Devblog #15: Design Philosophy

Hi, it’s TJWhale here.

Thrive has a great team. There’s a lot of talent working on this game and there’s also a lot of commitment, people really care. Recently I have been promoted to Microbe Stage Design Lead, which is a role that used to exist but had lapsed. As a team we decided it is important to have a way to finalise decisions and having a Design Lead for this stage gives us this.

In my life outside Thrive I have strong beliefs about what good engineering discipline is and I wa…

Mini Update #6: Gameplay Updates Pt. 1

Hey guys, Nick here, and welcome back to another Mini Update. It’s time for us to cover some of the upcoming gameplay changes that are going to be included with the next release. We’ve got a lot to cover, so we’ll split this into several parts. Today’s update will mostly cover gameplay changes to the compound system and features associated with it.

Now, the upcoming release is intended to be primarily for implementing the new engine, but alongside it we are going to also include some add…

Mini Update #5: Planetary Evolution

Hey guys, Nick here, and welcome back to another Mini Update.

Today we’ve got a longer update as it’s a post from one of our recent discussions on the Microbe Stage that we felt would be interesting to share. Instead of talking about any technical aspects of the development this time, we’re instead going to focus on some of the science behind the game’s design.

What’s the topic? Planetary evolution. Particularly, the evolution of the climate and geochemical cycles of a planet that le…

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!

As you might have noticed before , we’ve mentioned that we want to switch the engine. A quick recap…

Devblog #14: Punctuated Equilibrium

If you were to graph Thrive’s progress since its inception, you’d probably have a slow but steady background rate of development with occasional spikes in activity. This is quite similar to the evolutionary concept called punctuated equilibrium, where species remain static for millions of years then change dramatically over short time periods in response to rapid ecosystem change.

Nowhere is this demonstrated better than the last few months of the project. As I write (hello, this is …

Mini Update #3: Underwater Sensation Pt. 2

Hey guys, Nick here, and back with the next Mini Update.

Before I get into it, I just want to give a quick apology for the prolonged absence. We started the Mini Updates with the intention of having them be pretty regular small updates into the development of the game, and then I disappeared for an extended period after just two instalments (the latest one being a part 1 of a two part series at that). What happened was that I had a major family tragedy that really shook up my life and sc…

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.

Jokes aside, we’re going to be talking today about how to visually create the underwater atmosphere in the game, of which blur is one element. At the moment, the game doesn’t truly make the player feel immersed deep underwa…

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.

So what's been happening with Thrive recent…

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 scene…

Devblog #12: Prepare for Launch

Good news: Thrive now has its own dedicated launcher. Even better news: there’s a whole new release available as a demonstration of its abilities. This Devblog will run through both, as well as the general miscellaneous updates we post to make sure nobody mistakenly thinks the project is dead.

Thrive 0.3.4 isn’t a large release on the surface, but underneath our programmers have been hard at work on some very important features and fixes. And for the first time, we have a voic…