Progress Update 10/31/2026

Happy Halloween!

And welcome to your weekly Thrive Progress Update! Last week, we released Thrive 1.7.0, and we hope you're enjoying the update!

As so often after a release, we received a substantial number of bug reports. Therefore, a lot of the work this week went into bugfixes. This included issues with the new manual layout feature, dead cells shooting toxins, and Steam Achievements. The Perfectly Packed achievement was also made a bit more lenient. Auto-evo received a lot of smaller updates that are not very visible, but did a lot to improve the code structure and fixed small issues and inconsistencies.

A much more visible change is the new window that shows up when you are taking penalties for not being adjusted to the environmental conditions. This replaces the old plain white text, and we hope this will be easier to notice. The Macroscopic Editor camera also received a functionality change to become less disorienting.

Meanwhile, over on the Development Forums, release planning for 1.9.0 has started. The features we expect to work on next are finalizing the axon in multicellular, size-related costs to offset the bonuses and specialization rewards and probably implementing the optional feature to make hollow cavities in your multicellular species. There was also substantial discussion on Macroscopic Stage game design as a whole, the design for the multicellular cavities mentioned above, as well as more practical discussions on membrane stretching and multicellular auto-evo.

We would also like to mention that the 2nd loading screen artwork contest will end in less than two months. So get your entries in while you can! Look below for some additional details and screenshots if you're interested, and we'll see you next week for more updates!

Programming

• New Devbuild available to our Patreon Supporters:
  • Redid the visuals for the tolerance warnings in the editor by giving them a nice custom box with icons
  • Made the Perfectly Packed achievement much easier to get
  • Made AI species generation number increment whenever they mutate
  • Fixed macroscopic creature colour blending
  • Improved the macroscopic editor camera rotation when going directly over on top
  • Fixed a material null warning when exiting the macroscopic editor
  • Made all world events now, including nitrogen changes use a random seed derived from the world
  • Fixed the rigidity slider being able to cause a stack overflow when moving it at very low MP amounts and hard difficulty
  • Fixed organelle unlock conditions for later stages being checked early
  • Fixed auto-evo being able to generate organelle move mutations that cause disconnected hexes
  • Fixed the emission system being able to emit stuff after a cell is dead
  • Fixed miche occupant identities after rejected mutations
  • Refactored code for generating auto-evo attempted cell positions to avoid allocations in case of blocked positions
  • Added a check against duplicate species IDs exiting auto-evo
  • Reduced code duplication in auto-evo placement strategy code
  • Refactored auto-evo result application code
  • Refactored miche tree generation to use helper methods
  • Refactored stage resource loader code into a separate class
  • Refactored auto-evo island attaching to reuse one more memory buffer
  • Reduced allocations in auto-evo mutation candidate handling
  • Fixed a major bug in random species generation related to remaining MP handling
  • Added better handling for missing or corrupt save preview images
  • Made organelle removal tests populate editor layouts to quiet some warnings when running tests
  • Added a check that thumbnail cards won't try to apply their result if the target is destroyed
  • Updated code analysis tools
  • Updated unit testing C# side of gdUnit4
  • Updated AngleSharp to 1.8.6
  • Updated System.IO.Hashing to 10.0.14
  • Steam: made achievement data loading a non-fatal error
  • Updated translations
• An update on Multicellular auto-evo implementation, and next steps.

Graphics

• Discussion on further improving membrane stretching in multicellular species.
• Improvements to coloration and texture for the macroscopic prototype. Funny little guy pictured below.

Gameplay

• In the Macroscopic Editor prototype, panning the camera over the top of your design no longer flips the view to the other side.
• Game design discussions:
  • Extensive discussion on the general Macroscopic Stage gameplay loop, and revisiting what to do if the player species goes extinct.
  • Design proposal on making cavities in the Multicellular Stage.

UI

• A new UI pop up screen to warn you about environmental adaptation penalties. The hope is that this will be more noticeable, especially for new players. The window automatically scales to the size needed to display the currently relevant information.

Sound

• Nothing substantial.

Theory

• Nothing substantial.

Outreach

• The second loading screen art contest is still ongoing, but will likely be ending within two months. Art submissions of any level of quality or experience are welcome!

Other

• Thrive 1.9 release planning.
• Please welcome our new Promoter and Tester, Mr.Pukilar! Also responsible for the 1.7.0 trailer!