This week saw some progress, with a focus on enhancing the visual experience through the addition of microbe background blur and default distortion effects. Additionally, multicellular stage was renamed to “Macroscopic” phase to improve gameplay flow and progression.

Our team also rolled out important updates and bug fixes, ensuring smoother gameplay and preparing for future enhancements. We’re excited to announce the launch of the “Freezing Point” art contest, inviting players to showcase their creativity and contribute their artistic talents to the game.

Programming

• New DevBuild for our patrons:
  • Added microbe background blur and enabled distortion effect by default
  • Added region connection lines to the patch map and tweaked its visuals to make it clear which patches link together
  • Marine snow density now depends on existing species instead of always being there
  • Auto-evo can now evolve the slime jet
  • Added an option to the growth order menu to show organelle coordinates, which now defaults to off for clearer look
  • Late multicellular was split into its own full stage: Macroscopic
  • Made environmental light match the gameplay light cycle to make the environment darker during the night
  • Changing organelles back to their base state no longer refunds the upgrade cost. This fixed an infinite MP exploit with the refunds
  • Made our custom modal dialog manager close open dialogs when changing scenes as the old parent GUI is deleted
  • Added Banana Biome Easter Egg
  • Fixed the editor sometimes needing multiple clicks after closing a popup menu by making sure our input manager always forwards key up events to all listeners
  • Fixed the game getting locked up when trying to move the rigidity slider when you have exactly 0 MP
  • Fixed an error in multicellular editor when clearing the cell selection
  • Fixed the lysosome upgrade GUI being slightly too short and having a scrollbar
  • Fixed an issue in our native lib management tool incorrectly checking for Mac libraries in certain usage situations
  • Updated Nix build flake
  • Updated System.IO.Hashing from 9.0.0 to 9.0.1
  • Updated Thriveopedia content
  • Updated translations

Graphics

• Clearer look for growth order menu

• Better region connection for map

Gameplay

• Nothing Substantial

Sound

• Nothing Substantial

Theory

• Nothing Substantial

Outreach

• New Art Contest!
  
  Thrive Art Contest – Freezing Point
  For this new competition round you will need to design a unique and visually captivating organism that deals with the coldest of temperatures! Be it artic waters, chilling tundras, gelid glaciers, or whatever you come up with! Your imagination is the limit.
  
  When you are finished, post your submission in with a short description for your scene before the 8th of February. You’ll have a whole week to vote, results will be given the 15th of february.
  If you’d like to be mentioned on our social media, make sure to include your socials!
  Prizes:
• The top 3 winning entries will be highlighted on Thrive social media and our discord channel
• All participants will get special roles on our Discord server
• All participants will get special titles on the Thrive Community Forums
  
  If you have any questions feel free to ask them on our discord
  Good luck and have fun!

Other

• Nothing Substantial