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Progress Update 8/22/2026

Posted on August 22, 2026

Progress Update Banner 2026-08-22

Hello and welcome to your weekly Thrive Progress Update! We are currently in feature freeze for the release of Thrive 1.6, expected exactly one week from now. That also means we have a release candidate build for that release, that you can play early and test. If you do, please report on that thread any bugs or other problems you encounter. We're particularly interested in whether you encounter any problems with the auto-evo simulation crashing in the Multicellular Stage.

Quite a few things have been added in the last week. For example, what was that about Multicellular auto-evo? It exists now! No longer will the player be the only Multicellular species roaming the world. The implementation is still limited, however. Among other things, species don't yet become Multicellular on their own, so they will all initially descend from the player species going Multicellular.

Another change that has been worked on for a long time is the stretching of membranes for Multicellular species. Cells that are reasonably close, but not touching, will have their membranes stretch out to meet, bridging the gap. This makes bodies look more cohesive, and will hopefully reduce the cases of microbes getting stuck inside you.

In other Multicellular Stage changes, the new Actomyosin organelle has had its math changed, particularly buffing its impact on rotation speed. It is now also affected by the bonus from cell specialization and adjacency, meaning you can boost it a lot by designing and placing your cells well.

Speaking of the specialization and adjacency bonuses, they have both been buffed by 25%. Hopefully this makes it more worthwhile to interact with these systems. The specialization bonus was also added to force from flagella, it was already in the visible number calculations but didn't actually work while swimming around.

There are even more changes though! The mass budding reproduction option now requires at least two cells to start, and spore cell type management was improved. Also, AI can now use the Signalling Agent. Also, the “time per generation” has been changed from 100 to 50 million years, as after some discussion it was determined that it seems more realistic (when looking specifically at how long the average player takes to get to the Macroscopic Stage).

On the technical and development-supporting side, the proposed AI code review from last week has been added and is now reviewing pull requests, helping spot very human errors in code coming in, as well as flagging any suspected AI-made code coming in. This comes alongside a number of other code-checking updates and changes. The Godot version was also updated to 4.7.2.

Finally, there were some art-related updates. The winner of the first loading screen art contest (the second one is currently ongoing!) from earlier this year, “Motherly Love” by Trappist-1e, was finally added to appear as a loading screen for the Macroscopic Stage. While were at it, loading screens were re-arranged in general to better fit the different Stages. As this all happens via our Art Gallery system, this was also a good opportunity to update it further, including the new Actomyosin model, all terrain chunks, and more.

The Development Forums were quieter this week, but there was continued discussion on adding new multicellular parts, as well as a new topic in the generation of textures for species in the Macroscopic Stage. In other team news, one of our team members, Juuzo Lenz will be at the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim, California next week. If you're there, see if you can find them!

Look below for some additional details and screenshots, please playtest our release candidate build if you're interested, and we'll see you next week for the release of Thrive 1.6!

Programming

New Devbuild available to our Patreon Supporters:
- Time per generation is now 50 myr instead of 100. Only the display changed, game speed is the same as before.
- Implemented membranes stretching towards other colony members to make gaps between colony cells smaller
- Added auto-evo for multicellular species: they can mutate and split. They don't appear naturally yet so they can only split from the player.
- Updated to Godot 4.7.2
- Reworked the GUI for spore cell type picking and customizing
- Mass budding is now required to start with at least 2 cells, otherwise the editor cannot be exited
- Buffed specialization and adjacency bonuses
- Actomyosin is now buffed by specialization
- Added actomyosin Thriveopedia page
- Fixed specialization not applying to gameplay flagella
- The microbe AI now uses signalling agents to send commands in certain situations
- Added a bunch of missing models to the art gallery
- If loading a save fails the integrity of the save file is checked and if it is detected as corrupted, then a special message is shown
- Fixed cell layout reset not reapplying all species properties on divide. This should fix AI cells with a nucleus but small scale.
- Added the winning artwork from the first art contest as a loading screen
- Fixed colony rotation math giving a buff from colony member count
- Fixed actomyosin to be a buff
- Fixed actomyosin being marked as an externally positioned organelle
- Fixed a bug with loading a multicellular stage save where a chemoreceptor was pointing to its own species and was part of a world history record with changes
- Rebalanced actomyosin rotation impact
- Fixed stage-based guidance lines not coming from the player cell
- Added support for multicast debug console commands
- Entity debug labels now display active signalling command
- Fixed a bunch of code warnings found by new static analysis tools
- Added a CI check to ensure no missing “.cs.uid” files
- Added a prototype sky renderer into the game files
- Updated code checking tools
- Updated translations

Graphics

The Art Gallery (found within Extras from the main menu) has been updated:
- Concept art and models re-organized into their respective Stage categories.
- Terrain chunks added.
- Actomyosin and several older missing organelle models added.
- Trappist-1e's Motherly Love from the first loading screen art contest added.

Proposals on generating textures for Macroscopic creatures.

Gameplay

Cell specialization bonus maximum increased from 40% to 50%. (As before, this is doubled by the Nucleus)
Cell adjacency multiplier to cell specialization bonus increased from 4% to 5%.
The Sporulation Reproduction option has been updated. Instead of selecting one of your normal Cell Types, it now uses a unique one that cannot be placed in your normal design. Upon selecting the Sporulation option, you are now prompted to select one of your existing Cell Types to copy for a template design.
The Mass Budding option has been altered to require a minimum of 2 cells in the bud, otherwise you cannot exit the editor.
Multicellular Auto-evo enabled:
- Miche Score and population calculated for Multicellular Species.
- Existing Mutations enabled for Multicellular Species:
  - Adjust Environmental Tolerances.
  - Adjust Behaviour.
  - Remove Organelle (from Cell Types in this case)
- Added a new Mutation to add more of a Cell Type with a specific organelle, creating more of such a Cell Type if it does not exist yet. Entirely new Cell Types are placed in the front or rear, while existing ones are placed adjacent to cells of the same type.

Multicellular membrane stretching added. Cells that are not too far away will have their membranes stretch at the closest point to fill in gaps and better create a cohesive body. This is not just a visual change, since this does affect collisions.
Game design discussions:
- A comment on Multicellular Stage cell parts.