Devblog #54: The Achievementing
Thrive 1.7 has been released as the fourth major update to the Multicellular Stage! The time since the last update hasn't been quite as long as the one before that, but we still have a significant number of additions for you.
Included in this update as a major new feature is a new manual cell layout feature for people annoyed with how the automatic layout performs. Secondly, we have additional requirements to move to the Macroscopic Stage beyond just “add enough cells.” We also added new achievements for while you're in the Multicellular Stage. If you don't like the environment staying the same between thousands of generations, we have an option for that now too. We even have some updates to future Stage prototypes! And of course, quite a few smaller features, and a whole lot of bugfixes.
We would also like to remind people that our second community art contest is still ongoing. Art from this contest is to be used as Thrive loading screens and/or Juuzo Lenz's Thrive-inspired speculative evolution series. Art of all levels and diversity of quality is welcome!
As always the update is available for free with our launcher, or you can support development by purchasing on Steam or Itch.io. If you already own a copy of Thrive, you can also get the soundtrack. We really need your support in order to continue development at the current pace past the Multicellular Stage.
Read on for more details, or visit the download page linked below to get the new version.
Thrive 1.7.0
See our patch notes for full details, or read on for some of the highlights.
Precise Cell Layout
A longstanding complaint about the Multicellular Stage has been that the automated system for converting the hex cell layout to something that works in-gameplay does not always provide satisfactory results. The previous added membrane stretching system helps fill in the gaps, but did not change the logic of where cells are generally placed.
In order to address this, a new tab was added to the Multicellular Editor that allows you to preview what the gameplay layout generated from your current cell hex design is going to look like. More than that, it allows you to switch to fully manually making that layout yourself. We hope this will resolve frustration with the automatic layout system not fitting what you as the player had in mind with your design.
Of course, we do place some restrictions on exactly where you can place cells in this precise layout to ensure the game continues to function properly:
- You can't allow any cells to be fully detached from the rest of the body.
- Each cell needs to be within a few hexes of the cells it is adjacent to in the less-precise layout design (with an allowance for two disconnected cells).
- Cells can't be disconnected at any point in the growth order.
Stage Transition Requirements
Up until now, the requirement of simply reaching 20 total cells in order to transition from the Multicellular to the Macroscopic Stage has been rather easy. The only way to directly make this take much longer would be to make placing new cells more expensive. However, this would obviously make playing around with the core features of the Multicellular Stage more difficult as well.
Instead, we decided to add a new set of requirements that your species needs to meet before you can transition to the next stage. These symbolize evolving into a more complex multicellular form with differentiated cell types before you can grow much larger. The new requirements include a minimum average specialization across your organism, a minimum average cell adjacency bonus, and switching to a more advanced reproduction mode. We also reduced the required number of cells to 15, as 20 cells is really the point where the game's systems and game design start creaking under the strain.
It's quite likely that we'll continue to tweak the numbers based on your responses after this release.
Achievements
One of the features considered required for the completion of the Multicellular Stage was a set of achievements matching the ones we already have for the Microbe Stage. We selected a number of different objectives covering different play-styles, and tried to make sure that they do not trigger at the same time all that much. These achievements are of course also implemented as Steam achievements. As you can see them there anyway, the new ones are listed here:
- Ultimate Colony: Grow a multicellular colony of at least 21 living cells.
- Ultimate Cellular Firepower: Fire at least 10 toxin projectiles at once as a multicellular organism.
- You Animal!: Reproduce as a multicellular species with at least 10 cells, with every cell only getting ATP from glucose and no organelles producing glucose.
- Specialized Weapons: Leave the multicellular editor with a cell type containing at least 5 pilus or toxin organelles, while every other cell type has at most 1.
- Specialization Specialist: In multicellular, have at least 3 cell types with over 50% specialization and a different most common organelle in each.
- Just a Flesh Wound: Lose at least 30% of your total body plan of at least 10 cells, then survive to the editor.
- In Search of a Home:
Travel at least 1,000 units of distance during a single life as a spore. - Microscopic Birds and Bees: Successfully reproduce sexually in the Multicellular Stage.
- Perfectly Packed: Leave the multicellular editor with a body plan of at least 10 cells and no gaps or holes in its full layout.
- Beyond the Microbial: Reach the macroscopic stage.
New Game Option
There's been a very long-standing discussion within the team on whether it's right for the environment you were swimming around in to stay the same between entering the editor and leaving it again (As has been the case up until now, unless you move to a new patch). Now, an option was finally added that, if enabled, always re-spawns you in a refreshed environment once you leave editor. You can find this in in the Miscellaneous tab of the advanced New Game options.
Which option do you prefer?
Macroscopic Stage Preparations
While development is still focused on the Multicellular Stage, some of our volunteers have been working on features we will need for the Macroscopic Stage.
One of these is a new tool for rotating the position of a metaball around the parent metaball it is attached to. When the tool is selected, clicking on any metaball will create two rings around the parent metaball, intersecting the selected metaball. Click-and-dragging the rings will change the position of the selected metaball accordingly, with a ghostly outline showing where the metaball will be placed if you release the mouse button.
The other feature is a new system for displaying textures on the 3D organisms. It does this by taking the given texture and pasting it several times on different partitions of the skin, and then blending the seams. As the system can technically display any image on the organism, we had some fun with this as well. The actual textures themselves shown right now are generic placeholders, and not intended to be final.
Additional Features
- Non-player species can now become multicellular by themselves.
- The density of terrain is now decreased once the player moves to the Multicellular Stage.
- Added a set of new Multicellular Stage tutorials to the editor.
- Exiting the editor with unused cell types is now disallowed.
- Reworked how movement speed and buffs are calculated, especially for cell colonies.
- Reworked how glucose is provided for engulfed and killed cells. You will generally get more consistent amounts of glucose based on the cell's size.
- Increased the max zoom out distance when controlling a large multicellular colony, and it now dynamically increases as you grow more cells.
- Improved functionality, HUD notifications and visuals of sexual reproduction.
- Added the specialization bonus to storage and ATP tooltips
- Changed the visuals of the society stage buildings and added separate visuals for the factory.
- Many optimizations in processing time and species quality for auto-evo.
- Improvements to the auto-evo exploration tool, including the ability to load existing saves.
A full list of changes is available in our release notes on GitHub.
What’s Next
We're closing in on the end of the year, and with that, the point where we need to wrap up development on the Multicellular Stage, polish it, and declare it finished. As you can see on the Release Roadmap, not everything was implemented in the order originally planned, with some things delayed and others moved forward. Overall, we're still on schedule for that goal of starting Macroscopic Stage development around the start of the new year.
Coming up will the implementation of the Axon organelle as this was almost, but not quite, ready for this update. Another likely feature from our non-optional list is size-related costs, intended to give some additional pressure to specialize and smartly place cells as your multicellular organism grows larger. Additional updates to auto-evo are very likely as well, including a difficulty option to disallow the AI transitioning to the next Stage before you do.
Join us a bit later today for our developer Thrivestream where we'll celebrate the release on the stream, but also answer the usual question of what's coming in the next releases. (Questions can also be asked in advance in this thread). You can visit our feedback thread to give your thoughts on this release.
Watch the stream:
