Progress Update 01/25/2025

This week, we made great strides with Auto Evo, focusing on refining how it handles diverse evolutionary processes. One of the key updates was adding sulfur chunks as energy sources, which opens up more dynamic adaptation possibilities for organisms.

We also started exploring radiotrophy, looking at how life could evolve to use radiation as an energy source. The initial results are exciting and set the stage for further developments. As always, we tackled a variety of bug fixes and optimizations to keep everything running smoothly.

Programming

• New DevBuild for our patrons:

  • Increased auto-evo population change effect strength on the player from 20% to 50% and made it a configurable difficulty option

  • Updated various tooltip and tutorial text to be more clear and accurate in relation to new game features

  • Added a new overall tips Thriveopedia page to help new players

  • Added sulfur chunks as energy sources to auto-evo

  • Increased efficiency of organelle position finding code for organelle growth so that big cells don't cause lag spikes

  • Increased efficiency of position calculation for new organelles in auto-evo which should increase overall simulation speed by about 20%

  • Fixed auto-evo prediction not updating on patch change or on behaviour slider change

  • Fixed patch notes popup not grabbing focus correctly

  • Fixed modal popups staying open when moving on from an editor component

  • Auto-evo can now evolve the mucocyst

  • Reordered the charts in the report tab to have more important ones at the top and environmental conditions last

  • Fixed tutorial lines that pointed to nothing by allowing tutorials to temporarily hide the lines if there is nothing to point to

  • Fixed regression with save load not working in previous BOTD

  • Removed an unnecessary memory allocation in auto-evo organelle upgrade attempt code

  • Changed direct multicellular starter cell to work with the new no oxygen environment

  • Tweaked Dependabot configuration for dependency updates

  • Updated translations

Graphics

• New sulfur chunk

Gameplay

• Nothing Substantial

Sound

• Nothing Substantial

Theory

• Nothing Substantial

Outreach

• Art contest continues!

Other

• Nothing Substantial