Devblog #36: Upgrades people, 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 its 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!
A new tool has been developed to test the limits of a players 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!
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. Theres still a few features that didnt 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: [previewyoutube=tbD3jbpMZNY;full][/previewyoutube]
[ 2023-02-18 18:28:00 CET ] [ Original post ]
Were 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. [previewyoutube=tpatXf9YkyE;full][/previewyoutube] Our developers have worked hard to bring you an expanded Thrive experience. Weve 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 its 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 players 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. Theres still a few features that didnt 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: [previewyoutube=tbD3jbpMZNY;full][/previewyoutube]
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
Thrive
Revolutionary Games Studio
Revolutionary Games Studio
2021-11-26
Indie Simulation Singleplayer EA
Game News Posts 42
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
Very Positive
(1021 reviews)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1779200
Thrive Linux Content [649.7 M]
In Thrive, you take control of an organism on an alien planet, beginning with the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). Your goal is to survive in the environment, adapt your species by adding mutations, and thrive. Other species will emerge to compete with yours. They will evolve via a population dynamics driven simulation with random mutations - you must improve and spread your species to surpass them. The success of your species depends both on your skill in surviving as an individual cell and the changes you make in the editor.
In the Microbe Stage, you control a single microbe or a colony of microbes bound together. You swim through a watery environment to find the resources your cell needs to stay alive and to reproduce. Once you have reproduced, you enter the editor, where you can review how well your species and others are surviving, move to new biomes, and modify your species. Add new organelles, change your membrane, and change your cell's visuals. Your goal is to become a more complex lifeform by first evolving the nucleus to become a eukaryote, then using binding agents to form cell colonies, the precursor to the first multicellular lifeforms.
The major goals of Thrive are to create engaging, compelling gameplay that respects our players’ intelligence, and remain as accurate as possible in our depiction of known scientific theory without compromising the former. Thrive is an open-source project, and anyone with game development skill is welcome to join our team. The game uses the open-source Godot engine with the C# programming language.
If you don't have game development skills, you are still welcome to join our fan community. We would love to have you along for the long ride!
In the Microbe Stage, you control a single microbe or a colony of microbes bound together. You swim through a watery environment to find the resources your cell needs to stay alive and to reproduce. Once you have reproduced, you enter the editor, where you can review how well your species and others are surviving, move to new biomes, and modify your species. Add new organelles, change your membrane, and change your cell's visuals. Your goal is to become a more complex lifeform by first evolving the nucleus to become a eukaryote, then using binding agents to form cell colonies, the precursor to the first multicellular lifeforms.
Current key features:
- Control an individual member of your species and survive the environment
- Predate on other species, use photosynsthesis or scavenge for resources
- Edit your species to make it more successful
- Compete with other species emerging on your planet via an evolution simulation
- Explore different biomes
- Fight other cells with multiple cellular level weapons
- Try different gameplay styles by specializing in different energy sources in subsequent playthroughs
- Learn about biology by using real compounds, organelles or parts inspired by real science
- Spread your species via the biome map
- Review and plan future actions by looking at population simulation results and graphs
- Learn the basics of the game with a light interactive tutorial
The major goals of Thrive are to create engaging, compelling gameplay that respects our players’ intelligence, and remain as accurate as possible in our depiction of known scientific theory without compromising the former. Thrive is an open-source project, and anyone with game development skill is welcome to join our team. The game uses the open-source Godot engine with the C# programming language.
If you don't have game development skills, you are still welcome to join our fan community. We would love to have you along for the long ride!
MINIMAL SETUP
- OS: Ubuntu 20.04 or latest Fedora version
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 3300UMemory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 530
- Storage: 1 GB available space
- OS: Ubuntu 20.04 or latest Fedora version
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel equivalentMemory: 8 GB RAM
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: GeForce GTX 970 or AMD equivalent
- Storage: 5 GB available space
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