Progress Update 4/25/2026
This week was a lot more busy with things changing in the game itself compared to last week. These changes include some very old issues in the game that were finally fixed. Additional changes include the ability to set more fine-grained compound cloud behaviour (at the cost of performance, or alternatively reducing quality to increase performance) and using a controller to turn cells/colonies. On the visual side, there's been an overhaul separating the process panel into “blocks” for each process, and tooltips now “scroll” if they are too large to fit on the screen.
More direct gameplay changes include an overhaul of how cell specialization is calculated: it now uses a different algorithm that more strongly encourages you to place multiples of the same organelle, and try to minimize the number of organelle types in one cell. In addition, the nucleus now doubles cell specialization effects, both making the nucleus more powerful, and encouraging eukaryotes to be more specialized than prokaryotes.
In connection with the above, we have the first implementation of the cell adjacency system: a cell's specialization bonus gets a 4% boost for each adjacent cell of the same type. Since this is a multiplier on the specialization bonus, it is really only powerful if the cell type is also specialized. Together with cell specialization and the concept of having different cell types at all, you could consider this one of the core mechanics of the Multicellular Stage. For now this is only the back-end calculations, integration into the UI is coming later.
There are also two changes to engulfing toxic cells. Firstly, the damage taken is now a constant HP amount (modified by damage resistance, like before) instead of a fraction of maximum health. This means increasing your HP (mostly through membrane options) actually has an effect on how much of a threat toxic prey is. Perhaps fittingly, AI cells now also have a chance to expel toxic prey. Though it is modified by behaviour values, so overly aggressive and opportunistic predators can still accidentally die.
Meanwhile, over on the development forums it was pretty quiet this week, but we did have some more discussion on long-term effects of how you end a Stage.
And finally, Juuzo released the next video of his Thrive-inspired speculative evolution series, which includes art from our latest community art contest:
So do watch that, and when you're done, look below for the full progress list, and we will see you next week with more progress on the roadmap!
Programming
- New Devbuild available to our Patreon Supporters:
- Updated to Godot 4.6.2
- Engulfed toxin damage is now a flat damage rather than a percentage of max health
- In multicellular, cell positions next to cells of the same type now give extra specialization bonus for those cells.
- AI cells can now eject toxic prey when they take damage based on their behaviour values and how much health they have left
- Tweaked the visuals of the process panel
- Overhauled the calculation done for cell specialization. It is now based on Simpson's Diversity Index calculation.
- It's now possible to control the cell rotation with a controller input method or with keyboard keys with custom keybindings. Note that resuming mouse look requires swapping between input methods or reloading a save.
- Too tall tooltips now slowly scroll up and down to show all of their contents
- Playing music track state is now saved and loaded from saves. This makes music tracks resume their previously saved position when playing category is next changed after loading a save.
- Implemented the option to change compound cloud resolutions to allow the player to pick between quality and faster CPU calculation speed
- Microbes and cell colonies now use their actual radii to check against terrain collisions when spawning to ensure they don't clip into terrain when picking spawn locations.
- Changed our thread barriers on ARM (Mac) to use a more efficient WFE instruction than just a pure yield.
- Fixed balance regression for chloroplasts
- Fixed the ATP bar flickering when near full ATP. It is now back to the pre-ECS behaviour of staying totally full when a cell has sufficient ATP production.
- Fixed colony lead cell leaving a colony not disbanding the entire colony. This was the assumption elsewhere in the code so this small bug had quite far-reaching effects all over the game.
- Fixed the “devoured” text not always showing when dying to engulfing
- Fixed the screen overlay effect s not applying to our popup windows or custom tooltips
- Fixed the pause menu being able to open during the ascension and credits
- Fixed the button requesting screen record permission on Mac being way too wide and causing one part of the editor GUI to become really wide.
- Fixed organelle upgrades creating an action when leaving everything at the default values and then confirming
- When a text field is focused it now gets text input priority over our gameplay keybindings. This hopefully fixes text input with very uncommon keyboard layouts.
- Slightly updated code for how recursive engulfing ejections are performed which should make those a bit more reliable
- Adjusted the code for detecting and using smaller primary icon when a keybinding uses visuals made of two separate icons
- Fixed physics debug draw not working in certain later game saves. Note that debug draw is only available in debug versions of the game and not in release versions.
- Updated code tools version
- Updated System.IO.Hashing from 10.0.6. to 10.0.7
- Fixed various new code warnings from newer check tools
- Updated gdUnit4 version to actually have our CI system be able to run it again
- Updated testing library versions and CI settings
- Updated our pull request template to emphasise gameplay testing
- Updated translations
Graphics
- A new icon for cell specialization was created, though not yet added to the game. Can you tell what it represents?
- The process panel has received an overhaul:
Gameplay
- Cell specialization now uses a different set of calculations:
- a quite direct translation of Simpson's diversity index. What this means in practice:
- Placing only one organelle type would be necessary to get the maximum bonus.
- Each additional organelle type drops the bonus by quite a bit.
- Even if you have a number of different organelle types in a cell, you get a better score by having more copies of one or a few types.
- The maximum bonus you can get still scales with your size, but now caps at 10 total hexes. So as soon as you have a nucleus, you can get the maximum bonus.
- The nucleus now also doubles the effect of the specialization bonus.
- Balancing the numbers is still pending, particularly since cell adjacency was also only just added (which is a multiplier on the specialization effect).
- a quite direct translation of Simpson's diversity index. What this means in practice:
- A cell's specialization bonus now receives a 4% bonus multiplier for each adjacent cell of the same type. UI pending.
- AI cells now have a chance (based on their aggression and opportunism) to eject engulfed cells when taking damage from engulfed toxins.
- The damage taken from engulfed toxins is now a “flat” amount (still affected by damage resistances) instead of a set fraction of maximum health. This means increasing your health through membrane type and rigidity is a way to partially mitigate toxic prey.
- Game design discussions:
- Continued discussion on long term effects of stages, on “fossil” resources particular.
Sound
- Playing music track state is now saved and loaded from saves. This makes music tracks resume their previously saved position when playing category is next changed after loading a save.
Theory
- Nothing substantial.
Outreach
- The next speculative evolution video was released this Wednesday.
Other
- Nothing substantial.
