th is officially recognized as "RPG Maker Day", a whole day dedicated to sharing the joy of game creation.

To celebrate, we are thrilled to announce the start of the RPG Maker Festival 2026!

・RPG Maker Festival 2026

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/rpgmakerfestival2026/

・RPG Maker Festival 2026 – Event Period

From 10AM on FEB 9, 2026 to 10AM on FEB 23, 2026 (PST)

This massive online event features incredible discounts on the RPG Maker series and all its DLC, along with showcasing many amazing titles created by our community!

■ Special Discount Information

Now is the perfect time to start your game development journey with these limited-time offers:

RPG Maker MZ: 60% OFF for the first time!

RPG Maker MV: 93% OFF

ACTION GAME MAKER: 30% OFF

Extra Savings: Purchase the RPG Maker MZ & ACTION GAME MAKER Bundle to receive an additional 10% OFF!

■ RPG Maker MZ "Free Weekend"

Curious about game dev?

We are hosting a Free Weekend for RPG Maker MZ! During this period, you can experience every feature of the engine for free.

Discover the fun of building your own world, and if you love it, grab it at a huge discount during the festival!

■ Vampire Survivors × ACTION GAME MAKER Bundle

We are proud to announce a special collaboration!

Pick up the Vampire Survivors × ACTION GAME MAKER Bundle for an extra 10% discount.

This bundle is available exclusively for the duration of the RPG Maker Festival 2026 - don’t miss out on this legendary pairing!

■ Explore 1,000+ Games Made with RPG Maker

The festival isn’t just about the tools!

There's more than 1,000 games created with RPG Maker that are participating in this year's event!

From hidden gems to acclaimed indie hits, take a look and we're sure you'll find your next favorite game.

Many of these titles are also available at special sale prices!

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/rpgmakerfestival2026/?tab=2

The RPG Maker Special Sale is here to support everyone who wants to start making games—or is already creating them! From the RPG Maker series to the brand-new ACTION GAME MAKER, plus a huge variety of DLC and plugins, everything is available at special discounted prices!

■ Sale Overview

During this RPG Maker Special Sale, RPG Maker titles and related products are available for up to 90% OFF! Not only can you grab the essential editors, but you’ll also find plenty of additional assets and powerful plugins to expand your game worlds. Find the tools to take your creations to the next level!

• Sale Period: October 6, 2025 (Mon) 10:00 AM – October 20, 2025 (Mon) 10:00 AM PT

• Event Page:

■ Featured Titles & DLC

RPG Maker MZ – 55% OFFRPG Maker MV – 90% OFF ACTION GAME MAKER – 20% OFF RPG Maker MZ – Card Game Combat Plugin – 20% OFF RPG Maker MZ Dorapika Pixel Map Assets: Modern City – 65% OFF

■ Repost Campaign

To celebrate the sale, we’re giving away a package of both RPG Maker MZ and ACTION GAME MAKER to 10 lucky winners!

How to Enter:

About RPG Maker Festival 2025

Part One Events RPG Maker VX Ace Available For Free

Big Sales! RPG Maker MZ 55％ Off, RPG Maker MV 93％ Off

RPG Maker Game Celebrations

Phase Two Events

Fixed

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SIMPLE ENOUGH FOR A CHILD POWERFUL ENOUGH FOR A DEVELOPER VERSATILE ENOUGH FOR ANY PLATFORM

SIMPLE ENOUGH FOR A CHILD POWERFUL ENOUGH FOR A DEVELOPER VERSATILE ENOUGH FOR ANY PLATFORM

Rm2k3 Changelog

Added

• Incremental keyboard search in listboxes: It’s now possible to search in listboxes by entering the first characters of an item’s name - until now, only searching for the first character worked (and it didn’t even work correctly, see Fixes). Backspace also works. Advancing by pressing the first letter multiple times works as well.
• After an editor update, a changelog is now displayed.
• The editor now offers to upgrade projects which use an older runtime engine version, and a changelog of the engine is displayed. Breaking changes are highlighted using a “” prefix. There are also a few more checks and warnings (such as when opening an RM2k project).
• Option “Explore Project Folder” in “Project” menu.

• The title screen is now optional (can be changed in the System tab of the database). If disabled, a new game will always be started automatically, where one may display their own title screen.
• If the “Show Title Screen” option in the “Game” menu is disabled while the title screen is disabled in the database, the load menu will be called automatically upon testplay.
• Event commands “Open Load Menu”, “Exit Game”, “Toggle ATB Wait Mode”, “Toggle Fullscreen Mode”, “Open Video Options”.
• Conditional branch type “Other”, with options “Savestate is available”, “Playtest mode is active”, “ATB mode is ‘Wait ON’”, “Fullscreen mode is active”.

• Improved screen display: F5 can be used to open the video options. Options can be saved as default and are then used for all games. The video options can also be accessed through the window’s system menu.
• Window mode now also allows for x3 and x4 zoom, as well as interpolation.
• For the new fullscreen mode (GDI rendering), options for interpolation, uneven pixel sizes vs. integer scaling, and aspect ratio have been added.
• An option to use the old DirectDraw fullscreen mode has been added, because this mode works better for some users, mostly on older machines. Option to show FPS in title bar or top-left of screen (through F5 settings).
• Transparent windows can now be used together with the battle layout A as well. In battle, the windows will still be opaque, but on the map, they will be transparent.
• The transparent windows setting now also affects the title screen. Messages where some dynamic value is inserted in the middle (gold obtained, inn messages) are now intelligently inserting or not inserting spaces between the individual parts of the message. No leading space will be shown if the left string is empty, and no string between the middle and the right part will be shown if the right string starts th wia punctuation character.
• The “Y” key has now the function of an additional confirm button (such as Space, Enter and “Z”), so that it sits next to the “X” key on QWERTZ keyboards as well.

Changed

• The “Find” menu item was renamed to “Search”.
• In-editor bitmap font is now RPG2000G instead of RPG2000 because a serifless font is easier to read.
• The checkbox for transparent windows in the database has been moved from the Battle Screen tab to the System tab because it affects windows outside the battle as well.
• The game menu item “Change” is now called “Row”.
• All damage multiplicator values for elements (A-E) can now range from -9,999% to +99,999%.

• The game fonts are now not extracted to the harddisk every time the software is run, but loaded in-memory instead.

Rm2k3 Changelog

Added

• Incremental keyboard search in listboxes: It’s now possible to search in listboxes by entering the first characters of an item’s name - until now, only searching for the first character worked (and it didn’t even work correctly, see Fixes). Backspace also works. Advancing by pressing the first letter multiple times works as well.
• After an editor update, a changelog is now displayed.
• The editor now offers to upgrade projects which use an older runtime engine version, and a changelog of the engine is displayed. Breaking changes are highlighted using a “” prefix. There are also a few more checks and warnings (such as when opening an RM2k project).
• Option “Explore Project Folder” in “Project” menu.

• The title screen is now optional (can be changed in the System tab of the database). If disabled, a new game will always be started automatically, where one may display their own title screen.
• If the “Show Title Screen” option in the “Game” menu is disabled while the title screen is disabled in the database, the load menu will be called automatically upon testplay.
• Event commands “Open Load Menu”, “Exit Game”, “Toggle ATB Wait Mode”, “Toggle Fullscreen Mode”, “Open Video Options”.
• Conditional branch type “Other”, with options “Savestate is available”, “Playtest mode is active”, “ATB mode is ‘Wait ON’”, “Fullscreen mode is active”.

• Improved screen display: F5 can be used to open the video options. Options can be saved as default and are then used for all games. The video options can also be accessed through the window’s system menu.
• Window mode now also allows for x3 and x4 zoom, as well as interpolation.
• For the new fullscreen mode (GDI rendering), options for interpolation, uneven pixel sizes vs. integer scaling, and aspect ratio have been added.
• An option to use the old DirectDraw fullscreen mode has been added, because this mode works better for some users, mostly on older machines. Option to show FPS in title bar or top-left of screen (through F5 settings).
• Transparent windows can now be used together with the battle layout A as well. In battle, the windows will still be opaque, but on the map, they will be transparent.
• The transparent windows setting now also affects the title screen. Messages where some dynamic value is inserted in the middle (gold obtained, inn messages) are now intelligently inserting or not inserting spaces between the individual parts of the message. No leading space will be shown if the left string is empty, and no string between the middle and the right part will be shown if the right string starts th wia punctuation character.
• The “Y” key has now the function of an additional confirm button (such as Space, Enter and “Z”), so that it sits next to the “X” key on QWERTZ keyboards as well.

Changed

• The “Find” menu item was renamed to “Search”.
• In-editor bitmap font is now RPG2000G instead of RPG2000 because a serifless font is easier to read.
• The checkbox for transparent windows in the database has been moved from the Battle Screen tab to the System tab because it affects windows outside the battle as well.
• The game menu item “Change” is now called “Row”.
• All damage multiplicator values for elements (A-E) can now range from -9,999% to +99,999%.

• The game fonts are now not extracted to the harddisk every time the software is run, but loaded in-memory instead.

v1.10a (2015-04-30)

• The game installer creation works now, but replacing it with a better, modern installer is still on the roadmap.
• The graphics problems (framerate, edges cut off in fullscreen) have been solved with this update, but only for new projects. In order to use the updated fullscreen mode in an existing project, you have to copy the ultimate_rt_eb.dll file from a new project into the existing.
• The fullscreen can now be a bit smaller than the actual screen, to preserve fixed pixel sizes. In the next version, this whole process will be streamlined and improved further.

Fixed

• The default database for new projects had a few graphics not set correctly.
• Creating a game installer didn’t work (error message “Can’t read response file”).
• For some users, the mouse would “fly around” in the editor when drawing tiles or moving animation frames in the database.
• The Steam version would trigger DEP on some computers, causing it not to launch.
• The Steam version did not have the correct default project path set. Please note that existing users would have to change it manually now since they might already have projects in the old path.
• The word “Frame” was confusingly used in different ways in the animation editor.
• In some cases, no error message would appear when a project was opened a second time another instance. Instead, nothing would happen at all.
• Fullscreen was very slow on some computers.
• RTP: The ship tileset and the title screens were accidentally from the RPG Maker 2000 RTP instead of the RPG Maker 2003 RTP.

Changed

• The fullscreen mode now scales only to multiples of 320x240 so that pixels have a fixed size. This is a quick fix for the problems reported in v1.10.

Important Reminders!

• Please note that the fullscreen change will not affect existing projects unless the “ultimate_rt_eb.dll” file is manually copied from a new project!

v1.10a (2015-04-30)

• The game installer creation works now, but replacing it with a better, modern installer is still on the roadmap.
• The graphics problems (framerate, edges cut off in fullscreen) have been solved with this update, but only for new projects. In order to use the updated fullscreen mode in an existing project, you have to copy the ultimate_rt_eb.dll file from a new project into the existing.
• The fullscreen can now be a bit smaller than the actual screen, to preserve fixed pixel sizes. In the next version, this whole process will be streamlined and improved further.

Fixed

• The default database for new projects had a few graphics not set correctly.
• Creating a game installer didn’t work (error message “Can’t read response file”).
• For some users, the mouse would “fly around” in the editor when drawing tiles or moving animation frames in the database.
• The Steam version would trigger DEP on some computers, causing it not to launch.
• The Steam version did not have the correct default project path set. Please note that existing users would have to change it manually now since they might already have projects in the old path.
• The word “Frame” was confusingly used in different ways in the animation editor.
• In some cases, no error message would appear when a project was opened a second time another instance. Instead, nothing would happen at all.
• Fullscreen was very slow on some computers.
• RTP: The ship tileset and the title screens were accidentally from the RPG Maker 2000 RTP instead of the RPG Maker 2003 RTP.

Changed

• The fullscreen mode now scales only to multiples of 320x240 so that pixels have a fixed size. This is a quick fix for the problems reported in v1.10.

Important Reminders!

• Please note that the fullscreen change will not affect existing projects unless the “ultimate_rt_eb.dll” file is manually copied from a new project!