Revolutionary Games Studio

Brace yourselves for another feature-packed update: 0.7.1 is here! Along with enhancements to the various reports available to the player in the editor, a lot of visual improvements to our cells, backgrounds, icons, and textures are here.

Furthermore, oxygen is now dynamically simulated, being introduced by photosynthetic life forms on your planet. This has an immense effect on gameplay and progression throughout the Microbe Stage. Your organism, which now starts its journey on an anoxygenic world, must now strategically evolve its metabolism around the pace at which oxygen is introduced to your atmosphere. A significant chapter in Thrive’s development has begun – the introduction of a changing, scientifically accurate world that evolves with the life on your planet!

Read on for more details, or visit the download page linked below to get the new version. As always, the update is available for free with our launcher, or you can support development by purchasing on Steam or Itch.io.

Thrive 0.7.1

See our patch notes for full details, or read on for some of the highlights.

Food Chain Tab, Auto-Evo Report, Thriveopedia Revamp

Consistent with the theme of our roadmap items for version 0.7.x, significant work has been put into reworking and adding upon our auto-evo reports. Players will now have a better understanding of what exactly is going on in the world they inhabit.

Among the most notable additions is a long requested feature: the Food Chain Tab! Players will now have a chart of the food web within a patch, letting them know the distribution of organisms across different trophic levels. You will be able to see what metabolisms each organism utilizes, the primary producers in an environment, the top predators in an ecosystem, and overall predator-prey relationships.

Various other important changes have also been made to make information more accessible. The auto-evo tab is now much more visual, allowing players to know exactly what organism is being referred to, their population, and other notable characteristics important to performance.

Finally, the Thriveopedia has also been expanded, bringing much more relevant information from the developer wiki into the game. This will allow players to have an in-game reference regarding important mechanics, parts, and strategies.

More work has been done on information accessibility as well – for example, the microbe editor has additional functionalities, allowing the player to see net production at rest and at maximum movement, their cellular processes, and their energy balances with or without specific metabolisms. We hope that players now have much more relevant information, and are now better able to understand exactly what is happening.

3D Membranes, Backgrounds, Bloom, and More

With improved backgrounds, graphic effects, and texture reworks, this update continues to bring significant improvements to Thrive’s visuals!

First, our membranes are now fully 3D, making cells look more realistic. Cells are now represented with membranes that have height – creating a visually-pleasing appearance of depth and shape. A different normal map has also been applied to our membranes, making their texture stick out more and creating a realistic look to our cells. Their opacity has also been altered slightly, which helps to make it so that cells look distinct.

Second, our backgrounds are much more dynamic, with the introduction of mobile background elements like bubbles, and a new optional distortion effect. Rather than a simple parallax display, layers which contained elements that should move around a bit have some independent motion. A toggleable distortion shader (accessible in the “Graphics” option menu) is also applied to the layers below, resulting in distortion similar to that of light reflecting through fluid. Furthermore, a bloom effect is now available, making colors pop and, combined with the background, creating a feeling of “depth” in a previously flat visual landscape. Like the distortion backgrounds, bloom can be turned on and off, though performance should not be significantly affected on most PCs.

More subtle work has also continued in increasing visual richness. New ice chunks have been introduced, resulting in more variety in frozen ocean patches. Some work on the assets of the later stage prototypes, such as the Societal and Space Stages, has also been completed.

We would like to note that several visual improvements, such as those to the membranes, backgrounds, textures, and bloom, are going to see more work. The distorted background will likely eventually be enabled by default. If you have feedback after playing the update, please share it with us on either our forums or our Discord!

Bloom, enhanced backgrounds, and 3D membranes resulting in a more polished look for the Microbe Stage.

Oxygenation Events

After many years of conceptualization and development, a highly requested feature – oxygenation – has finally been implemented!

Similar to Earth’s history, players will now initially spawn in a world without oxygen. However, as photosynthesis emerges, oxygen will be slowly produced by the lifeforms on your planet – either from other cells, or your own.

Tweaks to existing metabolisms, such as iron respiration, have been implemented to provide options for the player. A new anoxygenic metabolism has also been introduced in the form of clostridial fermentation, represented by the Hydrogenase part. With time, oxygen will increase to the point of allowing more powerful, aerobic forms of respiration to form, and ultimately, more complex life. In other words, the Great Oxygenation Event can now be simulated.

A picture of the atmospheric auto-evo report tab, indicating changing oxygen levels in light blue. The dark blue line represents carbon dioxide levels, which also dynamically changes based on the organisms present within a patch.

Dynamic oxygenation represents the first of a string of new features which will culminate in a fully dynamic world that changes from generation to generation. These updates will likely require a lot of fine-tuning and balancing to get just right, so feedback is always appreciated. A more dynamic simulation of the environment is available as an experimental feature (needs to be enabled when starting a new game), though the experimental version is less balanced.

Additional Features

Flagellum length can now be modified: longer flagellum length results in faster speed but use more ATP, while shorter flagellum results in slightly slower speed but uses less energy.
Two new patch-specific themes have been added, one for ice shelves, and one for tidepools.
An improved “wiggle” animation for cells has been introduced, making membranes look more dynamic.
Balancing and bug fixes related to engulfment and the strength of currents generated from cilia while engulfing.
Reworks of certain compound icons, such as those for Nitrogen. And many more icons have been redone as SVG images.
Improvements to rendering of macroscopic organisms, allowing smoother high-poly meshes with minimal performance impact
And many more changes

A full list of changes is available in our release notes on GitHub.

Art Contest Winners

After a long time coming, we have hosted our first Thrive art contest in years on both our forums and discord. We had some amazing submissions, and we are proud to show off the winners below!

Here are the winners:

First place: Zorkman

“All stories have to begin somewhere, and ours did so an unfathomable amount of generations ago when we first peeked beyond the water’s surface.” *– Enarosat Xööday, renowned biologist and archaeologist from the Avoreth Academy of Natural Sciences*

Second Place: Trappist-1e

“Opave’ỹva is a moon orbiting an massive gas giant roughly the size of Jupiter. Due to a combination of gravitational push, too much water in that solar system region, somewhat young age, and bad luck, 93% of the moon is covered by big, sparse oceans filled with native fauna, flora, and other things human language has no words to.”

Third place, a tie between Kefkorr & Rehtom Ruoy:

“A slender, amphibious, bioluminescent predator that is seeking out some swimming “fish” (also bioluminescent) in shallow waters where they generally reside. It usually stays out the water for a few minutes (holding onto its gills) before it surrounds and strangles smaller prey.”

“A large, arthropod-like organism. Its body has 15 segments, the first four being fused into a cephalothorax, the rest, a long tail. Each segment presents a pair of limbs ending in three finger/claw-like structures. The first pair of limbs are used for crushing plant matter (and the occasional animal) and transporting it to its jawless mouth. They are its hands and teeth. The next three pairs of limbs are used for movement, and the rest are likely vestigial.”

What’s Next

Most items under section 0.7.x have been knocked off the roadmap through this update, a great sign of progress for the completion of the Microbe Stage. Some items remain however, so it is likely that our next update will be named 0.8, and might contain some features listed under the next phase of Thrive’s development.

Development focus will likely switch towards fleshing out the world the player lives in, particularly related to dynamic environments and compounds. Again, such a feature will likely require thorough balancing to get just right, so it could be a very iterative process.

Remember to join us for our developer Thrivestream later today, where we will answer questions asked by you, the community, and cover the results of our latest community art competition! You can also visit our feedback thread on the community forums to give us your impressions on the release.

Thank you for all your support, and we hope to see you soon!