Progress Update 12/27/2025
We hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! Speaking of which, Thrive is currently still on sale. With our main programmer on vacation, there have been no large programming tasks completed, and no volunteer work has been actually added into the game's code.
However, volunteers have still been working on new changes to be added to the game later on, as can be seen on our Github. This week that included both technical improvements and gameplay changes. On the technical side, we have an added debug console, fixing a visual issue with water currents, and an update to the way population is displayed in some screens. On the gameplay side, we have ongoing improvements to auto-evo and balancing on events, currents, photosynthesis and membranes. There are also changes specifically for the Multicellular Stage: increased turning speed, and letting you determine the order cells grow in.
Meanwhile, on the developer forums, we had discussions on Multicellular Stage design and on setting up a contest so that you, the community, can get some of your art implemented as loading screens. This week was also a special one in the sound department, because we got a whole two new soundtracks for the Macroscopic Stage! These will be linked below.
So, read the full list below, listen to the two wonderful new soundtracks, and we will see you in the new year!
Programming
- Work on pull requests not yet added into the game (since these are in progress, they may also never be):
Graphics
- Planning a community contest for loading screen art.
Gameplay
- Summarising the key themes for the Multicellular Stage design.
- Continued discussion on Multicellular Auto-Evo.
- Work on pull requests not yet added into the game (since these are in progress, they may also never be):
- Continued work on auto-evo, mainly adding more nuance to predation calculations.
- Oxygenate world in multicellular freebuild and change starting location, making it easier to test multicellular builds.
- Make species mutated from player different color.
- Balance patch events.
- Buffs meteor events; changes chances of the meteors to make them more interesting (plain meteors are boring)
- Rebalances volatility events; makes them longer; iron chunks are more influenced; affects at least 2 compounds now so there is no possibility to affect only nitrogen (which was also boring)
- Makes glaciation harsher for ice patches
- Fixes one snowflake chunk containing phosphates for some reason
- Current Differentiation Between Patches, making currents much more different in experience between patches.
- Photosynthesis & Membrane Re-Balance. Makes photosynthesis itself weaker, but also improves osmoregulation cost reduction from cell walls to make them an effective combination.
- A more aggressive version of the above..
- Multicelluar rotation buff, making it less frustrating to turn.
- Implement colony growth order window. Adds a colony growth order editing window. Mostly a reuse of the code used for the organelle growth order GUI.
Sound
New soundtrack intended for the Macroscopic editor: Sway!
Viewing embedded videos on this page uses YouTube cookies. You accept these third-party and tracking cookies by clicking play.New soundtrack intended to be a general theme for the Macroscopic Stage: Low Tide!
Viewing embedded videos on this page uses YouTube cookies. You accept these third-party and tracking cookies by clicking play.
Theory
- Nothing substantial.
Outreach
- Planning a community contest for loading screen art.
Other
- Please welcome our new artist, GalaxyDragon!
