We’re back again with our latest tri-monthly release of Thrive! This update brings to you a long awaited feature; The further adaptation and specialization of otherwise familiar parts. That is to say, part upgrades are finally here! As of now, only one upgrade exists, which provides cilia with a brand new functionality for players to experiment with. This and more, will be elaborated upon further into the post.
Our developers have worked hard to bring you an expanded Thrive experience. We’ve outlined the major changes in this devblog, but you can see the patch notes for a full list of features and bug fixes at the end of this post.
Part Upgrades
With the introduction of part upgrades, individual parts of the cell can now be customized to introduce new and innovative functionality. This allows players to further adapt to a playstyle of their choice in increasingly deep and interesting ways! Contrary to what the name implies, the upgrades system will rarely if ever introduce a purely positive effect. Every change has it’s tradeoffs…
As of now, only one upgrade has been implemented; The new pulling cilia variant augments your engulfing ability by pulling in prey from further away. The more upgraded cilia you have, the stronger the pull!
Performance Benchmark Test
A new tool has been developed to test the limits of a player’s device. This benchmarks test puts your PC through a gauntlet of performance-intensive situations and records the results for you to consider. Notice anything odd about the results? Let us know!
Other Notable Changes
Patch notes are now shown in the main menu first time when playing a new Thrive version (starting the first update after 0.6.1, i.e. 0.6.2)
Added buttons in main menu and the pause menu to open the link for reporting bugs
Added new auto-evo exploring tool features (exporting data, running multiple worlds in a row + others)
Evolutionary tree now works for freebuild games started with a fossil
Added day/night cycle tutorial
It is now possible to rebind and see controller buttons in the options menu
Looking Ahead
With a rise in performance issues and complaints from players, the next update is looking to be performance-focused with much of our effort going into optimization of Thrive. Unfortunately this means that it may not bring anything significant to the gameplay table.
There’s still a few features that didn’t quite make it into this release potentially to be followed through for the next, such as part unlocks. With functionality for upgrades added into the game, you may also expect more interesting options for present parts to become available!
Want to hear more? Come join us in our upcoming developer Thrivestream to ask us whatever you like, and celebrate the new release:
Full Patch Notes
Cilia now has an upgrade to make it pull in nearby objects, which is useful for predation
Added our website news feed to the main menu
Patch notes are now shown in the main menu first time when playing a new Thrive version
All patch notes can be accessed from the options menu
Added a new movement mode (screen relative) that can be used for keyboard input (it is the default mode for controller input)
Movement tutorial now works with a controller but has a warning that controller support is not fully done and is buggy
Added a microbe benchmark tool for more easily seeing what the game performance is on different hardware or testing changes that are meant to improve the game performance
Added new auto-evo exploring tool features (exporting data, running multiple worlds in a row + others)
Added day/night cycle tutorial
Added buttons in main menu and the pause menu to open the link for reporting bugs
Improved dynamic MP calculation to better handle some cases, especially the new general organelle upgrades system
The resource and health bars now show up to 3 numbers before switching to "k" suffix notation. This fixes a problem where ATP amount could overflow the box reserved for it
Microbe stats are now updated when doing move or upgrade actions this will make the numbers more accurately represent the current state of the edited microbe
The evolutionary tree is now in the game when playing freebuild (doesn't work in older saves)
GUI button focus visuals where they look bad should now be fixed
It is now possible to rebind and see controller buttons in the options menu (note to get default controller keybindings you, the input options needs to be reset to get them to appear)
Added controller button icons from Xelu
Evolutionary tree now works for freebuild games started with a fossil
Process panel now keeps working even when the player is ready to enter the editor
Auto-evo exploring tool now shows the total simulation run time
Much more of the game GUI is now usable with a controller or the keyboard
Implemented controller navigation of tabbed GUI interfaces
Welcome tutorial message now focuses the start thriving button by default
Fixed a bug with options menu thinking there are changed options, if the settings file didn't exist
Fixed a bug where left and right keys didn't work for GUI focus control
Fixed a crash when an entity with attached fossilisation button was destroyed
Added fossilisation buttons to more places
Invalid fossil files are now skipped instead of crashing the game
Fixed a bug in world generation where it failed due to not keeping track of a created tidepool patch
World seed is now logged when map generation fails
Light level updates are now no longer applied each frame to save slightly on performance
Fixed a few errors that happened when Godot loaded our code into the Godot editor process
Input rebinding controls are now destroyed when the options menu is closed. This reduces the number of background objects listening for inputs constantly.
Cleaned up some old unused stuff in organelle data file
Removed negative (or zero) passed time checks as Godot Engine should have a fix in now to guard against
Removed the dependency on Python for our translations script now there's one less tool required when developing Thrive
Updated our tools and scripts to use .NET 7
Updated our style guide for .NET 7 new code checks and fixed new warnings they found
Highlighted git submodule importance in our setup instructions
Unified codebase by removing use of Godot meta in one place
Improved the Github issue bug report template
Added a support in our packaging script to target the web platform, but as expected the game is totally broken when exported that way (someone might come along at some point in the future and make it actually work, but we aren't promising anything regarding this)
Improved text extraction for translation tool
Translations files are now alphabetically sorted based on keys, which will hopefully make fewer PRs required to update translation files
Fixed some trailing new lines in English text
Added a new code formatting check to ensure correct XML documentation formatting
Added a new custom code checking tool that finds some C# style problems and corrects them automatically
Added code style check for incorrect whitespace in English text
Updated translations
Added a warning popup when Steam initialization fails
0.6.1 Release Candidate available for testing
0.6.1 is soon here so it is once again time to test the release ahead of time.
The highlights of this release are the new pulling cilia upgrade (and finished general updates framework), new movement mode selectable in the options along with further work towards full controller support, a microbe benchmarking tool, showing our news feed and new patch notes in the game, additional features for the auto-evo exploring tool, and of course various smaller bug fixes and tweaks.
To test the version early switch to the "beta" version on Steam (in the game properties) and you can then play the test build.
Thrive Launcher updated to 2.0.3
The Steam version of the launcher has been updated to version 2.0.3, this brings in various bug fixes and small improvements over the previous launcher version. Luckily there weren't any critical issues with the huge 2.0 release of the launcher, which meant that we didn't have to put out multiple small bug fixes immediately after. The most visible change with this should be that the game launch failure detection advice should get displayed more reliably.
Devblog #35 Dawn of the Living Fossils
Today we are proud to present the final update within the year of 2022; Thrive 0.6.0! Twilight now falls on the seas of Thrive, and the normally dominant autotrophs now face their greatest enemy… It is always darkest before dawn with the beautiful addition of the day/night cycle! Found a species you love and want to remember forever? Immortalize it with the all new fossilization tool included in the long awaited Thriveopedia, future home of all things informational. These and more, in Thrive 0.6.0!
Specifically in the Steam version one of the most major things you'll see (or won't see) is that the Launcher will no longer be visible before Thrive is started. The launcher is still able to open automatically when there is a reportable crash or if you use the special button in the Thrive main menu to exit to the launcher. If you prefer, you can configure the launcher to be shown before starting Thrive to get back the old functionality.
Our developers have worked hard to bring you an expanded Thrive experience. We’ve outlined the major changes in this devblog, but you can see the full patch notes at the end.
The Thriveopedia
We’ve always wanted it and now we finally have it; The go-to resource for all things Thrive! The Thriveopedia is the future home of any information on the world, the game, and it’s mechanics, that the player could ever need to know. As of now, the Thriveopedia only contains a home page with links to our wiki and forums, a map of your current world, evolutionary tree, and the museum.
In the future, this guide is planned to contain information on the game’s features, including information about their real-life counterparts, and strategies on how to best use them.
Fossilization
Individual species can now transcend the confines of their home worlds at the behest of the player, with the powerful fossilization tool. While in the pause menu, the player can now select any species in view to capture it’s information and study it, and should they so desire, save it forever in their personal museum!
Amass all the species you could ever want within the Museum section of the Thriveopedia where not only can you admire your collection, but you can also freely start a new freebuild session as a select species of your choice! Share your favorite cells with other players by transferring your .thrivefossil files with each other! Gotta collect them all!
Day and Night
Throughout all of Thrive’s history photosynthesizers have reigned supreme as the most stable and uncontested autotrophs to grace the seas. But this ends today as the world of Thrive is no longer tidally locked with it’s sun and now experiences the exciting phenomena of night and day. Plant players beware as you must now periodically face a trial of endurance within the shadowy depths of the night, where the once ever-reliable sunlight can no longer reach.
As it is quite a large change to gameplay, the day/night cycle is currently disabled by default. So for anyone interested in experiencing the flow of time, make sure to enable it in the advanced game-start settings! Otherwise, players will be greeted with the familiar sunny skies of classic Thrive.
Launcher 2.0
Behold the latest in Thrive launcher technology, launcher 2.0; Now entirely rewritten and featuring enhanced processing and loading speeds, a sleeker design, and greater versatility.
Other Notable Changes
Thrive now has a new intro video when you start the game. Make sure you have it enabled in the settings so you can appreciate the exciting view!
The main menu now features social media icons so that you can easily find a community outlet of your choice.
Thrive now has a safe-mode triggered crashing, which disables all mods and video playing before restarting.
Pili now feature a slight damage delay, preventing them from rapidly inflicting a large amount of damage at once.
Looking Ahead
While this update may be exciting, it is only the beginning of our plans for 0.6.x and sets The stage for the future implementation of our upgrades system, unlocking system, combat reworks, and more!
Want to hear more? Come join us in our upcoming developer Thrivestream to ask us whatever you like, and celebrate the new release!
Patch notes
Added day/night cycle. Note that due to missing tutorials, balancing etc. which we didn't have time for, you need to manually enable this feature when starting a new game in the advanced options.
Added the first few pages of the Thriveopedia to show info about the current game and show the evolutionary tree now in the game proper as well
Added fossilisation feature to save selected species to the museum which can be loaded through the Thriveopedia to the freebuild editor
Pilus damage now has a cooldown to prevent a ton of damage from it very quickly
Balancing changes
Fixed infinite compound ejection caused by negative compound ejection (only a bandaid fix for now due to time constraints)
Engulfing now gives extra glucose on top of what the engulfed cell actually had
Membrane colour transparency works again. Be prepared to have AI species evolve to be more transparent again to avoid being eaten by the player.
Refactored our code related to species colour adjusting when used in graphs
Fixed multiple issues related to organelle graphics rendering by changing their render modes and splitting organelles into transparent and opaque ones
New intro video
Added our social media and website links to the main menu
Added safe mode start up after Thrive crashed before managing to start fully. Safe mode can disable all mods and video playing
Digestion efficiency display in the editor now shows the separate values for each type of digestion to reduce player confusion regarding them
Fixed panspermia being selectable with LAWK being on by default now
Enabled word wrap for credits to fix some misaligned columns
Saving being unavailable in some prototypes now has the warning about that shown correctly when manually making a save in the later editors
New mucilage and slime jet icons
Starting with no mods enabled but having installed mods now shows a heads up notifying that mods need to be enabled first before they work
Fixed evolutionary tree being cutoff even when fully zoomed out
Added some features used by Thrive Launcher 2.0. Added button to exit to the launcher when the launcher is hidden and would otherwise be difficult to return to from Thrive. Store versions of Thrive now use seamless launcher mode to not show the launcher window before starting Thrive.
Improved performance of our custom rich text labels by only registering input listening when necessary
Saving now uses a new Godot API to generate the screenshot PNG this avoids an unnecessary temporary file write to disk and should be faster as a result
Fixed a rare crash when using a lot of slime jets
Added a bandaid on infinite compound ejection due to engulfed object having compounds with NaN amounts in it
Added some guards against dividing compound amounts by zero this should hopefully reduce how often the NaN compounds bug happens
Changed scene change mod callback to trigger slightly earlier
Updated some code comments related to the saving system
Fixed localization update script writing BOMs in .po files on Windows
Fixed some typos in the English text
Updated translations
0.6.0 and new launcher now available for testing
0.6.0 will be released next week and because of that we are putting out a test build of the new version.
To play the test build switch to the "beta" version in the game properties in the Steam client. Note before you download that the day/night cycle needs to be turned on in advanced new game settings to work. All the other major features like Thriveopedia will work with existing saves in a limited manner. And please note that for now the new launcher 2.0 doesn't yet start in seamless mode on Windows (so you'll still see the launcher before playing Thrive). This will be fixed for the full 0.6.0 release.
Today we are proud to announce the release of Thrive 0.5.10, which among a large host of bug and performance fixes, provides players with brand new tools to play with and study their world. Deter predators by impeding them with the sticky mucus left in your wake! Live your life to the fullest as a proper vegetative plant, without having to search for compounds! Create entire timelines to your exact specifications with the new autoevo tool! All of this and more, awaits you in the latest in Thrive.
Our developers have tirelessly labored to bring you an expanded Thrive experience. We’ve outlined the major changes in this devblog, but you can see the patch notes at the bottom for a full list of features and bug fixes.
Mucilage Jet
0.5.10 presents a new highly versatile part to the evolutionist’s arsenal; The Mucilage Jet! This unassuming structure grants cells the ability to process glucose into a brand new agent known as mucilage over time. The cell is able to expel this mucilage to grant themselves a quick burst of speed to escape the grasp of predators, or perhaps catch their prey in turn. The mucilage left behind in the cell’s wake will drastically slow down any other cells caught in the sticky goo, granting craft creatures a chance to escape!
We cannot wait to see the interesting strategies players devise as they experiment with this new feature!
Time-Based Reproduction
No longer is the rate of reproduction tied directly to the player’s ability to gather compounds. Now in 0.5.10, all cells will passively acquire the necessary compounds over a period of time without needing to seek out concentrated clouds! No matter how large and slow you become, you will always be able to reproduce in reasonable time as the rate scales proportionally with the size of your organism.
Cells will on longer be able to reproduce instantly the moment they acquire sufficient resources however, as it now takes time to put the compounds to use. Gathering ammonia and phosphates via concentrated clouds will double the rate of reproductive progress, instead of directly filling it.
Auto-Evo Exploration Tool
For those of us with a love of clades and history; The Auto-Evo Exploration Tool is now available for your viewing pleasure! This invaluable tool allows you to directly run auto-evo several generations at a time within various defined metrics. Not only does it simulate the natural evolution of AI species, it also generates an entire clade diagram of each species and it’s predecessors!
Interested players will be able to peer into the very essence of any species by viewing it’s details, which reveal behavior values, precise color hex, population, auto-evo score, and more!
And what if you wanted to dive into this generated world that you have studied so well and experience it directly? You certainly can! Simply press “Play With Current Setting” to jump straight into the world you have generated.
Other Changes
Auto-evo calculations have been updated to encourage sessility in AI species, and now runs 60% faster as well.
LAWK (Life as We Know) is now toggled on by default when starting a new game. If you want to play with thermosynthesis, make sure to turn this setting off before starting!
Glycolysis and respiration processes now consume less glucose, making life a little easier. Small
Iron chunks now hold significantly less iron compound, preventing lithotrophs from fueling themselves indefinitely.
Entity limit is now weighted by size, so larger cells are less likely to spawn.
Outdated” species should no longer show up in gameplay, this includes species meant to be extinct and the player’s own species being left behind as microbes after advancing to multicellular.
The generation seed of your planet will now be displayed in the editor so it can be easily saved or shared.
The compounds and environment panels have become separate, and can be toggled separately as well.
The multicellular stage now has it’s own gameplay and editor themes.
Thrive is now available in the Norwegian, Vietnamese, and Croatian languages.
Looking Ahead
In the near future, we will move on to 0.6.x where much of our work will involve the implementation of the Thriveopedia, upgrades system, unlocking system, combat reworks, and more!
There are of course also some various features that unfortunately did not make it in time for release, such as the day/night cycle that you can look forward to.
And finally, we are hosting a Thrivestream RIGHT NOW so please join us in our developer livestream to celebrate the new release!
Patch notes
Switched reproduction to be more time based, cells now generate free compounds towards reproduction, and have a maximum use rate for growth compounds
Added new slime jet organelle
The player can now move to any patch their species is in or next to such a patch
Unhandled C# exceptions are now logged in game logs. If you get any of these please send the logs to us.
Added auto-evo exploring tool which allows running auto-evo and inspecting the results
Balancing changes
Auto-evo is now 60% faster by having more data caching
Replaced the ambiance tracks with completely new ones
Made some progress on the macroscopic stage prototype
Fixed auto-evo population number difference between text report and graphs
Reworked auto-evo predation calculations
MP text on organelle selection buttons is now replaced by an MP icon
LAWK is now on by default
Entity limit is now a weighted so that fewer big cells spawn
Potentially fixed a bug that allowed things to spawn over the entity limit
Fixed a major bug in the spawn system which caused a lot of outdated species spawners to exist. This should stop extinct species spawning and the player's old species spawning when moving to multicellular.
Fixed a save load problem related to engulfing with clearing objects
Fixed some situations where the dynamic MP calculation ended up at the wrong resulting MP, please let us know if you still see incorrect MP calculations
Rigidity slider is no longer ever disabled, bugs were fixed related to its MP use
Updated to Godot 3.5
Added new multicellular music tracks
Added one more piece of multicellular concept art
Patch name overlay is now on top of the movement tutorial
Added a welcome tutorial for early multicellular
Added a tutorial about exiting a colony to continue growing in microbe stage
Implemented radio button functionality for our checkboxes
Increased species split and migration rate to fill the larger maps faster
Tweaked procedural patch map connection logic
Fixed patches with duplicate names in regions
Fixed tidepool patches being able to directly connect to oceans
Fixed classic map patch connections not saving correctly
Added some controller input handling options in preparation for proper controller support
Planet seed is now shown in the editor
There's now separate button to hide/show the environment panel
Fixed auto-evo having a chance to read gameplay adjusted population numbers, which may have caused problems
Thrive now asks for window close confirmation if there are probably unsaved changes
Fixed low performance in the report tab coming from our custom rich text labels way too often re-parsing their content
Report tab now again reacts to selecting a different patch on the patch map tab. Also improved performance when selecting patches.
New game options now mentions and links to the performance options
Created a new system to save customized versions of game configuration objects, used for difficulty and auto-evo configuration. These allow old saves (in the future) to benefit from difficulty tweaks we do to the game
Added a few new cheats
Added the start of a resource loading manager system that should make the one linux crash we get reports about not happen by making the save screenshot loading happen differently
Opening the art gallery lag is now reduced by loading images gradually
The loading screen art now changes every 10 seconds
Prevented broken translations from crashing the game
Fixed an internal error with pause locks clearing with an unsuccessful save load
Tooltips now pick their direction better
Made a slight tweak to excess save deletion
Fixed some text in the GUI not reacting to language change
Fixed patch animations not playing in the patch extinction screen
Species name entry box now check the length of the input text visually and rejects too long names
Added GPU, current renderer and used GPU memory display to the options menu
The game now Waits for the loading screen to fade in before starting save load
Reduced the processing time used by axis type inputs
Disposed properties now have their paths logged when saving
Auto-evo now doesn't start while the stage is still fading out to prevent the game locking up for a while if only one background thread is used and auto-evo was set to not run during gameplay
Auto-evo run is now canceled if the game is exited to not leave multiple runs in the background if saves are loaded in quick succession
Tweaked the visibility of compound clouds a bit
Improved the height of the difficulty setup GUI
Updated compounds panel toggle button icon
Mod loader now gives a better error if a mod's .pck file is missing
Added a debugging tool to write current Godot SceneTree to a file
Our draggable scroll containers now hide the scroll bars by default
Fixed loading saves with engulfed objects in certain weird states
Fixed and improved engulfment related text and values in tooltips
Fixed warnings regarding GlobalTranslation when loading saves
Fixed a crash when closing the game with a game pausing popup window open
Fixed clipping not being enabled for the input configuration menu
Added a button to open our feature suggestions site
The exact commit and time Thrive was built is now shown in options
Exact build info is now shown for DevBuilds in the main menu
Save counting should no longer break if there are saves with bad numbers in the names
Graphs now use a cache for their data points to allow their re-use
Graph tooltips are now destroyed properly
Converted scripts in our repository from ruby to C#
Updated our code checking tool version
Fixed being unable to start the microbe stage scene directly from the Godot editor
Fixed a few code naming inconsistencies related to dB
Fixed the code for cell visual hashes using one field twice
Updated our setup instructions to recommend dotnet 6 SDK
Small git config change should collapse translation update diffs now by default
New languages: Norwegian, Vietnamese, Croatian
Updated translations
0.5.10 Release Candidate now available
A new release is soon here so it is time to do the customary pre-release testing. Some of the major features if you decide to test this will be the timed reproduction system, auto-evo exploring tool and various fixes and tweaks in a bunch of places.
The release candidate can be accessed by switching to the "beta" branch for Thrive in the game properties on Steam. Feel free to provide feedback about any new issues you experience with the new version and we'll try to fix as many problems before the release as possible. You can leave feedback either in the comments here or on the dedicated feedback thread on our forums.
New Suggestions Board!
Thrive, just like the creatures it simulates, is constantly evolving and improving. But to do that, we need effective channels by which we can hear feedback from the community. We decided to make this process much more streamlined by introducing a new Suggestions Board for the game!
It's easy to sign up, using either your email, Discord account, or Github account. Once logged in, you can:
Submit suggestions
Comment on other suggestions
Vote for the suggestions you support
Search for suggestions by tag, whether they're trending, the most wanted, the most discussed, and more
Check it out now at the link below:
https://suggestions.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/
Devblog #33: A Whole New World
Three months since our last release, we’re back with another Thrive update. Thrive 0.5.9 heralds the arrival of a large slate of game-changing features, many of which have long been stuck on our to-do pile. From procedural patch maps to 3D editors, cilia to thermoplasts: read on to learn more about these new additions.
Our developers have worked hard stuffing this release full of juicy new content to make the game a richer and more diverse experience. We’ve outlined the major changes in this devblog. See the patch notes for a full list of features and bug fixes.
Note that saves created in previous releases will not load in Thrive 0.5.9. This was a necessary change for some of the new features to work correctly, since the new features were so big it wouldn’t have been worth the large effort to write a save upgrader.
Procedural Patch Map
Perhaps the biggest change in this release is the procedural patch map generator. In previous versions, every game took place in the same world with the same biome layout. In Thrive 0.5.9, each game world is different, with a dynamic map to explore and adapt to.
In future, we hope to extend this system to allow more detailed planet generation. While different planet types do arise in the current implementation – it’s possible your planet may be full of ice biomes for instance, suggesting a much colder world – these arise by pure chance, and still rely on only a small set of patches. But this system is a start, and adds a replayability factor the game was sorely missing.
If you yearn for the familiar layout of Pangonia though, don’t fret – you can switch to the classic patch map thanks to our next important feature.
New Game Settings
Have you always found Thrive too easy? Too hard? Too boring to always start in the hydrothermal vents? In Thrive 0.5.9, we’ve addressed these issues and more with the new game settings screen.
Select a difficulty preset to adapt the game to your skill level. If you’re feeling adventurous, switch to the advanced view, where you’ll find plenty of sliders you can fiddle with to fine-tune various difficulty parameters.
Meanwhile, with the planet settings, you can enter a chosen seed for the procedural map generator and choose your starting patch from a range of scientifically plausible options. The advanced view also lets you switch between procedural and classic Pangonia map layouts.
Speaking of scientific plausibility, we finally have a LAWK toggle! That’s Life As We Know (it), for those unaware. If you’re all about that strict realism vibe, turn this on to disable speculative game elements we haven’t observed in nature. More on these shortly…
Engulfment Revamp
We’ve given engulfment mechanics a makeover in this release. It’s now more engaging than ever to swallow chunks and other cells, with custom mutations to expand your options further.
Digestion is now a timed process. Engulfed objects remain inside the cell as its enzymes break down ingested material. You can evolve lysosome organelles to make this process faster and more efficient. Modifying these lysosomes unlocks the ability to digest tougher membrane types, which have been buffed with resistance to engulfment from all cells without this mutation.
Macroscopic Prototype
Following on from the Multicellular Stage prototype last release, Thrive 0.5.9 adds a prototype editor for the macroscopic portion of the Multicellular Stage. Yes, that’s right – a 3D editor!
Right now it’s rather basic, consisting of a load of coloured balls representing cells. Other features meant development time had to shift away from this prototype, so there’s no 3D gameplay for the time being. Still, it’s a strong statement of our future intent with the game, and a lot of important work went into refactoring the game to pave the way for this feature and others.
Cilia
Their icon has been in the editor’s organelle list since Thrive 0.3.4, so we’re ecstatic to finally announce the arrival of cilia as placeable organelles.
Cell rotation rate now depends on size – the larger the cell, the closer its agility will be to that of an oil tanker. Cilia though boost rotation rate to help you fight this inevitable inertial creep, so be sure to add a few as you grow.
In future, cilia will be upgradeable, with further mutations generating currents to pull in unwary prey, but this feature didn’t quite make the cut-off for this release.
Thermosynthesis
The thermoplast is another organelle we’ve been hoping to add for a while. Thermoplasts (and their prokaryotic counterpart, thermosynthase) are speculative organelles which produce energy from heat gradients.
In Thrive 0.5.9, thermosynthesis creates ATP at a flat rate which depends only on the ambient temperature in a patch. This can be quite overpowered, so we’re looking to implement a more involved mechanic where the player has to chase dynamic heat gradients to keep their ATP topped up.
Spawn System Revamp
A less visible change is a revamp of the system spawning objects and clouds in the environment. While still subject to variation, the new system is less susceptible to large and frustrating regions of emptiness. Hopefully this should make gameplay more satisfying and the world more vibrant.
Art Gallery
Alongside all the above gameplay features, we’ve added a special treat to the main menu. Under the extras menu, you’ll now find an art gallery, full of some of Thrive’s iconic concept art, in-game models and in-game music. Browse at your leisure to the sound of a Thrive Main Theme smooth jazz remix.
Other Changes
That’s the big changes covered, but there are many more smaller changes to enjoy.
Easter eggs – We’ve added one type of randomly spawned Easter egg to the game environment, and most of you will find it quite familiar. Can you find it?
Patch-wide population system – Going extinct in only one patch no longer means game over. Instead, you’ll be greeted with a screen to choose a patch where other members of your species reside, giving you a second chance to thrive.
Configurable maximum entities option – If you’re having performance problems, head to the options menu and reduce the maximum number of entities in the performance tab. While it’s not a silver bullet, this should go some way to helping those with less powerful machinery play the game.
Pause hotkey – Press space to pause and unpause the game.
Debug overlay – Press Ctrl-F3 to open the new debug panel, featuring performance metrics and other helpful information.
Nucleus damage reduction – Having a nucleus now gives a 50% reduction in damage caused by enemies.
Many other tweaks and bug fixes!
You can read the entire list of changes in our patch notes.
Looking Ahead
In our next release, we’ll be solidifying many of these features with stability and performance enhancements. We also hope to continue expanding the Multicellular Stage prototype, and add further features to the Microbe Stage to bring it closer to its final form.
Again, we’ll be holding a developer livestream:
to celebrate the new release, so make sure you join us to ask questions and learn more about the inner workings of Thrive and its development team. We’re looking forward to seeing you there.
We also look forward to seeing you here for our next release!
0.5.9 Release Candidate now available
0.5.9 is approaching so it is time to do the usual pre-release testing. Note that this time we expect to break save compatibility between the rc1 and 0.5.9 release. So either don’t put too much time into saves with the RC or be mentally prepared to not be able to load them in 0.5.9. With that out of the way some of the most major things you’ll see are the engulfment revamp, procedural patch map, cilia, and continued work on the prototypes. Of course there’s a bunch more other changes included as well.
The release candidate can be accessed by switching to the "beta" branch for Thrive in the game properties on Steam. Feel free to provide feedback about any new issues you experience with the new version and we'll try to fix as many problems before 0.5.9 is released as possible. You can leave feedback either in the comments here or on the dedicated feedback thread on our forums.
