0.14.2.6

Changelog

• Added localizable strings and tooltips for emotion names, descriptions and adjectives.
• Added localizable strings for a large number of AI routine names, as utilized by the thought logger
• Added localizable strings for energy deltas, shown on the Energy details tab
• Added missing localizable strings on the Customize Creatures menu page
• Added missing localizable strings for creature behavior states.
• Added missing localizable strings for temperature reporting

If youve been translating the game (shout out to s.t.andgo and magmacube!), youll find all these new strings appended to the bottom of Species ALRE\Language\en-AU.txt. Copy them into your own language txt file to begin translating. And also, thank you!

0.14.2.5

Changelog

• Fixed an egg-related crash that happened when loading a game.

[ 2022-11-25 11:24:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog

• Tentative fix for a creature teleportation bug associated with pouncing attacks.
• Main menu buttons are now localizable (they dont look quite as good as before, but its not too bad).
• Fix a crash when tutorial header text is translated into any other language.
• Added language name to the localization strings.
• Fix some typos in the English localization.

0.14.2.3

Changelog

• Tentative fix for MacOS version crashing on startup.
• Fix creatures inside eggs in the nursery dying before they hatch.
• Fix imported creatures dying as soon as they are imported.
• Fix a number of localization errors introduced in 0.14.2.2

[ 2022-11-07 09:57:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Lately I've been moving towards fatigue, sleep, temperature and exposure to the elements all needing to be much more important survival needs than they are right now. Let's put all of these mechanics under the umbrella of 'habitat'. Eventually, habitat will be almost as significant as food as far as survival and selection pressures go, one they will need to balance against seeking food in order to survive long enough to reproduce. Unfortunately, I find the current vegetation model wholly inadequate to support my plans for this stuff. It has failed me for the last time. So it's time to take what I've learned, throw the whole system into a volcano, and build a cleaner, more elegant and far more ambitious replacement. Here's the design goals for the new system, in rough order of priority:

The tree's need to be 3 dimensional structures.

Multiple 3d interaction points for fruit, foliage, shelter, perches and nests.

The tree types need to serve a purpose in the ecosystem.

Shelter tree's should not provide food and food tree's should not provide shelter. This will allow me to ensure the two do not generally grow in the same location.

The tree's need to be performant.

They're not the centerpiece of the simulation: their role doth not merit that they drink deeply from the fountain of FPS.

The tree's should evolve.

Evolving tree's is probably the second most requested feature, after flight. It was always planned, though never as a centerpiece of the game. So, let's discuss! You can read the rest of this post over here, on the development blog.

[ 2022-10-24 08:56:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.14.2.0 is now live on the experimental branch. This update does not include any gameplay changes, but instead enables the creation of localization mods and introduces new music. See the blog post here: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2022/10/10/0-14-2-0-released-to-experimental/ The three new music tracks were made by discord user Poliostasis.

[ 2022-10-10 06:26:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.14.1.14 Changelog * Fix a memory leak introduced in 0.14.1.12 that was causing an escalating series of freezes, ultimately leading to the game becoming non-responsive.

[ 2022-10-02 07:45:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.14.1.13 Changelog

• More consistent fossil generation.
• Fix a crash when loading a world.
• Fix a different crash when loading a world.

[ 2022-10-01 08:05:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.14.1.12 Changelog

• Add a lifecycle progress bar to Creature Details Overview page.
• 
  
• Fix clade diagram problem that was causing long-term saves to become corrupt and fail to load. Clade diagram will reset on load when this happens.
• Keybindings disabled when typing into the Save/Export Creature filename
• Holding keys down (eg. backspace) will work correctly when typing into the Save/Export Creature filename
• Substantial refactoring behind the scenes to make memory-pooled objects (creatures, corpses, eggs & trees) easier and simpler to work with. Hopefully, this wont cause any noticeable changes.

[ 2022-09-28 06:42:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Change diet pie chart colours
• Add consumption percentage figures
• Fix crash when putting creatures in nursery
• Fix creatures not being lifted when being moved
• Fix Nursery UI disappearing when opening it by clicking on the tower

[ 2022-09-18 00:37:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Add dietary pie chart to the clade diagram and sat map views. * Fix teleporting pounce bug * Fix liedownanddie micronap loop * Fix a multithreaded related crash * Fix creatures able to target locations beyond fences when running * Fix creature thumbnail stretching in export creature screen * Fix rovers being able to target creatures in the nursery * Possibly fix creatures escaping the nursery

[ 2022-09-17 06:39:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.14.1.9 Changelog

• Significant performance improvement: Creature AI now runs somewhere in the vicinity of 17% faster.
• Fix single frame micro-naps when all needs are satisfied.
• Fix "Index was out of range" crash thrown by the Save and Load World screens.
• Disable Nursery Fertility Emissions to prevent them from impacting underwater biomes.

[ 2022-09-13 07:59:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Fix a hunger/sleep behaviour loop that kicks in when a creature has both zero fatigue and zero food. The LayDownAndDie subroutine returns, with a vengence. * Remove mouse tooltips and ground pixel selection when using right click to rotate the camera * Fix fertility noise map resetting when using map editor tools * Fix fertility immediately reverting to non-terraformed biomes after you start the game * Fix animation speed problem when feeding underwater * Fix off-map underwater rendering as black or purple

[ 2022-09-12 06:55:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.14.1.7 Changelog

• Add nursery TURBOCHARGE option. If you turn TURBOCHARGE on in the nursery, it will dramatically increase the growth rate of eggs, juveniles and pregnancies.*
• Add nursery-specific wandering behaviour
• Fix a minor nursery button overlap issue
• Fatigue will no longer drop rapidly when max fatigue is reduced due to bad temperatures
• Cause creatures to wake up and make one last desperate bid to find food if their food stores run out while asleep. (replaces the LayDownAndDie behaviour)
• Rename the Metabolic Heat Production gene to simply Metabolism
• Make Healing and Fatigue recovery scale with Metabolism
• Fix another crash caused by lack of audio hardware that I missed last time. (The given key WindInBroadleavedTrees was not present in the dictionary.)
• Possibly fix the Embryos should not be able to die crash. But dont hold me to that, I dont have any way to test it.

*footnote: TURBOCHARGE is not recommended for Primum specium with anxiety, heart palpitations, neurotic yapping disorder or suicidal ideation. Immediately discontinue use if your potatoes exhibit early warning signs of sentience and/or begin mimicking human speech. If life signs persist after 4 hours, aim for the head.

[ 2022-09-09 07:14:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Add Gene Cycling function to the nursery.
• Gene cycling artificially selects by one gene at a time, allowing others to mutate freely, instead of by measuring the genetic distance to target. In theory, this should allow it to fix outliers that the default method can't catch.
• Note: This is an experimental feature that hasn't been working out particularly well in testing so far. I believe the nursery likely still has other issues I need to address.
• Add Genetic Distance To Target to the Nursery UI
• Fix NoAudioHardwareException on startup
• Fix InstancePlayLimitException when headphones or speakers are unplugged
• Make pressing M, N, L, R hotkeys a second time dismiss the screen they originally brought up.
• Remove false Ignore state which was creating "Meh" thought bubbles.
• Fix number of starting creatures not applying to Random and Exported creature options.
• Shorten move distance for "move to habitable node" action (taken when all other food options fail)

[ 2022-09-07 10:58:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Add small coloured progress bars above creatures heads for basic tasks. Tasks they will appear for include: - Eating Foliage, Fruit, Eggs and Meat - Sleeping - Fighting - Gasping for oxygen - Eggs Hatching - Pregnancy
• This is likely to be too much in large crowds and I will probably remove some of these as I continue to polish the build. - If you find the bars annoying, you can turn them off by clicking the "Thought Bubbles" toggle button on the right hand side of the screen through to "Bubbles only".
• Increase fatigue while sleeping so creatures stop waking up with half-full stamina meters.
• Increase broodiness of creatures in the Nursery so they don't stop producing offspring and die off.
• Fix a semi-common NaN crash ("corpseWorldMatrix should not be NaN")

[ 2022-09-05 09:59:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.14.1.4 Changelog

• Add "Delete World" functionality to the Load World screens.
• Add a detection routine to disallow loading of corrupt or outdated saved worlds and warn the user when they're only potentially outdated.
• Add a detection routine to disallow importing of corrupt or outdated exported creatures and warn the user when they're only potentially outdated.
• Half the fatigue loss cost of pregnancy.
• Reduce default forest density to 2.
• Fix a bug lobotomizing rovers.
• Fix rover stat selection dropdown menu appearing offscreen.
• Fix eggs laid in water appearing on the floor even though the offspring appear at the height the parent was when they were laid.

[ 2022-09-04 08:48:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Allow creatures to make their way to a nearby shadow-casting tree (if there is one) to sleep, taking advantage of the shelter it provides.
• Reduce how rapidly growth cost scales with creature size and complexity.
• Prevent attacked creatures from continuing to try to seek food/breed/etc during the fight.
• Added an oxygen bar to the selected creature UI. Not sold on it. I'm going to need to redesign the UI at some point: I have a bunch of idea's on that front.
• Encourage creatures who begin a meal to finish it. [Berates random P. specium for being picky]
• Prevent predators from fleeing from the spoils of victory due to fear accumulated during the fight.
• Fix pregnancy-induced fatigue loss being applied even when game is paused.
• Fix creatures in combat drifting away from the site of combat while the game is paused.
• Fix a number of other animation problems related to combat.
• Fix a problem with some types of thoughts not being logged.
• Fix pregnancy cost being incorrectly represented in mouseover energy bars.
• Fix game crashing on startup on Linux.

[ 2022-09-03 07:27:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Some bug fixes and tweaks. In particular, I've made the Predator and Prey start viable again. 0.14.1.2 Changes

• Double the energy available in grass and ground cover.
• Fix creatures getting caught in an AI-loop when seeking food near a fence.
• Fix a problem with carnivores sometimes dying instantly during birth.
• Increase hunger while eating, to make creatures more likely to finish their meal.
• Increase hunger if pregnant and don't have enough energy to carry to term.
• Fix an issue with the climate device UI not setting the devices appropriately.
• Fix an issue with Creature Detail/Draw cap getting locked at or below their minimum.
• Fix rovers not targeting creatures behind fences.

0.14.1.1 Changes

• Fix selected creatures not animating or turning towards their target.

[ 2022-09-01 08:57:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Species 0.14.1: the Hearty Breakfast Update (that's a much better name, my thanks to the steam user who suggested it), has now been released to the Stable branch on Steam. Eggs are the centerpiece of this update, but there's a lot more than just them to talk about. The game has undergone a lot of refinement and I've made small improvements in just about every domain. These include... Eggs: Creatures can now lay eggs as an alternative to giving birth to live young. The primary advantage of eggs is shorter pregnancies, but it also renders the offspring vulnerable to opportunistic scavengers. Egg laying is governed by two genes: Pregnancy Length and Egg Length. Pregnancies: Carrying a pregnancy to term now consumes a great deal more energy and time than before, making them a much more potent test of a creatures ability to gather food and survive. Broodiness: Creatures now need to make a decision to begin a pregnancy instead of it happening upon reaching automatically. This allows adult creatures to stockpile food and seek a mate prior to doing so. (Note: parthenogenic creatures can begin a pregnancy even if they fail to locate a mate, but they will still try regardless). Diet: The dietary spectrum can now be subdivided into grazing herbivores, browsing herbivores, frugivores, ovivores and carnivores. Notably, at some point I made it much easier than before to maintain populations of scavenging carnivores and opportunistic predators. I'm not sure which of the many changes in 0.14 prompted this behavior, but it is welcome nonetheless.
Combat: Creatures in combat are now highlighted with big red circles, and take turns trading blows until one creature dies or flees. Predators will pounce on their prey to initiate combat, and creatures fighting over food will no longer try to kill each other. Temperature: Exposure damage is now more aggressively applied, especially when creatures are sleeping, and creatures will be able to seek shelter under shade-giving tree's to negate up to 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). Fatigue: Creatures get sleepy earlier than before, resulting in shorter but more frequent naps. This also gives them more ability to seek shelter before exhausting themselves and losing the ability to move. Ambient Sounds: Biome-specific ambient soundscapes, plus a few for altitude, shores and underwater. Procedurally Generated Fur: Fluffiness continues to be fluffy.
Mass Creature Suggestions: Creature suggestions are no longer limited to the 'Play as Creature' mode. You can give an entire population of creatures the same suggestion by selecting them all and right clicking on a target.
Regrowth-based Population Control: The option exists for population control to adjust plant regrowth speed instead of food efficiency. This is likely to result in larger population booms and crashes than the default, but is also more realistic. Thought Log: Press 'T' while a creature is selected to show the thought log. This was intended purely as a debug tool to help me diagnose AI problems, but I enjoy how it gives the creatures a voice and will probably refine it somewhat in the future to make it part of the game proper. Stability Improvements: 0.14.1 is significantly more stable than the 0.13.X releases were. Almost all known crashes and a great many unintended behaviors have been fixed. There are still some known crashes that can happen with low performance, so I recommend keeping the FPS in double digits for best results. Note: By far the most effective way to keep FPS high is to reduce the creature cap. Technical Changes: 0.14.1 is built on .Net Core and Monogame 3.8, which is substantially different from the older versions. I'm not expecting any issues stemming from this on Windows, but the Linux and Mac builds are untested. If you're running the game on a Linux or a Mac and have any troubles, please get in touch. Cheers, Quasar

[ 2022-08-31 07:17:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Species 0.14.0.Ex has been pushed up to the experimental branch. You can get it by right-clicking on Species in Steam, going to Properties, selecting Betas and opting into the experimental branch.
https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2022/08/14/0-14-0-released-to-experimental-branch/

Features!

Eggs and Pregnancy Improvements

Creatures have two new genes, Egg length and Pregnancy length, the greater of which determines if they will lay eggs or give birth to live young. Eggs can be broken and eaten (though doing so will risk the wrath of the parent), and serve as a kind of gateway food to carnivory.
Reproduction is now much harsher, requiring a fair chunk of calories to be spent, and creatures have the option to postpone it if they dont have energy theyll need for it. Creatures can evolve a shorter and less costly pregnancy, but they do so at the expense of their offspring. These reproductive changes seem to have had some good effects on the long term survivability of clades, making one species outcompeting the rest a less likely occurrence in this build.

Diet

Instead of diet being a simple binary spectrum between herbivory and carnivory, creatures can now specialize to feed on ground cover, foliage, fruit, eggs or meat specifically.

Temperature and Fatigue

Temperature is now a much harsher mistress, requiring creatures to seek shelter if they start burning or freezing. Creatures will also attempt to seek shelter before sleeping, as sleeping makes them even more vulnerable to these effects.

Ambient Soundscapes

I added biome-specific ambient soundscapes, plus a few for things like water and altitude, to fill the void of sound in between music tracks a bit.

Procedurally Generated Fur

Fluffy! It wont look quite like this in-game: Ive yet to implement fur length or floofiness genes, so I had to crop it short. But a floofiness gene has now become vitally important to the games future development. Honestly, I dont know how weve gotten this far without one.

Stability Improvements and Bug fixes

So many bugs. So many. Their cries still haunt my nightmares, and yet I continue, for the work is not yet completed. I have become less man than monster, but I swear to you truly: it was for the greater good. The greater good. BTW, aquatic animals are properly viable again.

Other bits and pieces!

Regrowth based population control. You can now set the Automatic Population Control to affect plant regrowth instead of food efficiency. Ive not made this the default because its less responsive, resulting in more extreme population explosions and crashes.

Thought Log.

Press T to show the thought log. This was only ever intended as debug functionality, but its cute and it gives the creatures a way to voice the incredibly messed up reasoning behind their incredibly stupid decisions.

Background tweaks

There have been a metric ton of these. Everything from speed calculations to fatigue energy deltas to how buoyant creatures feed on underwater plants has been tweaked, adjusted and/or re-built.

Technical Changes

The usual disclaimers apply about this being a first-release beta (aka. an unstable and bug ridden mess), but I will note that a great many issues in the 0.13 releases have been fixed. Expect a whole new ecosystem of bugs! Seriously though, while I have fixed as many of the existing issues as I could reach, 0.14.0 is built on a completely different foundation than 0.13. Monogame 3.8 has significantly changed under the hood from previous versions, and I fully expect that to cause problems, particularly with the Linux and Mac builds that I was unable to test before now. This background change will also cause it to take up a fair bit more hard drive space than before: the current release clocks in at 687 MB, and I may have to increase that further to ensure the cross-platform builds have all the files they need to run and that nobody will be asked to manually download .Net Core. Please send me an email or contact me on the unofficial discord channel, or just the Steam forums, if you experience any crashes or just , so I can get them fixed prior to pushing anything to the stable branch. Cheers! Quasar

[ 2022-08-14 03:26:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

I don't intend to just slap egg's on top of the existing game: they're just one aspect of some fairly fundamental changes to creature diet, behavior and especially reproduction. In this last week I've shared a fair bit about those changes on the development blog, here: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2022/06/23/eggs-as-a-food-source/ ... as well as here: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2022/06/25/eggs-as-a-reproductive-strategy/ Head on over and take a look if detailed overviews of semi-technical changes sounds like your thing! Or if you like chooks. There are pictures of chooks in the second one. Quasar

[ 2022-06-24 23:38:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

So... it has been a while since I last spoke. I have posted the full details of my hiatus the Species development blog. I'll provide a shorter version after the link, but I'd recommend reading the full story here: An update, an explanation and an apology Keeping it simple: I was suffering from untreated mental illness, which I am now getting treated. Thanks to finding the right medication for me, I have more motivation and energy than I've had in many years and am eagerly throwing myself back into development. I'm sorry for seemingly abandoning the game. I don't think there was anything I could have done to prevent the hiatus, but I should certainly have communicated my situation better. I have no excuse. I'm sorry. Species 0.14.0 is on it's way: it will introduce eggs to the game, as well as including a significant overhaul to pregnancy and diet, and a number of notable QoL improvements. And yes, I'm planning to dedicate a good long while to tracking down and eliminating those irregular crashes. The most common ones have already been addressed. I hope in time, with regular releases and my fair share of hard work, I can regain your trust and help rebuild the wonderful community that formed around this little game. Gratefully, Quasar

[ 2022-06-19 01:18:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab. Changelog * Fixed a problem with creatures becoming unkillable undead abominations trapped eternally in a permanent 0 HP state of "Dying". - Looks like they managed this by changing their state from "Dead" to something else before the world could detect that they were dead and despawn them. - Also by pledging their souls to unknowable occult forces or something, the little rascals. * Fixed a problem with creatures unecessarily continuing a fear response after combat, even after other emotions have surpassed fear.

[ 2020-09-17 07:26:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab. Changelog * Fix a multithreading-related crash when a creature modifies it's Behaviour Tree while another creature is accessing it via combatInstance. * Fix a multithreading-related crash when a creature's target is set to null in while it is attacking aforementioned target. * Fix a multithreading-related crash when a creature's combatInstance is set to null while it is attacking * Fix a crash when a rover cannot pathfind around player built fences (this may occasionally result in a some very confused rovers) * Ignore a potential crash when loading the clade diagram: keep loading the game and reset the clade diagram instead. * Added some additional error detection to catch problems before they become crashes.

[ 2020-09-16 11:04:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab. Changelog * Overhauled hunting behaviours - Predators will stalk their target while outside detection range, conserving energy as they approach - Predators will chase their target once within detection range - Prey will flee if they detect an incoming predator - Predators will pounce on their target when close enough, dealing bonus damage and initiating a combat instance
* Overhauled combat instances - Creatures will lock on to each other and take turns trading damage until one dies or flees. - Predators will lock prey into combat to prevent a flee-fight-flee behavior loop. * Food source competition - Aggressive creatures will get angry at other creatures trying to eat their food, and may attack them. * Added red circles to highlight combat taking place. * Fixed an issue with some of the more sporadically-used particle systems (blood sprays, pings, strike effects) not rendering * Fixed the rover camera pitching up when driving forward with W or Up * Tweaked creature camera movement to be simpler and easier to control * Added default positions for rover and creature cameras * Tweaked shade-giving tree's to provide shelter from both hot and cold temperatures, providing up to 10 C offset towards an average of 20 C at their base. * Tweaked cannibalism to be slightly viable instead of a complete non-starter. * Improved support for content mods (body parts, skins, etc) - Texture mods can now be loaded from *.bmp, *.gif, *.jpg, *.png, *.tif and *.dds formats - Stats and Mutation Mapping can now be stored in the same file

[ 2020-07-27 06:36:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog: * Added Cost/Benefit analysis to mouseover text when playing as creature. - Technically, this is just leftover debugging code. But it's cool to see and it make's the creatures decision making a bit more transparent. * Fixed an issue where creatures would consistently underestimate travel costs * Fixed an issue where climbing cost would sometimes generate a NaN error and result in creatures ignoring the affected food source. * Fixed an issue with the Immediate Family Tree displaying no more than 3 children icons. * Fixed a crash when the Sat Map loaded a reference to a creature that wasn't bound to a Species. * Fixed a crash when the Species Averages view was opened. * Threw another fix at the crash coming from the Immediate Family Tree, hoping it would stick this time. - There's always a stubborn one every update, isn't there?

[ 2020-07-03 22:42:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab.
Changelog: * Added survival need icons for at-a-glance assessment of the Player Creatures state. * Fixed a crash that could occur when too many corpses existed in the world. * Once again tried to fix the crash coming from the Immediate Family Tree. - Also implemented some code to help provide more detail in the error message if this doesn't work.

[ 2020-07-01 07:42:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog * Re-implemented the "Diet" pie chart on Species Overview page to show the ratio of meat/grass/tree's that the species has been consuming. * Fixed a crash that could occur when siblings in the Immediate Family Tree didn't match siblings in the game. Again. * Adjusted player camera to look ahead of creature instead of directly at it. * Tweaked general movement to be slightly less oxygen intensive.

[ 2020-06-26 09:27:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab. Changelog: * Fixed game incorrectly displaying creatures as siblings/children in the Family Tree after they are die and are re-born to different parents - This happened because, as a performance optimization, the game re-uses the Creature object instead of destroying it. This can occasionally cause... strangeness. * Fixed crash that could occur when siblings in the Immediate Family Tree didn't match siblings in the game * Fixed crash in Quickstart, when selecting a creature type from the drop down menu * Fixed crash that could occur if a creature swam/was moved out of map bounds. * Fixed possible crash when exporting creatures if the exported creature file list is full

[ 2020-06-25 07:29:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog: * Renamed the Stamina bar to 'Fatigue'. - Words cannot begin to describe how confusing the code was becoming due to having multiple Stamina leg genes and a Stamina phenotype stat which affected the Stamina loss in a Stamina energy bar with a variable Max Stamina. * Simplified the Fatigue bar mechanics. It will fall slowly while awake and rise slowly while asleep, and will no longer consume calories from Food to regenerate. * Complicatified the Oxygen bar mechanics. Oxygen will be consumed when performing exercise, and will replace Fatigue as a 'sprint bar'. - This means creatures will gasp for air when exhausted instead of passing out on the spot, which is a lot more logical (albeit less funny). * Fixed a crash when the Player Creature dies and the game tries to switch to a dead sibling. * Fixed a graphical glitch with the 'Mate' behavior sprite

[ 2020-06-23 07:41:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

And on the subject of good news, 0.13.1.0 has just been published to the Experimental branch. This version includes the (admittedly somewhat unpolished) "Play as Creature" feature, which allows you to do the thing I just said, and also other things, which I will now elucidate upon. After selecting a critter and clicking the "Play as Creature" button, the camera will follow the selected creature around.
You can then right click on the ground, trees, other creatures or even yourself to demand the creature obey your will, and itwill do so! ... probably. Creature's still have their own survival instincts and if they desperately need to get oxygen or food, for example, they're unlikely to pay attention to "huddle" demands for very long. In addition to controlling the minds of complacent beings, the game will also track the creatures immediate family members for you (parents, siblings and offspring). This allows you to switch targets whenever you feel like it, or automatically in the event that your chosen avatar suffers a severe case of the deaths.
Naturally, being able to observe a creatures lifecycle so intimately like this will bring some of the AI's flaws into stark relief. This is a good thing: it makes abundantly obvious that a number of things need fixing, and I will be focusing a lot of development time on those flaws in the near future. Additionally, turning Species into a miniature survival game at this level has given me a lot of idea's, and I'll be drawing inspiration from the gameplay experience of actual survival games as I move forward. Obviously this will make 'play as creature' more fun, but more importantly it will make the in-game evolution more intuitive and interesting, since survival will come to depend more on "playing the game" and than on finding ways to exploit it. I'll discuss those idea's soon. I'm very much looking forward to the coming weeks, Qu

[ 2020-06-22 03:01:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all, I'll be pushing 0.13.0.6 from the Experimental branch to the Stable branch tomorrow. Please note that save games from 0.12.0.10 will no longer work in 0.13.0.6.
Among other fun things, 0.13.0.6 adds the Map Editor, Seasonal Cycles, and Starting Creature Customization to the game, as well as making the world look prettier with Erosion effects on the terrain and Bloom Lighting on the everything.
Cheers, Qu

[ 2020-06-22 02:17:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab. WARNING: for our Mac & Linux users, please note: the erosion algorithm performance fix includes a graphics format that I haven't had a chance to test on non-Windows PC's. Please let me know if you see any issues and I'll roll it back asap! Changelog * Added Seasonal Bloom Lighting (I've tried to keep it subtle and non-obstrusive, but if you don't like it you can turn it off in Options) * Significantly improved performance of erosion algorithm * Fixed Fertility changes (grazing pixels, tree stabilisation, climate devices) affecting temperature * Fixed Blank Slate "Respiration" setting range going from 0 to 1 (Amphibious to Terrestrial) instead of -1 to 1 (Aquatic to Terrestrial) * Fixed Tail Thickness Gene not changing the appearance of the tail. * Fixed limb length not contributing to limb damage. * Reduced harshness of default seasonal temperature/fertility changes * Multiplied ground friction by gravity * Fixed seasonal settings not being saved and resetting to default when loading a game * Fixed new world options not being saved and resetting to default when loading a game (gravity, oxygen, stamina bar modifiers)

[ 2020-03-21 23:13:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab. Changelog: * Added option to display temperatures as Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin. (Rankine temperatures still in development) * Fixed a bug locking the Creature Cap and preventing it from being adjusted after being set to a value lower than 5 * Fixed the Starting Creature counts on the "Customize Blank Slate" page not affecting creature generation * Fixed a crash when "Restart on Mass Extinction" is enabled and you attempt to restart a game that was loaded from a save file. * Fixed a crash when you set the Mutation Rate to a negative number. * Fixed a crash when you set the nursery's Mutation Rate to a negative number. * Fixed a crash when you set the Feature Location in the gene editor to a negative number (special thanks to those of you who keep breaking the game on purpose. :thumbsup:) * Fixed a crash when you Initialise Aquatic/Predator and Prey after loading a save file and then quitting to the main menu. * Added a bit more detail about the game state to the crash logs to assist with future debuggery.

[ 2020-03-12 08:20:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Scrollbars. Scrollbars everywhere. Eeeheheheh. Changelog: * Added scrollbar to the Save World page * Added scrollbar to the Load World page * Added scrollbar to the Export Creature page * Added scrollbar to the Import Creature page * Added scrollbar to the Species List on the Sat Map/Cladogram pages * Added scrollbar to the Clade Diagram itself * Acknowledged I might have a scrollbar problem * Added scrollbar to the Gene Editor * Added scrollbar to the Creature Overview page * Added scrollbar to the Creature Physiology page * Increased the gene editor value spinner size to match the rest of the UI * Added a "Reset To Defaults" button for the Season Editor * Implemented a minimum value for Seasonal Curve Period to prevent crashes * Moved the map editor "Randomize" Button * Moved the map editor "Erode" Button and progress bar * Fixed some bugs related to the Nursery thinking it's enabled when it's not * Quickstart worlds now have the Nursery enabled by default * Tweaked the blank-slate "preferred temperature" calculation * Turned the "Show Tutorials" Yes/No menu back on

[ 2020-03-09 07:49:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog: * Right-click now rotates the Map editor. * Middle-click now pans the Map editor. * Fixed bug with Creature Cap value spinner not setting Creature Cap correctly * Fixed bug with Creature Detail Cap value spinner not setting Creature Detail Cap correctly * Added the Creature Cap value spinner to the Quick Start page for easier access * Fixed crash when selecting "Initialise Random" after quitting a world and going back to the menu * Fixed "Erode" button removing terrain and temperature changes * Some tooltip wording changes

[ 2020-03-03 08:02:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog: * Fixed map reverting to 0 fertility after a few minutes when using "sediment" fertility type (this happened in development builds, and was re-introduced as a result of the performance fix in 0.13.0.1). * Fixed sediment map reverting to default when you use height brushes in map editor * Fixed fertility brushes not working in map editor * Fixed Save/Load removing brushed temperature/fertility changes and reverting the temp/fert target map to base settings * Fixed temp/fert variety defaulting to (0.5, 0.5) instead of (0.7, 1.0) when using quickstart without visiting the Map Editor * Fixed options not being selectable in the Options page. * Fixed Resolution/Full Screen not prompting a restart when changes were made * New games should once again automatically select the font size appropriate to your resolution. * Tweaked the fertility cycle (Wet/Dry season) to be less harsh by default * Tweaked the sediment map to provide more average fertility by default

[ 2020-03-01 03:39:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab. Changelog: * Dropdown menu's now display on top of all other controls except ToolTips * Dropdown menu's now hold focus when you click them, so that they don't interact with controls behind them * Fixed issue with terrain-height brushes sometimes raising/lowering/flattening terrain to the left or right of the brush location, instead of under the brush. * Water height is now set correctly when adjusted in Map Editor and Quickstart * Fixed some incorrectly positioned UI controls * Improved menu performance when eroding/generating sediment map

[ 2020-02-29 01:22:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

The 0.13.0.0 (New World Update) Pre-release is now available. You can access it by right-clicking on Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution in steam, selecting Properties, selecting Betas and opting in to the Experimental Branch.
As always, a word of caution: things on the experimental branch may be unstable! Also, be warned, the default season settings will probably need some tweaking. They can be quite harsh. Final note, 0.13.0 does not have backwards compatibility with old saves or exported creatures. Sorry about that, here, have an apology shoggoth:

[ 2020-02-27 09:18:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Geez, the SeasonalCycleEditor UI control has well and truly gone through a its fair share of iterations now. The goal here is to provide an intuitive interface for customizing the duration, magnitude and offset of seasonal temperature/fertility cycles, which themselves follow a straightforward sine curve. The first version of this control utilized a straightforward 2D texture of a sine curve, which I figured I could stretch, tile and crop to create the cycle graph. As mentioned in a previous post, that attempt failed because frickin arithmetic, how does it even work, science cant explain that. So I scrapped the sprite-based control and made this shader-based control instead:
Technically, this is two controls: the temperature and fertility curves are rendered separately on top of one another. Its a somewhat prettier result, but it lacks polish and isnt exactly intuitive: 6 handles on a single surface is way too many, and if it wasnt labelled seasonal cycle itd be quite difficult to guess at its purpose. Not good enough. Try again:
Better. Separating the curves was a good call. Their units (Celsius and percentage respectively) are unrelated, so sharing graph space only makes it more difficult to label the Y-axis. Labeling the seasons was also a good call. I originally considered Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter, but Wet/Hot/Dry/Cold are more descriptive and less tied to real-world seasons. Also, theyre shorter. Easier to fit on the UI. The result is still non-optimal, however. I dont like that the hot and cold season bars overlap with the wet and dry seasons, a) because thats not accurate (hot shouldnt start as soon as cold ends!) and b) because its not how we *think* about seasons. Sure, were aware that in reality one fades into the other, but in our minds, the concept of spring is distinct and separate from the concept of summer. To be maximally intuitive, a graph like this should reflect the mental model the player has of the thing being graphed. One more try:
Much better. Still could use some tweaks, labels, and a brighter season description bar (my laptop has a very bright screen, which makes it hard to see how dark some parts of the game are until I export the screenshots to a different machine), but its very much getting there. Im happy to leave it here for the moment and make progressive tweaks to the design as I push forward to 0.13. Cheers, Quasar Cross-posted from: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/tis-the-seasons/

[ 2019-09-27 03:04:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Sorry for the radio silence everyone, Ive been submerged in some refactoring work that, while vital to keep a codebase the size of Species workable going forward, doesnt make for great screenshots and/or interesting blog material. Here's what I've been up to: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/04/keepin-on/ https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/16/more-multithreading-also-terrain-brushes/

[ 2019-09-16 02:52:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

The New World UI is a mess. Lets not sugarcoat it: clicking the New World button is like kicking a beehive, except instead of kicking youre clicking and instead of being assaulted by wrathful insects hell-bent on vengeance youre exposed to a confusing excess of numerical input spinners hell-bent on vengeance. So, the first part of the new 4-part New World screen will be a simple Quickstart screen, designed to get you away from menu and into the game as quickly as possible. Keep reading here: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/the-quickstart-page/

[ 2019-07-02 03:00:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Its about time I wrote one of these. Ive been working quietly on 0.13.0 in the background for a while now, but I didnt want to write anything solid until I was certain 0.12.0 no longer being haunted by the dreaded ArithmeticException. 0.13.0 will revolve around improving the New World screen, or at least changing it to be something more user friendly than an impenetrable wall of number spinners. Instead of one New World screen, the game will have 4: Quickstart, Starting Creatures, World Editor and Advanced Settings. Read more here: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2019/06/03/where-to-next-0-13-0-the-map-editor-update/

[ 2019-06-03 02:44:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog: * Strapped the ArithmeticException bug (the most common cause of crashes in the game) to a table and attempted to bisect it with a laser. Gloated for a while, then left the room in the certain knowledge that escape was impossible and my victory was complete. * Increased the scale of limbs to make creatures in general a bit more interesting and... appendagery. That's a word now.

[ 2019-05-10 08:42:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog: * As I have still been unable to catch the ArithmeticException (the most common cause of crashes in the current version), I have purchased a significant quantity of fireworks from the Acme Corporation and laid an ingenious trap. When the crash happens, the program will report a significant quantity of additional information about the problem that I can use to track it down and fix it for good.

[ 2019-05-07 07:24:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog * Once again attempted to defeat my nemesis, the ArithmeticException bug (the most common cause of crashes in the current version). I'll get you this time, gadget.

[ 2019-05-01 07:45:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog: * Again attempted to fix the most commonly reported cause of crashes. It may or may not fix the the infinite leg flesh expansion bug, but it should fix the ArithmeticException it causes. So... that's something to look forward to, I guess. * Fixed glitchy walk animations when a creature is selected. * Fixed a potential crash when you revive or import a creature.

[ 2019-04-29 07:43:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog * Prevented an ArithmeticException related to leg animations from causing crashes when it happens. * Fixed a bug preventing the "Spinner" controls (up/down arrows next to number inputs) from working. * Made a number of changes to the UI to better support the new variable-sized fonts.

[ 2019-04-17 07:28:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

I'd say I'm ready to merge the experimental and main branches. Let's hope this works! Changelog: * Variable font sizes! Should be of some assistance to people on high resolution screens. You'll find the dropdown in the "Options" menu. [url=https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33254358/d61758d3621ef2cd47071287f1e9d46a7ba1f121.png]
(Click to enlarge) * Fixed multithreading bug that could cause a random crash in long running games. * Improved alignment of some UI features.

[ 2019-04-11 07:42:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog: * Fixed bug causing program instability leading to an eventual crash after the "Revive" tool was used * Fixed bug causing sleep to flicker between frames and stamina to regenerate at half speed as a result * Made Nurse Bots reset NumberOfChildrenBirthed so that artificial selection won't stagnate when specific parents are kept alive. * Made Nursery average creature 'reset' when the Nursery UI is opened (to reduce the number of incidents in which it becomes a non-euclidian abomination that causes terrible gibbering madness in all that witness it) * Made the borders of cliffs a bit sharper (visual adjustment only) * Lowered cost of empathy when deciding what to eat * Raised cost of travel distance when deciding what to eat * Added several 'early warning' exceptions to help catch errors before they reach the steam version * Multiple small background adjustments to make the game more stable overall. I'm hoping it will make the game stable enough to push to the main release branch. (hahahaha it's cute that I still have hope)

[ 2019-03-23 23:26:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog: * Adjusted grazing to be more random and less biased towards travelling in a specific direction. * Fixed a bug preventing fins and flippers from increasing swim speed unless they touched the ground * Fixed a crash when exporting an engineered genome. * Fixed a crash when starting a game with a small world size * Fixed a crash that happened randomly in longer running games.

[ 2019-02-21 08:00:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Still too buggy for stable release, but we're getting closer! (Which isn't to say that it's less buggy than 0.11.2.5, I've actually fixed a lot. It's differently buggy) Changelog: * Adjusted balance calculations to be significantly more realistic * Adjusted childhood to 'pull' a consistent amount of energy each frame, and childhood length to depend on total energy spent (rather than pulling a variable amount depending on childhood length). - This will fix the problem with food energy flickering up and down. * Increased 'base' stamina amount (to make adulthood easier). * Increased childhood cost of primitive organisms (will make childhood longer) * Fixed a bug registering live creatures as "inedible" and preventing hunting * Fixed a bug making scavenging meat significantly rarer * Fixed an issue with empathy cost being applied to creatures outside the predators species (which stacked with the first issue to prevent hunting). * Fixed bug preventing brain report (eg. "Hunger >> Graze") from appearing in UI. * Fixed crash when reviving creatures * Fixed crash when using any god tool with both creatures and corpses selected * Fixed potential crash when mating/gene splicing. * Fixed a bug causing the skybox to render at half resolution and show distant mountains on the 'ocean' maps, which was never intended. * Zoomed the camera in to show creatures at a better scale in the clade diagram/satellite map/gene editor * Displayed balance forces in the gene editor when "Draw Bones" is selected. * Activated the nursery UI when the first creature is dropped in, to better help players understand how it's supposed to work. * Adjusted camera movement to be slightly less floaty

[ 2019-02-20 08:55:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Now available on the Steam experimental branch.
Changes: * Gene Editor now includes a "Draw Bones" option, allowing you to visualize the skeletal physics that govern creatures body plans. * Made dragging torso bones along the ground cost more in walk speed * Increased cost of balance problems * Reduced cost of compressive stress problems * Caused Pregnancy Length to double after each litter born, making it necessary for creatures to increase their litter size if they want to engage in r-select strategies. * Adjusted growth cost gradient to be more costly for simple creatures and less costly for complex ones * Fixed bug preventing gene splice from working * Fixed bug preventing corpses from being revived * Fixed bug preventing corpses from showing up on the Sat Map * Fixed visual bug showing the creature total as "CAPPED" indefinitely, despite the population dropping off

[ 2019-02-12 09:38:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Early adopters rejoice! I've just put Species 0.12.0, the Multithreading Update, up on the Experimental Beta Branch on Steam! 0.12.0 adds multithreading to the underlying game engine, significantly increasing the performance (and Creature Count) of the game on computers with Dual-Core, Quad-Core, Octo-Core or Septendec-Core CPU's. Please note that this is an Experimental Build. It is likely to be less stable and less performant (though still more performant than 0.11!) than the version that will be soon released to all Steam users. You can access the Beta branch by right-clicking on "Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution", selecting "Properties",then opening the "Betas" branch and selecting "experimental - Unstable Experimental Builds" from the drop down.
At the moment, 0.12.0 adds no features or tweaks: it's the same game, but faster. In addition to the obvious stability work, I will be polishing it in the coming weeks to make the survival strategies and body plans more varied and interesting, as well as see if I can make carnivory more viable.

[ 2019-02-10 00:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

In the currently released version of species, I can handle about 1100 creatures with an average FPS of 12.
In the current 0.12.0 Multithreading Prototype, Im getting more than twice that. 2600 creatures with the same average FPS.
I think we can call this a success. Theres still a few bugs specific to the multithreading implementation, and further optimization to do, but theyre limited in scope and Im pretty sure I can see the path ahead, so Im happy to say that, barring any incidents between now and then 0.12.0 (Experimental) will be released to a Steam Beta Branch within the week. Once that happens I will begin a stability pass to fix all of the crashings forever prior to 0.12.0s official release. (Okay fine, most of the crashings forever. Gotta be realistic here). And after 0.12.0 is properly released, I will be releasing regular polish updates for a while to reduce the effectiveness of limbless and herbivorous survival strategies and hopefully improve carnivores ability to survive. Cheers, Qu

[ 2019-02-02 22:57:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

I've been paying attention to the Steam reviews and the exception reports flowing into my inbox, and have been compiling a list of crashes and related stability issues to address. I haven't been able to get to them yet because I'm a leettle bit desperate to get multithreading out of the way, but upon my oath: as soon as 0.12.0 is released, there will be a reckoning. Ever seen The Purge? I haven't, but it's like that, except with a lot more bugfixing and slightly less murder. Part of said reckoning will be a change to more robust coding practices. Currently, when the game encounters a bug it fails immediately. Great for me as a coder trying to identify problems: terrible for you as someone trying to play a game. Instead of doing that awful thing, I will adjust the code to absorb the error, log it to the bug report and kill off the creature responsible out of spite before attempting to continue. This will give us the best of both worlds, at the cost of creatures dying instead of losing their anchor to the third dimension and ascending into the space between worlds, or whatever actually happens to you when your position become NaN ("Not A Number"). Thinking about it now, killing them when that happens is probably a mercy. As far as Multithreading 0.12.0 goes...it's aliiiive! (by specific definitions of the word "alive") The Species development build now has a "Multithreaded mode" and it doesn't crash when you switch to it! All my evil schemes are coming to fruition. Except the one with the dinosaur soldiers. I'm thinking it's probably best to cut my losses on that one at this point. Multithreaded mode currently utilizes quite a bit more of the CPU than before (up to ~40% from ~15% on my laptop, which has a quad core processor) and provides a very noticeable performance boost at high creature counts. There's still a combination of refactoring, optimizing and bugfixing to do (if I can get that percentage up to 80% or more I'll be very happy), and I've somehow managed to turn delicious meat into an inedible object (whoops), but we're definitely getting there. For science! Quasar

[ 2019-01-29 02:46:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Ghosts of Species Christmas appeared to me to demand I reflect upon my misdeeds. Unfortunately, I was otherwise occupied, so I've been procrastinating on that ever since. But I'm getting a bit sick of the chain noises and the spooky jerk popping up through the floor when I'm not expecting it (I swear he's doing it on purpose), so let's take a look!

Ghost of Species Updates

Species has been on Steam for more than 3 months now, and I'm still not crushing the world in an iron fist. Slightly disappointing, but I'm willing to call it progress! The game's gotten a lot of feedback and I've made a lot of changes since October...

• Performance Improvements - It's hard to quantify exactly, but I've made somesignificant optimizations to the game since launch. I may have also murdered empathy in the process, but it's safe to say Species now can handle far more abominations of nature than it could at launch.
• Mac and Linux Support - the game actually runs on Mac and Linux now! This is a big deal for me: I always knew I wanted Mac and Linux support, but actually trying to implement it intimidated the heck out of me. So glad I did!
• Underwater Ecosystems - Aquatic life is now nicely balanced with land-borne life, and both are viable niches for creatures to occupy.
• Graphics - Underwater worlds in particular look a lot prettier than they did with improved fog, lighting and most importantly bubbles.If I may take a moment to brag, the new sedimentary layers in the cliffs also look pretty awesome.
• Animation - Creatures body parts are now screwed on properly and spend a lot less time waving in the air like they just don't care.
• Anti-cannibalism Measures - I may have screwed over the poor carnivores with this one, but they were cannibals. They deserved it...
• Over-hunting Suppression - ... but then they took revenge on the prey species! I had to do it! I had to kill them all! I'M A MONSTER OF CIRCUMSTANCE!
• "Niches" Automatic Population Control - designed to encourage creatures to continually adapt to new food sources rather than adopting a single strategy and relying on it forever.
• Stability - Oh my goodness yes. So many bugfixes. I've learned my lesson: in the future, major updates will be released on a beta branch for play-testers and early adopters.
• And so manytiny improvements to the simulation it'd be difficult to list them all here. Let's just say, I'm satisfied that Species is a better game now than it's ever been.

Okay? Okay! We're done here. Take your chains, and... ... wait, two more ghosts? Seriously? Urgh. Fine. Let's get this over with...

Ghost of Species Multithreading

What? I'm working on it. It's multithreading, it's not exactly a photogenic topic, y'know? What, am I supposed to write a thousand word essay on race conditions and deadlocks? Nobody wants to read... oh, huh. Yeah I suppose I could share the prototype. That's... actually a good idea. One of the things that helps a lot when implementing big terrifying systems that you've never built before is to prototype them on a small scale. It allows you to learn where the bottomless pitfalls with spikes at the bottom are by face-planting into them in a safe environment (We put these little nerf balls on top of the spikes). Multithreading falls into the category of "big terrifying systems that I've never built before", so I made a little particle physics simulator to feel out the path ahead:
Singlethreaded. CPU Utilization: 22%. Frames Per Second: 11. And then, long story short, I implemented the system I intend to use for multithreading. The results are... promising.
Multithreaded. CPU Utilization: 100%. Frames Per Second: 125. Yyyyup. Of course, this is just a particle physics system, not a full game. Current results are not indicative of future performance, and all that. But nonetheless, "yyyyyuuuup". I'm very much looking forward to getting multithreading working in 0.12.0. If you want to try the multithreading prototype out for yourself, you can download it here: http://www.speciesgame.com/Downloads/Multithreading Prototype.rar (Generic disclaimer: The multithreading prototype executable is provided as-is, and is run at the users own risk) BTW, stay tuned to the blog for the thousand-word essay about race conditions and deadlocks I've got planned.

Ghost of Species Roadmap

So you're the last ghost. What's your deal? Or do you just stand there in a hood, lookingominous? Last time I posted this, I did so without comment.
Let's rectify that! The indigo oval in the middle encompasses 0.11.0 and 0.12.0's features: past and present respectively. Everything else is future. Generally speaking, features closer to the center of the image will be implemented sooner than those out by the edge. If you can draw a direct line between 0.12.0 and the feature, it's probably not too far off. The exception to this is the violet "modding" bubble in the top right, which is standalone and could happen at any time. Lines represent relationships between features, usually of a "prerequisite" nature. For instance, flight is useless without perches, which can't be added until the tree's are overhauled. You can follow the lines to get a literal road-map from a possible 0.13.0 feature to one in the distant, post-apocalyptic future. (I realise I'm just assuming the apocalypse'll happen here, but it seems a fair bet at this point) The ovals around the features are colour-coded:

• Cyan - Gameplay. These features are centered around establishing an interesting game-play loop and a science-inspired progression system, wherein you unlock features in the game by observing and experimenting with the simulation. - The closest feature here is 'Sampling', where you utilize the rovers to "sample" creatures and build a library of body parts for... later use. Oh lordy what did I just type.
• Green - World.Improvements to the world, mostly from a 'simulation' standpoint. - The features I'm looking at here are seasonal cycles and a map editor. Admittedly, mostly for my own edification, but I know at least a few people are interested in the latter.
• Yellow - Creatures. Mechanical, graphical and animation improvements to the creatures themselves. - These are incrediblyimportant,but as you can see on the map most of them are gated behind other features. Most notably, I want to get working on the Phenotype Editor, a "spore-like" graphical creature editor (distinct from the numbers-based gene editor). This will come in handy for previewing and iterating on creature improvements.
• Red - Creature Interactions.Social and combat behaviors and balance improvements. By far the most important of these is making carnivory and hunting viable in the long term, but that's also going to be an incremental process over the course of several updates. Calls and social behaviours, such as herd defense and pack hunting, are also high on my priority list.
• Indigo - Mod support.This is planned. I tend to think simulation games live or die on the strength of their modding community, so this is definitely planned.
• Violet - Multiplayer. Extremely long term goals. I'll probably try networking in another context before I attempt to introduce it to Species: I have experience with the subject, but not as much as I'd like.

Mmm hmm. It's a grave. With my name on it. And... the dirt's shifting? Sweet, you mean that immortality ritual actually worked? And here I thought it was a scam. Best $20 I ever spent. Alright, thanks for... whatever this was. I guess? I'm going to bed and if the ghosts aren't gone by tomorrow morning I'm going to start to researching how to build real-life proton packs. Bye! Cheers! Quasar

[ 2019-01-12 01:45:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Im dont have too much to say about the multithreading work just yet (aside from its coming along, and early results are promising), so instead lets talk about a long-overdue task I undertook at the start of work for 0.12.0. Its not directly related to multithreading, but its related to things that are related to multithreading, so itll provide a foundation for future blog posts. Continued on the development blog: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/refactoring-bodyplan/ I'll have more to say on the subject of multithreading very soon.

[ 2019-01-10 02:45:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Updates will be slowing down for a while as I work on multithreading for 0.12.0. This is a big and promising feature, but also a dangerous one. It's kind of like summoning an eldritch god: you might get immortality, or your life force might be consumed to power a terrible murder portal through which demons can invade the earth. (it's important to make your analogies relatable) Continued on the development blog: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/19/where-to-next-multithreading-0-12-0/ Cheers, Qu

[ 2018-12-19 02:45:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Fixed bug causing uncontrollable population explosions when Automatic Population Control was set to "Niches" * Fixed crash when setting Time Acceleration to 0 while the "Energy" information panel was open * Fixed crash caused by new migration routine * Allowed "Energy" information panel to continue to display change information when paused * Adjusted "H&C" Automatic Population Control to keep the maximum population a bit further away from the creature cap

[ 2018-12-07 07:26:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Sedimentary layers visible in cliffs. * 'Fallen Fruit' (Fruit/Pinecones) now visible on Palm Tree, Bunya Pine and Norfolk Pine (to better communicate that P. specium *can* get food from the large trees). * Terrain lighting angle adjusted to make the game less dark overall. * Creatures will now (attempt to) migrate to a neighboring zone if they're hungry and can't find any food source that meets an "optimality" threshold. * Predators that are suppressing population growth and hunting because of lack of prey will no longer suppress the hunger need, and will attempt to migrate instead of idling or occupying themselves with other behaviors. * "H&C" automatic population control adjusted to try and maintain the population of both at a higher number and reduce the number of extinctions (even if it means capping out sometimes). * Sat Map will now display the species average of the creatures you hover over, rather than the individual creature. * Species List (next to Sat Map/Clade Diagram) will now take you to a specimen when you click on a species name. * No Audio Hardware bug should now be handled more gracefully (muting the audio and putting some error text on the Main Menu rather than crashing). * "Out of Order" sign hung on the Web of Life (I tried fixing it and made it worse) * Parking brake added to rovers (should reduce the amount of slipping down hills, especially on 10x speed. * Droop and Balance costs slightly reduced. * "Motivation" gene renamed to "Risk-Taking" to better communicate what it does.

[ 2018-12-06 07:46:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Significantly reduced tree regrowth rate * Reduced tree energy content * Balanced oxygen absorption of advanced head types to make them less OP. * Reduced growth cost of limbs. * Adjusted creatures to take speed into consideration when deciding whether to race others for a food source. * Increased the threshold at which Automatic Population Control starts raising food efficiency * Adjusted "H" menu to show only the basic three efficiency options if "Niches" isn't selected. * Fixed a bug preventing Automatic Population Control from maintaining the population below cap. * Fixed another clade-diagram related cause of crashes in long-running games. * Fixed crash if "Forest Density" was set to 0

[ 2018-11-26 10:00:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Fixed a common crash that happened when recording a new species to the clade diagram in long-running simulations. * Fixed a crash that happened when importing creatures, if doing so would exceed the creature cap. * Fixed a crash that happened if an underwater grazer tried to graze from pixels outside the map borders * Fixed a crash that happened when starting a game with significantly increased forest density * Fixed an issue creating an invisible cap limiting forest density to around 3. Forest density is now unbounded. (Cue people melting their computers with stupidly high forest densities) * Fixed an issue allowing UI spinners to exceed their maximum and minimum values * Fixed an issue causing "Initialise Random" to generate 25% more creatures.

[ 2018-11-23 08:16:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Sometimes the smallest of changes can have the largest effects. Case in point, this patch dramatically increases the stability, longevity and food production of forests simply by preventing herbivores from grazing the biome out from under trees. (which was killing the trees and destroying the forests. Aww, they think they're people). * Creatures can no longer graze from a ground pixel if there's a tree on it. * Trees can no longer spawn on ground pixels which are already occupied by other trees. * Fixed Nurse bots escaping the nursery and running away. (Why does everything in this game try to escape the inescapable? Wait, better question: why do they keep succeeding?) * Climate device effect radius increased

[ 2018-11-22 08:00:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Species ALRE has migrated to another habitat: Mac OS X! This release also includes another metric bucketload of polish. For those who use the imperial system, that's 1.102 Fahrenheit and 3 inchfoots of polish. Special thanks to both Jared and Jay, who volunteered to help me test the game on Mac. Without them this would never have been possible. Enjoy! * Survivability curve has been broadened. This will particularly benefit creatures generated via the "Initialise Random" setting. (Have you tried "Initialise Random"? I highly recommend it! It's made from only the finest quality nightmares) * 'Niche' food efficiencies will now very slowly attempt to return to the setting specified in 'World Options'. (give it a whirl, see what you think!) * Carnivory and Herbivory further balanced against each other. Still a way to go, but carnivory isn't quite the knife edge it used to be. * Adjusted fatigue so that creatures sleep for longer and recharge more of their stamina before setting out again. * Tail stats will now affect the creatures correctly. (Hopefully they'll actually evolve tails now!) * Creatures are more competitive: a creature calling "dibs" on a food source no longer discourages others from going for it if they're closer. * Head Type "Eat Rate" will influence oxygen absorption, making the intermediate stage easier to survive for higher order organisms. * If no viable food source is available, hungry creatures will idle rather than targeting non-viable sources. (Was causing problems for carnivores affected by the hunting suppression system) * Nursery wall collision planes replaced with an impassible 'bubble', both for performance and to prevent critters from escaping. * Fixed the most common cause of crashes in hands-off simulations (the "IndexOutOfRange" exception coming from the clade diagram) * Fixed not being able to select items in multi-column dropdown boxes. * Fixed trees frequently not being selectable. * Fixed temperature simulation to utilize the same approach as the fertility simulation. (should clean up some lingering temperature issues) * Fixed bug causing Time Accelleration to influence grass growback rates. * Fixed being able to generate "underwater" biomes on dry maps by increasing the fertility. * Fixed a bug causing the map to freeze if you pick the 'height' variation method. (Fixing this meant inverting the height-temperature correlation. Set "Temperature Variation" to a negative value if you want cold-up/hot-down) * Added functionality for showing tooltips on gene spinners in genetic engineering. * Adjusted bubble particle sprite (Easily the most important fix in this list) * Adjusted large splash particles for performance * Minor tooltip adjustments across the board. * Downgraded the Unhandled Exception dialog into a basic text file for better cross-platform support. * Reduced fertility adjustment 'smoothness' to ensure grass always regrows on specific graphics hardware. * Added fallback climate shaders to provide support for older Macs. * Disabled restart when adjusting resolution, since the restart function wasn't compatible with the Mac build.

[ 2018-11-21 09:35:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Im hard at work on getting the Mac version up and running (thanks again to Jared Mann, without whose help all this cross-platform goodness wouldnt have been possible) and once thats ready Ill also be able to release all the polish and bug fixes Ive been adding to the Windows version this last week. In the meantime, I've uploaded the Species ALRE Roadmap to the development blog. Check it out: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/looking-ahead-roadmap/ Qu

[ 2018-11-09 08:02:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Added an Overhunting Suppression System that reduces carnivores reproduction, hunger and desire to hunt (as opposed to scavenging) when prey organisms in the local area are sparse. - (I'd have preferred to allow something like this to evolve naturally, but mass extinctions aren't much fun and the ecosystem size in species isn't large enough to consistently recover from over-hunting induced population crashes) * Added a mouse-tracking tooltip containing some basic information about the biome pixel and/or creature you are currently hovering over * Rebalanced vegetation energy content for easier early game survival. * Reduced corpse decay rates * Fixed a bug making the Mass Extinction dialog unclosable * Fixed a bug causing the Species dialog to close when the selected individual died * Improved "Zoom To" button functionality (again).

[ 2018-11-01 09:59:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Semi-complete 'Niches' Automatic Population Control option. The underlying system works correctly (as far as I can tell), but I'm not ready to make it the default until a few unrelated issues are sorted out and I can give it a proper test and make sure it does what it's supposed to. - If you try it out, try pressing 'H' to see the food source efficiency table. It's actually kinda cool to watch it adjust itself over time. * Significantly reduced meat build up during grazing to make carnivory less appealing overall. This is to reduce the number of overhunting-induced mass extinctions until carnivore AI can be made smarter. - In particular, this should make Mass Extinction events easier to avoid for folk with low population caps. * Added blue lines between the selected creature(s) and their chosen target(s). (Should have done this ages ago. Makes it so much easier to see what the little creeps are up to) * Gently tied "scanning" speed when making a decision to eyesight. (Better eyes = faster decisions) * Set default fertility variation to 1.0 to add a bit more biome variety to default maps * Fixed a bug causing creatures with gills to run for the origin point (top left on the map) instead of downhill towards water when air-drowning. * Fixed a separate bug causing creatures with lungs not to swim upwards for oxygen when drowning. * Fixed a crash when generating repeat worlds with "Initialise Aquatic" or "Initialise Predator and Prey" * Fixed fossils not showing when hovered over in the clade diagram * Fixed tooltip display issue the first time you hover over fertility buttons * Re-compiled Linux binary for compatibility with earlier Ubuntu releases (14.04)

[ 2018-10-30 10:47:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Species now includes an officially supported Linux build! Was hoping to get a Mac build too, but that's going to have to wait for a bit more. I'm also putting up a weeks worth of polish for the windows build. Call it a bonus for sticking with me till now. Thanks for playing! Note: your saves should still load, but with this many changes there's a good chance you'll need to babysit your creatures until they can adapt to the new conditions. Changelog * Reasonable performance gains, particularly during population explosions. * Improved world loading times to around twice as fast. * Fixed a major bug with the anti-cannibalism function that was severely reducing meat efficiency across the board * Increased the rate of meat-buildup in grazing creatures * Halved the corpse decay rate * Clamped automatic population control food efficiency adjustments to 2.0 for meat and 4.0 for vegetation. * Significantly changed the ground fertility to make it's behavior easier to understand and predict. * Separated "water fertility" and "land fertility" into two independent values. * Implemented Habitability calculations during world generation, which will try to find viable habitats for the newly spawned creatures rather than just placing them randomly * Fixed a bug which tied maximum stamina to pregnancy cost (giving a significant boost to creatures with long pregnancies or larger litter sizes) * Fixed one possible cause of the nursery allowing all the creatures in it's care to die * Fixed a bug which caused creatures to be lit brighter under certain circumstances * Fixed "Zoom To" button frequently zooming the clade diagram to a random location * Fixed possible crash during loading * Fixed possible crash when selecting climate devices * Added underwater fog to the nursery geometry * Added underwater fog to shadows * Added underwater fog to corpses * Increased underwater light penetration to make ocean worlds much brighter * Colour-patterns are now smaller and tiled more aggressively. * Colour-patterns are now applied to the head and feet * Fixed geometry holes in 6 specific foot assets * Fixed wonky animations in 3 specific leg assets * Fixed horizon appearing as a dark blue line when looking into the distance from high locations * Better camera target display when panning/rotating * Reduced the stats on combination leg/flipper limbs * Randomly generated creatures are now slightly larger overall to reduce the number of insect-scale creatures in random worlds * Upgraded to Monogame 3.7

[ 2018-10-25 09:53:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Im hard at work implementing cross platform support for 0.11.1, with the assistance of a few volunteers (thank you to Jared, Kristen and Ewery!). We have a very promising Linux build that works on our test system, and Im working on getting the Mac build going! In the meantime, Ive also been doing some optimization and polish work. The next version, whether its 0.11.1 and includes cross platform support or 0.11.0.17 and doesnt, should run faster and have fewer rough edges all round. Lookin at you, nursery water fog. Ive also had time to pay a bit of attention to the longer term balance and survival strategy game as it currently stands, and theyre fun to discuss even if I havent started work on them. So... further thoughts over here on the blog: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/carnivory-habitability-niches-and-cross-platform-support/ Cheers, Qu

[ 2018-10-18 03:04:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Fixed a common crash when loading save games (some corrupted save files should now be viable as well, though the game may reset the clade diagram on them) * Fixed a rare crash on startup. * Prevented player from attempting to delete exported creatures/genomes when there are no creatures/genomes in the list * Fixed a separate crash that could happen when deleting exported creatures/genomes. * Increased the padding on Clade diagram fossils and species to make them easier to hover over * Removed depth-floor on how far rovers could sink. * Removed backwards compatibility with Shader Model 2.0 to prevent associated crash. Note to people still using Shader Model 2.0: sorry about this. Not many people are still using hardware that doesn't support Shader Model 3, it has no performance benefits, and it would take quite a bit of development time to refactor the fallback shaders to work with Monogame.

[ 2018-10-14 00:17:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Don't eat polish kids, it's not actually delicious. * Improved/fixed some of the most janky procedural animation side effects, including... - Small limb jitters - Limb detachments - Tail detachments - Foot detachments on two "Legflipper" limbs * Changed water shader to make it easier to see into the water from above. * Added ability to see walk and swim cycle animations on the preview creature in the Gene Editor. * Fixed minor bug that occasionally caused creatures who couldn't find a mate to enter an endless 'wander' loop. ("lonely... I'm so lonely... I have nobody...")

[ 2018-10-11 10:19:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Species ALRE: Cannibalism Simulator. 2012-2018. RIP. * Creatures will now get substantially less energy from consuming genetically-similar corpses. * Empathy (the trait which incentives creatures not to hunt their own parents/children/species) is now stronger and applies to corpses as well as living creatures. * Added "Zoom To" button to the clade diagram, so you can jump to the bottom of the diagram without panning all the way there. * Changed age-related energy loss to come out of Food instead of Stamina. (this to prevent elderly creatures that are healthy and have full stomachs from falling asleep and never waking up until they starve) * Added Wander to Amorousness emotion as a backup behavior if the creature cannot find a mate. * Changed Amorousness emotion to slowly increase over time, to ensure that creatures will eventually decide to mate. * Fixed Amorousness dropping to zero if the creature cannot find a mate. * Fixed mating only flagging the creature who initiated the behavior as having mated. * Fixed bug causing grazing energy gains to be proportional to current Time Acceleration * Added down arrow to communicate when the camera target is below the ground. * Fixed it being possible to remove nursery walls. * Increased size of meat model.

[ 2018-10-09 11:06:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

I've made a suggestion thread over on the phpBB forums to gauge community opinion about what direction the game should head in with the next update. If you've got any strong opinions on the subject, this is probably the best place to put them. http://www.speciesgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2518 I'm not done with 0.11.0 yet: there will almost certainly be a number of additional balance, polish and optimization hotfixes before I move on to working on the next update. Cheers, Qu

[ 2018-10-08 12:37:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Help I'm trapped in a hotfix factory. * Added a new visual effect for rotating/zooming the camera to better communicate where the camera target is to the player and how the vertical panning works. * Fixed bug causing creatures to be soaked with water when they are first generated, or on load (being soaked causes evaporation, which causes cooling, which can kill creatures quickly if they don't have the mass or insulation to cope with it) * Fixed bug causing creatures born after the initial generation to have 1/3rd the Maximum Stamina they were supposed to, making survival more difficult * Fixed bug preventing the Numpad keys from working on input spinners

[ 2018-10-08 08:28:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

A subspecies of the game has just been released with a variety of beneficial mutations! * UI now shows amount of Delicious Meat when you select a corpse. * Creatures/corpses are automatically removed from the selection set when they die/decay * Revive now resets creatures Age, to prevent old creatures from immediately dying again upon revival * Fixed issue where the creature tools would sometimes not appear even when creatures were selected * Fixed Nursery bots not resetting their state properly when you re-load or generate a new world * Fixed it being possible to export/genetically modify corpses. * Fixed nursery not evolving creatures towards the target you specify * Fixed a crash when you Import Creature while your creature list is empty

[ 2018-10-07 06:58:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

* Added Yes/No option to profile to turn Mouse Edge Scrolling on and off * Fixed a bug where the UI could appear scaled at the wrong resolution the very first time you started the game. * Fixed a bug where creatures in the Nursery were not being properly reset when you exited to menu and re-entered the game. * Disabled any rover that jumps into the Nursery to prevent it's attempts at path-finding from crashing the game * Fixed bug with sat map highlighting creatures outside the current species when you hovered over one * Fixed a bug where the Mass Extinction dialog would occasionally be prevented from appearing. * Fixed a bug which replaced the Pause menu with a Mass Extinction dialog after a mass extinction

[ 2018-10-05 11:48:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

The bugs are gradually being pushed to extinction, performance is recovering rapidly and both the simulation balance and polish are thriving in their new home! I released the .9 hotfix yesterday with a number of polish and stability improvements and the .10 hotfix just now with more of the same, plus some unexpectedly substantial performance gains. Full changelist for both hotfixes: * Fertile underwater biomes now form in deeper water, further from the shore. * Underwater biomes can now be grazed to non-existence the same as land biomes, and will gradually regrow over time. * Rewrote the temperature/fertility influence shaders. Trees should no longer affect temperature, and heating/cooling devices should no longer affect fertility. * Grass grows back faster now. * Can now use numpad for camera control * Optimized stat change performance * Optimized emotion change performance * Fixed hotkeys not responding consistently * Fixed Tilde (~) not pausing the game when pressed * Fixed a survival strategy where creatures could gain energy by suffocating themselves (no, really. The little bastards will exploit anything) * Fixed bug where some creatures were Unselectable * Fixed bug where creatures could breed multiple times on a single frame, or while paused, without paying the energy cost. (This occasionally resulted in one creature giving birth to a cap-breaking horde when you paused the game) * Fixed common clade-diagram related crash during speciation. * Fixed a possible crash when creating a world. * Fixed crash when creating too many rovers (You'd be surprised how many bug reports can be summarized with: "the game didn't stop me when I deliberately tried to break it"). * Fixed a second, less-common crash related to rovers. * World Seed displaying correctly after loading a save game Known issue: accidentally disabled mouse-edge scrolling. Apologies to anyone who was using it! I'll take the opportunity to implement an option to turn it on/off, since I know it was causing grief to windowed-mode users. Full disclosure: I accidentally uploaded a broken version of 0.11.0.10 just prior to release for a few minutes. I backed it out immediately, but if you got it you would have noticed creatures acting extremely strangely, breeding rapidly to cap and making a beeline for one corner of the map. If you ended up with this version, just restart Steam to get it to download the fixed copy.

[ 2018-10-04 11:28:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

We'll probably need a few more of these before I can in good conscience call the game "stable", but this is a good start. * Fixed most commonly reported crash, which occurred when any creature reached a perfect -1 digestive system. (vegans broke the universe) * Fixed crash when entering the Nursery * Removed malfunctioning LOD sprites (the epic laser battles you'd occasionally see on the edges of the screen) * Fixed crash when too many Ground Circles (shadows, selection circles, etc) were on screen * Fixed crash when playing a loaded world that was originally saved with a higher creature cap * Set Primum speciums litter size back to 1 (was set to 5 by accident) http://www.speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/ Cheers! Qu

[ 2018-10-02 09:35:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.11.0.7 is a bit bigger than the previous hotfixes and includes some reasonably significant performance and stability gains. If performance was your Achilles heel, give it a try! Development blog post here: https://speciesdevblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/0-11-0-7-performance-hotfix/ Cheers, Quasar

[ 2018-10-01 03:01:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Some people have reported that the UI can be quite hard to read on particularly large screens, something we missed in testing by virtue of not having megagodscreens ourselves. It will take a fair bit of testing to make the UI work for everyone, but in the meantime... unofficial font size mods! The default font size is 9p, so these fonts are 11% bigger, 33% bigger and 55% bigger respectively: http://www.speciesgame.com/Downloads/FontOverride10p.zip http://www.speciesgame.com/Downloads/FontOverride12p.zip http://www.speciesgame.com/Downloads/FontOverride14p.zip To install one, simply copy your preferred font size into the mods folder (Steam\steamapps\common\Species ALRE\Mods). No need to extract it: the game will detect it and do that for you. Please note: even though these mods come from me, this is not an official feature of the game (yet). Some parts of the UI be distorted or unreadable as a result of using these files, particularly the larger ones.

[ 2018-09-29 23:09:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's here! Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution 0.11.0: The Fins And Flippers Update. (everyone knows titles are better the longer they are) As you might guess from the name, the Fins and Flippers update introduces aquatic life to the world of species. With swim physics, aquatic biomes and a new respiratory system gene, we have prepared P. specium for the oncoming tide as best we could! Now to toss it in the ocean and watch it flail helplessly. Ah. So majestic. This is our first steam release, and it's been a fun journey getting here, but we're not done yet: not even close. This is only Early Access after all! I hope you'll join us as we continue to evolve! Cheers! Qu

[ 2018-09-29 00:17:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Which, given the context in which this announcement appears, should probably be obvious. Still! This move has been a long time coming, and it's great to finally make a start on it. This will be the start of a new an exciting era for this project. Cheers, Qu

[ 2018-07-22 00:20:07 CET ] [ Original post ]