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…

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.

Devblog #10: Call to Action

If you haven’t seen our previous Devblog, Thrive version 0.3.2 is out. That’s good news for us, since it means we can commence with a little something we’ve been planning for a while: a whole load of outreach. It’s time to spread the tenets of Thrive throughout the internet until everybody is buying our blue jeans and listening to our pop music.

And guess what? You can help! Read on to find out how…

Thrive has been in development for a while. We can’t deny that. For several…

Devblog #9: Current Affairs

It's that time again: another Devblog, and a new release! World, prepare to welcome Thrive 0.3.2. There are two big new features (compound clouds and a tutorial), and a bunch of smaller changes.

In this Devblog, we will be covering the new features of this release and the plans for the next release. Read on to find out what's new in Thrive.

Thrive 0.3.2 introduces some important changes, and for the first time we've provided a video where a developer, TheCreator …

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.

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 t…