We had a beta build last week, and quite expectedly it had a bunch of problems. We’ve spent the last week fixing as many of them as possible. Right now there shouldn’t be any blocker issues on releasing 0.6.4 and as such it is scheduled for next week. For now there is a public test build to just to make sure that the release will be good enough quality as it is always the case that random people find bugs we developers have not seen at all.
The new test build is available as the beta version through Steam (selectable in the Steam client game properties). It has various improvements over the previous public beta test. Here's a short list of the most major things:
- New feature: mucilage can be selected for vacuole storage specialization
- Reimplemented early multicellular, game should be playable again all the way through the prototypes
- Buffed base movement, especially for larger cells, set slightly even higher microbe physics damping
- Massively buffed mucilage jet speed
- Reimplemented organelle render order to get things to look more like they should, especially when engulfing
- Reimplemented pulling cilia so that it no longer crashes the game, it's just a bit unbalanced
- Various colony damage and engulfing fixes
- Fixed saving and loading with cell colonies
- Fixed pilus damage not working at all
- Fixed engulf size not re-applying after cell grew or was edited
- Fixed multiple engulfing related bugs (still at least one bug left with indigestible things getting stuck inside)
- Fixed engulf progress indicator going up to 200% also fixed "devoured" text not appearing
- Fixed a crash with certain entity types existing and not having expected materials
- Fixed immediate crash when going to the ice shelf patch
- Fixed various other bugs and crashes
- Added submodule info to packaged source code
- Updated translations
Please note that this build has at least one pretty serious bug: indigestible cells are not ejected from engulfers. If you as a player get engulfed by something that can’t digest you, that may softlock the game. But the game should no longer crash at all, and early multicellular (as well as the later prototypes) is now functional again. There will hopefully still be a rotation rate rebalance completed next week before the full 0.6.4 release.
If you have feedback about the new build, you can share it here: https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/0-6-4-release-candidate-testing/7039 where we'll be able to easily see and respond to all the feedback.
Unless some very big new bugs are uncovered in the next few days, you'll be seeing Thrive 0.6.4 arriving next week, finally. After that release we hope to resume making more regular releases (every 2-3 months or so). Though please expect a 0.6.4.1 patch if a bunch of newly discovered issues pop up once 0.6.4 is out as the default game version.