Get ready for another exciting update: Thrive 0.8.0 is here! Packed with visual upgrades, this release introduces reworked 3D models for organelles, fresh membrane textures, and improved icons to enhance clarity and aesthetics. The dynamic environments also see significant changes, with more balanced compound changes and vent eruptions.
In the editor, two major tools make their debut. The organelle suggestion system offers strategic recommendations based on auto-evo, guiding players on which organelles will benefit their organism’s evolution. And the split order tab which gives you precise control over ATP production by letting you customize the sequence of organelle reproduction, adding a new layer of strategic depth to cell development.
Give the new version a try now, or if you don't have Thrive yet there's a sale on Steam right now for 25% off, so this is the perfect chance to grab a copy if you don’t have one already or to gift one to a friend.
Organelle Suggestion System
This update introduces the Organelle Suggestion System, a helpful tool that offers recommendations based on auto-evo analysis.
While in the editor, the system suggests which organelles to add to your organism in order to guide you towards optimizing its evolution. By analyzing your species’ needs and environmental conditions through the lens of auto-evo, it provides valuable guidance for both new and experienced players to make strategic decisions. While certainly useful it may make some seemingly unusual suggestions for now, as auto-evo itself can sometimes have a warped view on what makes a successful species at this time.
Organelle Split Order Tab
With this update comes a powerful new feature in the editor: the Organelle Split Order Tab which allows for greater control over the reproduction process in your cell!
The Split Order Tab gives players the ability to customize the order organelles split during the growth-phase, providing players with greater control over their cell’s life cycle. Players can optimize their organism’s efficiency and better plan for cell growth by determining what parts are reproduced at each stage of reproduction. This addition adds a layer of depth to the editor, allowing for a more flexible and realistic cell reproduction.
If you feel this might be too complex to handle, do not worry! Use of this feature is entirely optional and players can still enjoy the original experience of cell-growth by simply ignoring the feature.
Revamped Visuals for Membranes & Organelles
This update continues to enhance Thrive’s visuals with improved graphic effects and texture reworks!
Each membrane texture has been completely revamped. While 3D membranes have been in the game for a while, their textures were originally very similar which made differentiating membrane types impossible. Now, each cell membrane and wall has a distinct look which allows players to more easily identify what they may or may not be able to consume.
The organelle 3D models have also undergone a major overhaul, improving their design and granting a vibrant look to cellular life in Thrive.
Additional Features
- Reintroduced Mac builds of Thrive. Thrive is again playable on macOS but this is not official full support yet.
- Added sulfur chunks.
- Added an underwater vent eruption event that creates extra hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide in the patch.
- Made nitrogen dynamic.
- Added two new multicellular loading screen artworks.
- Reduced base endosymbiosis time costs by one.
- Lowered hydrogenase ATP output by 10%.
For the full patch notes see the end of this post.
What’s Next
As always remember to join us for our developer Thrivestream later today, where we’ll cover the changes in this release and answer any questions you might have about the future of development. We’ll also answer the usual question of what’s coming in the next releases.
You can leave feedback in the comments below or visit our feedback thread to give your thoughts on this update.
Full Patch Notes
- Added an organelle suggestion that is shown in the editor which gives info on what auto-evo would like the player to add
- Added a new tab in the editor to control organelle split order for more fine tuned control over ATP during reproduction
- Reintroduced Mac builds of Thrive. Thrive is again playable on macOS but this is not official full support yet.
- Balancing changes to microbe storage: most organelles now give much less storage to make storage an actual gameplay mechanic that needs planning
- Created new membrane textures that help make the 3D membranes of different types more easily distinguishable (as the change to 3D membranes made all the membranes look very similar)
- Reworked all organelle 3D models
- Added sulfur chunks
- Added a bloom strength slider and enabled it by default
- Added an underwater vent eruption event that creates extra hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide in the patch
- Added a miche viewer to the patch map tab
- Improved gas update logic to make sure gases don't add up to over 100%
- Made compounds move much more freely between patches
- Made nitrogen dynamic
- Added hydrogen sulfide compound consumption by species
- Added iron chunks being oxidised by oxygen making them less common once oxygen starts spreading through the world
- Removed experimental compound production mode as it was too unbalanced and didn't get any work done on it since the last release
- Improved the microbe AI in terms of when it uses sprinting
- Mucocyst can now be used by the AI to defend itself
- Added difficulty options for what to do with stored compounds after reproducing
- Added disk caching for generated species images. This makes displaying species images a lot faster after restarting the game and loading a save. By default the cache aims to use at most 1 GB of disk space.
- Reduced unlock requirements of gas-dependent organelles
- Reduced base endosymbiosis time costs by one
- Lowered hydrogenase ATP output by 10%
- Made slight balancing tweaks to photosynthesis glucose production and glucose use of a few ATP-generating organelles
- Renamed Nitrogen-Fixing Plastid to Nitroplast
- Made glucose reduction text only apply to discovered patches to make the percentages higher to make it look like a more important message
- Added a warning tooltip for the speed stat in the editor about how it is not fully accurate
- Added an icon for the mucocyst upgrade
- Reworked the experimental siderophore feature action icon
- Made engulfing info be last in the membrane tooltips like it was previously (before tooltip refactoring broke it)
- Added a new and more visible cell membrane animation
- Increased visibility of engulf wave effect slightly
- Added bigger warning when enabling experimental features mode
- Added tooltips for chemoreceptor upgrade GUI amount and distance sliders
- Updated nitrogen icon to not have glow anymore to be more consistent with other compound icons
- Tweaked some GUI element alignments to be more similar to what they were before we upgraded to Godot 4
- Added a tip in the unlock tooltip that endosymbiosis is an alternative unlock method
- Fixed process toggle buttons not always matching the underlying process states and fixed processes re-enabling by themselves when organelles reproduced
- Fixed hex popup menu being able to operate on deleted hexes which could be exploited for infinite MP. Also fix a related bug in the prototype editors.
- Fixed not all patches showing up in the editor report patch selector dropdown
- Fixed a bug in the volcanism effect that caused it to add way more CO2 than originally intended
- Fixed non-LAWK unlocks showing after loading a save
- Fixed aspect ratio of sunlight icon in daytime selection bar
- Fixed chemical equation arrow to be vertically centered
- Fixed a bug where compound diffusion between patches could move too much compound
- Fixed auto-evo migration usefulness calculations using the wrong miche tree
- Fixed organelle scale-affecting upgrades not applying while moving that organelle to a new location
- Fixed bug with osmoregulation cost being shown on upgrade tooltips
- Fixed osmoregulation showing in rigidity slider tooltip
- Fixed lag when zooming out a draggable container while it is still displaying its initial animation
- Fixed the timeline incorrectly claiming some species to be extinct
- Fixed moved cell in body plan editor being invisible if no cell type to place was selected
- Fixed a missing wordwrap on a label in the mod manager
- Fixed multiple bugs in our species visual hashing algorithm that made memory caching also less efficient
- Fixed extinct species not having previews in auto-evo exploring tool
- Made auto-evo exploring tool show patch events, note that historical view for events doesn't work yet
- Disabled temperature miche being generated when in LAWK mode (no species could occupy it but for clarity it is entirely disabled now)
- Added two new multicellular loading screen artworks
- Tweaked PhotoStudio image capture distance math
- Made organelle tooltips not constantly try to refresh their displayed chemical equations
- Added an energy icon for the later stage prototypes
- Linked late multicellular prototype jump force to mass to make jumping speed more consistent
- Added proper content for the Thriveopedia page of ferroplast
- Added code for UV unwrapping of macroscopic creatures, but there's no textures yet so the code isn't enabled
- Native lib install tool now prints full paths to try to reduce potential confusion
- Started backend work on allowing more kinds of unit tests for Thrive using gdUnit4
- Added workaround in the C# interop code to work with newer native library compiles
- Added a few explicit garbage collector calls when the game is loading to hopefully reduce chance that it runs during gameplay
- Updated to .NET 9
- Updated YamlDotNet from 16.1.3 to 16.2.1
- Updated System.Numerics.Vectors from 4.5.0 to 4.6.0
- Updated automatic code checking tools
- Improved a few aspects of our CMake files
- Fixed workshop upload dialog not showing all error conditions
- Updated translations