It’s another year and while we’ve slowed down a little after the holidays, we still have some neat things to show off and start the new year right. There has been a bit of brainstorming behind the scenes as we seek to devise new and exciting mechanics to make Thrive more lively; such as puzzling out how to generate procedural water currents, and expanding player control over cellular processes. Meanwhile our graphics artists have been busy whipping up some exciting visuals for the planned chemo-receptor part, and the long awaited 3D membrane generation.
As we leave 2021 behind, we want to wish everyone a great and happy new year! Here’s to a bright and eventful future!
If you haven’t already, check out Thrive on Steam and Itch.io!
Programming
- With the funding received from the Steam and Itch.io, we can now pay our lead programmer to work more often. Guaranteed faster development of Thrive!
- New DevBuild for our patrons:
- Added a button on graphs to open a bigger view of them to see the data more clearly
- Forced a few more critical game tutorials people were skipping
- Tweaked the patch name display animation
- Save names are now autowrapped in the saves list
- Fixed many scenes not being able to be started directly from Godot editor
- Reduced small iron chunk mass to be much smaller than the big chunks
- Tweaked the visuals for toxins
- Updated translations
Graphics
- Visible progress has been made on cell membrane generation using metaballs. This is an exciting and highly anticipated feature that is expected to enable proper membrane wrapping onto the cell’s shape. Thus allowing for cells to take on more unique shapes instead of featureless blobs.
- Created concept art for the chemo-receptor part; a concentrated collection of chemo-receptive cilia that enhance the host cell’s ability to sense the surrounding environment. In gameplay terms, this will give your cell radar!
Gameplay
- Discussed an expanded process panel, potentially unlocked by evolving the nucleus.
- Brainstormed generation and mechanics of water currents in the microbe stage.
Sound
- Nothing Substantial
Theory
- Brief discussion behind the scenes on the potential of precipitation-mediated migration of species on surface patches.
Outreach
- Nothing Substantial
Other
- Nothing Substantial
