Continuing the momentum from our previous update, many new features have been added to Thrive which will enrich the player experience. Symbolizing another monumental step forward towards a complete Microbe Stage, we present to you Thrive 0.7.0! This release marks the completion of the 0.6.x roadmap. For this release the major features are a new auto-evo algorithm based on miches that should generate much better AI species, and a convolution surface algorithm which gives macroscopic creatures a skin in the prototypes. Theres also a lot of smaller new features and tweaks to the microbe stage as usual. The last roadmap items to be completed where engulfing balancing and fixing as well as allowing continuing as a related species in easy mode.

Thrive 0.7.0

[previewyoutube=IUXOp3PgWPM;full][/previewyoutube] See the full patch notes at the end. or read on for some of the highlights.

Convolution Surfaces Realized

A long-awaited feature sure to excite the community, our macroscopic organism editor has been improved to include meshing, metaball scaling, symmetry, and finer control over sculpting your organism. You read that right: your 3D organisms are now more than just a collection of spheres! There is still an immense amount of work to be made in the editor creating dedicated parts related to eyes, mandibles, and more and macroscopic gameplay remains bare. Regardless, convolution surfaces are a foundational mechanic for creating organisms beyond the microscopic stages of Thrive. We hope you enjoy this promising new feature and appreciate you for being there every step of the way Thrive takes forward. If you make any interesting looking creatures with the new editor, be sure to send them our way as wed love to see what the community comes up with.

Auto-Evo Reimagined

Thrives auto-evo system, responsible for simulating the evolution of life around the player, has received a major overhaul introducing, the Miche System. By defining various problems and pressures that organisms might face, and defining how species might respond to that pressure, miches provide a dynamic and complex simulation of an ecosystem. Species will generally be much more efficient in adapting to their environment and responding to pressures. Players will find their worlds busier and more alive, with more competitive organisms popping up around them. This is an exciting and dramatic change to auto-evo the fundamental evolution mechanic underlying Thrive built up from years of lessons learned. For a more detailed write-up on how exactly miches work, consider reading this older document by Thim, who is one of our programmers who contributed heavily to the development of miches. Note that some changes might have occurred between this rendition of miches and that which is currently implemented. You can also see an explanation of miches in a video format where Thim yells at a lawn. Again, the current implementation of miches has likely been changed to better fit Thrives purposes since the making of this video, but this is the easiest existing introduction to the core concepts of miches. [previewyoutube=Ka4btpy9jlk;full][/previewyoutube]

Expanded Cellular Gameplay

The microbe stage has received a host of new exciting features that greatly expand on its gameplay and feel. A new part the mucocyst has been introduced as a customization option and alternate form for slime jets. When activated, the player will be encased in a tough exterior coat of mucus, allowing major resistance to toxins, engulfment, and other threats. Players will be immobilized however, and growth will be halted while in this state. A sprinting mechanic has been introduced, granting the player additional speed. Rather than just pointing your mouse in a direction and holding W, races to compound clouds and chasing/being chased is now more engaging. Be careful though sprinting too long generates strain, resulting in an increased energy demand that could exhaust your organism! The process panel now has a functional use beyond making sure things are functioning right within your cell. Players can now selectively pause certain metabolic processes via the panel, allowing for an entirely new layer of energy management for players who love to optimize. Finally, various smaller but substantial improvements to game mechanics will make combat both more rewarding and challenging. A short healing cooldown has been introduced, making toxins more viable as a weapon and combat more high stakes for the player. And greater customization over toxins allows players to choose an expensive, high-damage impact, or less expensive and faster but less-damaging hits.

Compound Clouds Revisited

Thrives visual richness has been improved. Compound cloud visuals have been improved, with the clouds having much more texture and contrast than before. With adjustments having been made to improve visibility in the brighter patches. Phosphate chunks have been introduced as well, with both smaller digestible minerals and large cloud-emitting crystals spawning into the world. These chunks will be more frequent in deeper patches and will create a more interesting visual landscape and environment for the player to interact with. More chunks might be added in future updates, so stay tuned!

Other Notable Changes

• In the experimental features mode, placing rusticyanin allows the player to shoot projectiles at iron to break off chunks, which will eventually result in the larger iron chunk being depleted fully. Enabling experimental features will allow players to test this out; feedback would be much appreciated.
• Migration has been revamped, allowing the player to direct their species towards a new patch without necessarily playing in that patch themselves.
• On easy mode, players can now switch to another species upon extinction.
• Corpse chunks now have more resources, making heterotrophy more viable. Chunks spawning and despawning has also been refactored to result in more consistent performance.
• You can now engulf when starving, though you take health damage.

Looking Ahead

The development team will now shift focus to improvements to the presentation of information across the various editor screens of Thrive, such as the editor itself, population and patch data, the timeline, and representations of the food web in a patch. This will make the game easier to understand and manage, setting up the Microbe Stage for future dependent features, such as dynamic environments. Though focus has shifted towards the x.7.0 release cycle, this doesnt mean that combat will not see any new development in the future; any volunteer can pick up on concepts and implement more abilities. However, our main programmer will now be focusing on moving Thrive forward and establishing the foundation of the important features we have yet to implement. As always, remember to join us for our developer Thrivestream later today, where well cover the changes in this release and answer any questions you might have about the future of development. [previewyoutube=dJkveuM2SUU;full][/previewyoutube] You can either comment below or visit our feedback thread to give your thoughts on this update.

Full Patch Notes

• Added a completely new auto-evo algorithm based on a miche algorithm. This should massively improve the species auto-evo generates.
• Added convolution surfaces to add "skin" to macroscopic creatures to no longer display them just as a collection of metaballs
• Added sprinting ability to get a quick burst of speed
• Updated the compound cloud visuals with a new shader for more textured look
• Added new environmental chunks that emit phosphate
• Added feature to command the player species to migrate to new patches without the player having to move themselves
• Added mucocyst upgrade for slime jet which turns it into a defensive shield
• Added option to switch to a different species on extinction in easy mode instead of getting a game over
• Added a red screen flash as indicator for the player taking damage
• Added customization of toxin toxicity, which allows selecting between more damage per single shot or faster fire-rate
• Increased toxin initial velocity a bit
• Made cell turning speed ramp up much much faster when not pointing at the cursor. This makes the strategy of needing to overshoot the cursor past the direction you want to point at for maximum turning speed unnecessary.
• Microbe AI can now move sideways when trying to reach chunks or other cells
• Fixed eukaryotic engulfing size multiplier to be 2 instead of 1.5
• Prokaryotes now drop smaller cell chunks that are easier to eat
• Buffed dropped cell chunks to have 3x more compounds in them
• Added a cap to how many chunks a dying cell can drop to prevent absolutely massive cells causing issues
• Entering engulf mode without ATP is now possible at the cost of a little bit of health
• Added pilus damage cooldown on ejecting something to prevent ejected cells from immediately dealing massive amounts of pilus damage
• Increased maximum chunk count a bit to hopefully help with visual despawning
• Added buttons to the process panel to toggle individual processes on or off
• Cell colony members now forward messages to the HUD, which for example, allows indigestibility messages to be forwarded to provide info to the player as to why they can't eat something while in a colony
• There's now a few second cooldown before health regenerates after taking damage
• Added experimental siderophore feature that reworks iron gameplay to make it require shooting projectiles at big iron chunks to break off small chunks to then eat them
• Added a basic process panel view to the editor
• Added slider to resize metaball to be placed in the macroscopic editor
• Added simple X-axis symmetry mode to the macroscopic editor
• The prototype rocket launch animation now approximates an orbit entering manoeuvre instead of going straight up
• Tweaked when the low performance warning is triggered
• Fixed a bug where engulfed objects can get stuck in an incorrect state (entities in incorrect state are now force ejected)
• Fixed bug with the events timeline clearing wrong parts of the timeline after 20 generations
• Fixed organelle icons being cutoff in the Thriveopedia
• Fixed species preview tooltips not working in auto-evo explorer
• Fixed species preview tooltips not working in the timeline tab
• Fixed input keybindings menu not showing modifier keys along with graphical key representations
• Fixed slight visual artifacts with mixing clouds near the screen edges
• Fixed mouse hover panel checked world position under the cursor not taking our distortion shader into account (chromatic aberration option)
• Fixed various aspects of main menu 3D backgrounds 2 and 3
• Fixed multiple places in the editor where too long translations caused issues
• Fixed one 3D background having a particle emitter set to update at a limited framerate
• Fixed not being able to rebind inputs to CTRL, Shift, and ALT
• Fixed bug with rebound keys not displaying in key prompts correctly
• Fixed species colour not applying to all strands of cilia
• Fixed editor timeline global and local buttons being pressable at once
• Fixed word wrap not being enabled for auto-evo prediction panel, which caused issues with too wide GUI controls in some languages
• Fixed radial selection menu text being offcenter
• Fixed bug with editor button staying active while going to a later stage
• Thrive now prints the time when the game is started to log files
• Reduced memory allocations in microbe mutation generation
• Added a shader for iron chunk depletion and slightly updated the iron visuals in general (this is unused currently but is planned to be used in the future)
• Removed old auto-evo configuration options that are no longer used
• Made key prompts queue a refresh on data change instead of loading an updated icon immediately
• Wrote code documentation for BiomeCompoundProperties
• Added backend support for LAWK-locked organelles to be handled by the endosymbiosis system
• Updated some of the code README file badges
• Updated YamlDotNet from 15.3.0 to 16.0.0
• Updated code checking tools version
• Fixed our shader code check not working properly after the Godot 4 upgrade
• Removed old mutation code that the new auto-evo no longer uses
• Improved our threaded run generation script error messages
• Added TODO comments to a few places we could use graphics pooling as new graphics instance creation is one of the heaviest parts of the game in terms of performance currently
• Added more instructions regarding gettext to our setup instructions
• Updated translations