Progress Update 3/14/2026

The theme of this week is “fixes and auto-evo”. Last week was the release of 1.0.1, and as always that produced some issues that had to be fixed. In particular, some people were experiencing an issue where the screen was stuck on black when trying to exit the Multicellular editor. This turned out to be a problem with some specific layouts not being able to find a good solution. So some extra safeguards were introduced to fix this. In other Multicellular news, we know have an animation for cell growth in the multicellular: cells rapidly grow from nothing to their final size, instead of “popping in”.

As for auto-evo, quite a few people have also been encountering problems with very long loading screens before entering the editor, or even auto-evo freezing or completely crashing. The latter two are most likely caused by Thrive eating up all the available working memory and then stalling out. Changes made this week halve the amount of memory used, which should give your RAM a lot more breathing room. As for the “generally slow” problem: an improvement to that is in an advanced stage and should be ready soon.

Meanwhile, over on the development forums there was a flurry of activity. Topics included the art-style for the macroscopic stage, potential new cell parts for Multicellular, progression through the Multicellular Stage, and finally, planning the Multicellular Roadmap! Quite a lot of ideas have been brainstormed, to be mercilessly cut down some time in the future to fit our schedule. If you also want a chance to have your idea officially ruled out because it would take too long, (or maybe even make it onto the roadmap) now is the perfect time to make your suggestions!

And in case anyone missed it, Dligr made a prototype to figure out how the macroscopic editor could work in the future. This was made in an entirely different engine, so the code does not carry over, but lessons were learned from it. Look below for the full progress list, and we will see you next week for more!

Programming

• New Devbuild available to our Patreon Supporters:
  • Adjusted the new cell layout algorithm to prevent stuck conditions
  • Switched auto-evo to use cache keys for species to not keep temporary species around as long. This cuts required memory for auto-evo in half.
  • Added a colony cell growth animation
  • Converted species tolerance calculation result into a struct to save on some temporary memory allocations
  • Fixed a very rare case of organelles not going to final positions in single centering operation by always performing a second operation
  • Fixed a bug in the debug console history handling
  • Updated author names in the art gallery
  • Updated System.IO.Hashing from 10.0.3. to 10.0.5
  • Updated translations

Graphics

• Discussion on the Macroscopic 3D artstyle.
• A new animation for growing cells in Multicellular instead of “pop-in”.

Gameplay

• A new Macroscopic editor prototype
• Game design discussions:
  • A discussion on changes to oxygen tolerance and hydrogen sulfide damage.
  • Trying to create a vision for progression through the Macroscopic Stage.
  • Taking a look a potential new Multicellular Stage cell parts.
  • Extensive discussion on building the Multicellular Stage roadmap.

Sound

• Nothing substantial.

Theory

• Nothing substantial.

Outreach

• Nothing substantial.

Other

• Nothing substantial.