Devblog #17: The Re-Emergence of Life

It’s been a while.

To someone not following the project closely on our more active platforms (community forums and Discord) it may appear Thrive has fallen into a long, dark slumber. Nascent life extinct, factories gone cold, space relics left scattered about the cosmos.

But all is not as it seems. Life stirs below the surface.

The purpose of this Devblog is to state in no uncertain terms the second most repeated of our mantras (right behind no underwater civs):

We’re not dead.

We’re back. And things are about to get exciting.

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Mini Update #4: Future Plans

Hey guys, Nick here, and welcome back to another Mini Update. As mentioned in the latest devblog, today we’re going to talk a bit about the short term plans and goals for the project. However, I’m also going to throw in a part at the end to talk about our new forum and some of the interesting discussions on the Microbe Stage we’ve been having recently. Let’s begin!

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Mini Update #2: Underwater Sensation Pt. 1

Hey guys, Nick here, and welcome to today’s Mini Update. This time we’re going to be talking about blur, and more specifically how making what you’re looking at harder to see will make it look nicer. Hopefully this isn’t saying anything about our artistic ability.

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Mini Update #1: Engine Switch and Compound Balancing

Hey guys, Nick here, and welcome to the first in our new series of mini updates!

For a while we’ve been discussing the idea of having smaller development updates like this. The idea is to have them between the devblogs for a chance to keep you guys up to date with what’s going on in the project in the very rare (okay maybe not that rare) periods where there is no big news. We’re going to try it out, and if all goes well we’ll stick with it.

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Devblog #13: The Engine Dilemma

From outside the project, it might appear as if things have moved slowly over the summer. But we’re still going. The trouble with this period is a lot of work has gone into under-the-hood changes – that is, the Thrive game engine.

Before we delve into the issues with the engine, we should tell you about a few visible features that have been added. New programmer zyad137 gave us the suicide button, a handy device for offing yourself if you run out of ATP or want a change of scenery. He’s also provided notifications for organelle pickups and improved AI, and is working on a hints system to help players understand what they should do next. Developer crodnu also added improved camera zooming ability.

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Devblog #11: A New Thrive For A New Year

Is it too late to say happy New Year? Probably, but we’ll do it anyway. Happy New Year, and as 2017 takes its first steps we’re happy to present another update to Thrive: version 0.3.3.

A flashy new GUI, more realistic health and reproduction systems, and the first steps towards evolution are the flagship features, and you can read all about them below, alongside our recent podcasting efforts and plans for 2017.

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Devblog #8: A Friendly Little Update

Welcome to the Devblog, Thrive fans! We haven’t had a Devblog in a while, so we thought a little update was in order. In this Devblog, we will look at the direction Thrive is heading in and the progress it’s making. It is a little shorter than usual but there should be another Devblog coming soon, detailing the 0.3.2 release.

0.3.2 Progress Update

Test Release

We recently released a test release on our Community Forum and Reddit, so that we can find and deal with the bugs that are present in the newest version of the game. This means that when we release it to our wider audience, it should be a higher quality product. The feedback we have received so far has been very helpful in flagging up bugs; it shows us that there is still quite a bit of work to be done. In response, we have brought out a second test release. You can still help report on bugs by downloading it here. Thanks to these reports, the team is currently hard at work trying to fix these bugs in our private chat, Slack. The next Devblog will go into more detail about what this release brings to Thrive.

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Devblog #5: Thrive vs Species

Evolution aficionados, get excited. It’s time for the simulation smackdown of the century, as two up and coming biological games go head-to-head in a battle of truly Darwinian proportions.

In the red corner – Thrive, an open-source project from Revolutionary Games aiming to show the player the wonders of life as they guide their species from the tidepool to the stars.

In the blue corner – Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution, a single developer’s quest to simulate evolution by natural selection as accurately as possible, an effort already making waves in the gaming world.

Who will come out on top? Can this introduction get any more dramatic? Is this actually just a few people amicably asking each other questions about their different approaches to crafting an evolution-based game which will ultimately result in an overall increase in knowledge and understanding with no real aspect of competition?

Read on to find out!

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Devblog #3: A Farewell to Hexagons

0.3.0

It’s official: after a quick pre-release to clear up a few bugs, Thrive version 0.3.0 is now available to download. To do so, either visit our Releases page or the link below:

THRIVE VERSION 0.3.0

This devblog will run you through the various new features, along with other miscellaneous updates, including what’s coming next.

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