Progress Update 07/19/2025

Progress continued this week with many small changes being completed for the game. These included many small bug fixes, and even fixes for the future stage prototypes which don't often receive attention. The most interesting addition for many players this week will be the added multicellular species preview images, which have been missing for years, and the multicellular editor now remembering the exact layout created by the player. So no more randomly shifting cell layouts each generation in the multicellular prototype!

There were also some discussions on the developer forums, and some balancing work has been completed, but there's still multiple more balancing changes we are hoping to get done in time for the next Thrive release. We also made a performance tradeoff with the microbe ripple effect now using much less CPU but potentially more GPU power. That overall helps with Thrive performance but some very slow GPUs might have problems. If someone with a slower computer tries the new build, please let us know how that goes.

Programming

• New DevBuild for our patrons:
  • Implemented preview images of multicellular species
  • The multicellular editor now remembers the exact hex layout between sessions and no longer does a conversion process that sometimes shifted cells around
  • There is now a new look to our options menu with checkboxes replaced by toggle buttons and various other tweaks were also made like moving options around
  • Tweaked balancing of the easy difficulty preset
  • Improved CPU performance of the microbe ripple effect by making the effect graphics plane subdivisions static to reduce recreation of planes due to LOD when cells moved around
  • Made the editor tabs disallow swapping between them if there is an in-progress action that needs to be completed first
  • Fixed the process panel list being empty if opened initially when the game is paused
  • Fixed auto-evo being able to place macroscopic organelles in microbe species
  • Fixed the timeline tab showing nonsensical glucose reductions if playing a single Thrive playthrough for a very large number of generations
  • Improved the handling of scrollbars in the timeline tab with too tall scrollbars being now less likely to appear, but they still do sometimes
  • Fixed jittery creature movement in the ascension ceremony screen
  • Fixed a regression in a previous build that caused a major problem in macroscopic
  • Updated unit testing framework, including updating gdUnit4
  • Tweaked our code checking tool ignore list
  • Updated translations

Graphics

• Nothing substantial.

Gameplay

• Continued discussion on the forums revolving around the finalizing of the Microbe Stage, discussing proposals more in depth.
• More work on world building for a loading screen concept.
• Some more discussion on a rough concept outlining the Multicellular Stage.

Sound

• Nothing substantial.

Theory

• Some work on fleshing out the scientific information in the Thriveopedia has continued.

Outreach

• Nothing substantial.

Other

• Nothing substantial.