It's been a while since we updated the public version, and we think we were overdue, so here it is! We have started doing a lot of background work, but we still have quite a bit to share this time around. Obviously, the Steam Workshop integration, but also many small improvements and quite a lot of bugfixes (and one small surprise 🤫)!
Let's go right to it!
The Workshop!
The people who bought the simulation on Steam (please do so if you haven't already <3, it helps the project a lot) will have a far easier time sharing bibites, scenarios, challenges, and saves! (and eventually mods!)
Downloading a bibite species is now as simple as clicking the "Subscribe" Button in the Steam Workshop! And it will automatically be added to your game when it next launches, and available to use like any of your own saved bibites!
The same is true for Scenarios, Challenges, and Saves!
Changes/Addition:
Added Rotation Speed Node (as a Brain Input)
Improvements to the Bibite Library
Improved the collision equations (for damages) to be more realistic and based on the transferred impulse (big bibites won't be as sensitive to small bibites ramming into them)
Void avoidance logic fixed so it always stay in the present existing zone, and won't privilege an outside smaller zone
Added buttons to export an image of your bibites in the Bibite Library!
Moved to Unity 6.44 and full URP Render Stack (small improvement to performances/stability)
New Settings to block bibites from producing specific pheromones (Red, Green, or Blue)
[Ctrl+C] copies tag of selected bibite to the clipboard
[Ctrl+V] set tag of selected bibite from the clipboard (doesn't have to be from a previous bibite)
Improved usability of one-time-spawn settings for bibite templates
Made connection weight mutations having a relative impact on speciation (the relative change in weight is what contributes to speciation, not the absolute change)
A secret feature soon to be announced
Fixes:
Significant improvement to memory leaks
Fixed a few sources of NaN propagation errors (causing singularity bug)
Prevented all genes from going out of bounds
Fixed the bibite's shader sometimes causing issues
Fixed bibite sprites sometimes causing some sub-pixel artifacts
Corrections to many text errors/Clarification of a few explanations
Fixed lineage tree nodes placement (so parents are always above children)
Not possible to open lineage panel anymore if there's no data to show (used to be possible but throw error and bug)
Fixed Custom Bibite Sprite Renderer (and exporter)
Fixed the one-time-spawn setting respawning the template bibites on load
Fixed pellets sometimes rendering on top of bibites
Fixed Field of view sometimes not detecting bibite
Fixed issues when entering some settings values manually
Fixed event call order when a setting is changed
CanGoOutOfBound property of some settings now correctly enforced at all levels
Fixed Internal organs preview (in Biology Panel), now should be a lot more solid, and work for Linux and Mac
Fixed unattached node loops breaking the brain panel
Fixed invalid scenarios creating empty scenario Items
Fixed some bibites without inputless output nodes crashing the bibite brain editor
And finally, what can you expect for 0.6.3 ?
Like we announced previously, we have started the very hefty task of completely rebuilding the Bibites from the ground up, with a reinvented evolutionary algorithm called BIOME (Biology Inspired Open-ended Module-based Evolution), which I've been developing theoretically for the last few years, and using a new programming framework (Unity DOTS).
BIOME aims to significantly expand the possibility for evolution and revolutionize evolutionary algorithms as a whole. Moving to Unity DOTS for running the simulation promises incredible improvements to performance (x10 to x100) and multi-threading by default.
While this is exciting, it's gonna take a while (probably ~ a year), so in parallel, we want to still update the current branch every ~3-4 months with features that have been voted on by the community.
For 0.6.3, we have:
The Bibites 0.6.3: Seasons and Events!
We want to add a lot more dynamism to the simulation, and the ability to have the simulation parameters vary over time has been a long-time request.
So in 0.6.3 (and in alpha releases on Patreon before that), you'll be able to create cycles/seasons, program changes, and trigger events!
Events would be significant things that could happen randomly, like a meteor hit, a sudden bloom of plant pellets, etc.
Seasons/changes will work by creating a settingsChanger, link it to as many settings as you like, and detail how they would change over time, starting when, and etc.
The nice thing is that we already unofficially added this last thing to 0.6.2... more on that at the end of this post.
Other potential additions I would like to include in 0.6.3:
More towers (like the current Color Selector Tower)
Radiation tower
Pheromones tower
Genes selection tower
... and more maybe?
Modifiers for zones (changing some settings locally, like drag)
A Notification System to track events, take notes, and track significant changes to the simulation (like die-offs, new species, etc.)
A simple scripting language to interact with the sim
(I'd really like this one, but it would be a lot of work, so...)
Unofficial Seasons in 0.6.2 (Changing settings over time)
This is only a tentative implementation, so, for now, you have to manually modify the settings.bb8settings file in your scenarios/challenges, as detailed below.
This will allow the most experienced bibite engineers to play with varying settings over time automatically in new, unique, scenarios/challenges and share them with the wider community, RIGHT NOW IN 0.6.2! This will also help us test this feature a bit and gather ideas for the final implementation.
You simply need to add the "settingsChangers" list to any settings.bb8settings similarly to this example:
A given settingsChanger instance can reference any number of settings, so that a singular instance can be used to control them all uniformly, akin to seasons.
I'll make a post in the future to better detail how it works and how to implement it.