Almost a year since our last release, and a month since the first release candidate, we finally bring you the awaited version 0.3.0.
In this release:
- Upgrade to Ogre version 2.0
- Brand new opening cutscene (and video support, in general)
- Cell Membrane (no more honeycombs!)
- Organelle models
- Organelles take up multiple hexes and can be rotated
- Microbe editor revamp: green highlight if you can place an organelle and red if you cannot
- Organelles can only be placed next to existing ones
- Compound storage should be slightly less worse (still not ideal, though)
- Tooltips
Controls:
- Point mouse to turn
- WASD to move around
- Mouse scroll wheel to zoom
- E to release toxins (if you have any)
- G to engulf other cells (you must be bigger in size)
- ESC to bring up menu.
- F2 to switch between microbe stage and microbe editor
- F4 to save your current gamestate
- F10 to load your previous saved gamestate
- F12 to save a name-change
- (Cheat: if you ever get frustrated by reproductase, just press ‘p’)
Future plans:
This graphics update has made Thrive look a lot better than before, but we still have a long way to go. The main goal for next release, 0.3.1, is compound clouds and fluid dynamics and to get a working linux build. We are hoping to release sometime this year unless something unexpected comes up… which most likely will. We have already implemented different microbe coloration (you can change every single cell’s color by going into the Membrane.material file), but we are currently lacking a GUI for doing this. Speaking of which, we currently have a couple people working on designing a better GUI.
For the remaining 0.3.x releases, we want to implement bacteria, a moving background, an options menu, and a couple other minor things (see the dev forum for in-depth information on the upcoming features). Although this hasn’t been discussed much and is completely my opinion, I think that 0.4.0 will be the release where we implement agents, toxins, and in-depth combat gameplay. This should make Thrive an actual fun game that you can actually play (it’s more of a simulation currently). 0.5.x will probably be the release with an in-depth AI, and 0.6.x will feature compounds, population dynamics, and auto-evo and will basically conclude the cell stage. Again, this is just my speculation on what could happen.
To finish everything off, here is a series of images of Thrive evolving through the years.