0.5.2 Feedback Thread

It does look like the smoothing between the cloud density pixels has disappeared or something.
Anyway we are still waiting for a graphics programmer to arrive (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LacAoBVnj8).

(Printscreen went e so I didn’t get the You Have Thrived screen)
That cloud I mentioned? It got me to Gen. 20 as a single hex of cytoplasm.
Edit: I’ll do another run to see if this wasn’t a fluke.

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But I thought that graphics programmers were only required for the old engine…

Wait, you mean that you went from Gen.1 directly to Gen.20?


I forgot to ask about gasses. They are represented in ‘%’. What does that mean? How can a process scale with them?


Took around 5-6 minutes. So yes, you can beat Thrive as a single hex of cytoplasm. And it’s arguably easier to do so.

Wait, you mean that you went from Gen.1 directly to Gen.20?

I went from gen 1 as a single hex all the way through to gen 20, skipping through every evo screen.
Edit:

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Wait till the next version where binding agents will be implemented…

hehe

Still required. Compound clouds are still implemented with a custom shader.

I think that’s right. Chemical process speed scales with gas density if it uses gas as input or speed up factor.

I don’t plan on removing the current win screen from the game until we have much more of the later stage(s) implemented.

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As long as I can, I will try to beat Thrive without evolving… or migrating.
If and when multicellular comes around, I’ll try to figure out something minimal.

its see like we need to nerf that next update XD (but in true the simpler the “live”, the better he succeed, looks on viruses)

That’s … the same equation I gave

In the UI, absolutely. But for the equation to work you need to use scientific units, so meters for length.

It’s the standard speedrun strategy, actually.

You may know I wasn’t as active as I was before here in the forums lately, mainly because of school work, and couldn’t do any analysis or bigger posts here, or anything more than liking a post or announcement.

So, LordLovat is really back now! Here I’m talking the pros of this new release, and also the things I’m still missing about the game (which I also want for the next release). See this as the feedback of a player that came back to the forums after a while.

Pros:

I really like the Auto-evo algorithm: Though simple, I can see the game creating better species than before, I haven’t seen any species that would naturally starve to death since it’s born in this release yet. :relaxed:

The new UI: It may seem a simple step next to all the things thrive still needs, but it really makes the game more engaging and such. We don’t have UI with different models and colors anymore, I saw that the GUI makes sound now (idk if it did before), MP bar improvements, ATP bar improvements.
As I said, these may seem as simple things next to all the things thrive needs to come over, but this release I felt in a real game, to be honest. All the GUI improvements, plus the simple auto-evo algorithm (which at least creates self-sustainable species) and the next 2 items really make the game feel real and alive for me.

Report tab (idk if that’s the name honestly): I mean, its good to be conscious of how much time’s passing, also the UI improvement really made me look a bit at the report tab (I never looked at it tbh), the realistic population growing, its not more +30 when reproducing and -20? when dying. I feel like this was in the former releases already, but if it really was, its still really good.

The new effects: :star_struck: Dude, the toxin effects, death effect and sound, it’s a basic thing, but still those things are getting me to play much more. As I said, I’m starting to feel in an alive and actual game.

Things I’m still missing while playing 0.5.2 and would love for 0.5.3:

Obviously, the so-talked Binding agents. This is obvious and needs no arguments. :grin:

Ok, lets get serious

Patch spread:
Patch spread is still the same as always: If I move to a new patch, my species is still the same both in the vents and the epipelagic. I really can’t explain how the vents one doesn’t get extinct.

Population growth still needs to be worked:
Having only 2000 population in 2 billion yrs isnt that realistic in my opinion…
Should include thousands and millions, or maybe billions when you grow enough? Because the population growth seems exponential, but it isnt really, if it was, I think it should be growing even faster. Including “Primum Lovat: 15k population” or “Primum Gororus: 15B population” in the patch map or report tab is kind of my idea.

Thrive doesn’t have much objectives and competition: If I choose to stay forever in the cave, or the vents, or even the epipelagic, I don’t need to evolve anything after some time. A really really good addition would be passive enzymes and toxin immunity, as I would need to keep my eyes open on the other species and really evolve according to them, even small prototypes or simple versions of it would help a lot, combined with the next two items.

Spawn system is good, but not good enough: I can find all the compounds and cells I may need, but there’s a problem: Cells do not spawn so much. I may have a LETHAL KILLING MACHINE PREDATOR PROKARYOTE that kills my species very easily, but I dont even meet them so much, and they should spawn in swarms, really swarms, not just one there, and you Ivan, go there! And you Gertrid: wait for the player in that cloud! They should need to be together, especially when talking about prokaryotes. I just don’t find enough cells as I expected to find.

Make lifes longer. Compound clouds make each “life” very short: If I find a bunch of clouds of glucose, ammonia and phosphates, especially in the vents, but happens everywhere, no matter if there’s a LETHAL KILLING MACHINE PREDATOR out there that kills my species very easily, if I can reproduce every 90 seconds and dont even find them, or if i ever find, I reproduce before they kill me. This is a thing I have been suggesting here for a while, I think with @hhyyrylainen.
Summing up: Every life should be longer, because the possibility of reproducing every 1 minute removes all the competition and reason to adapt to the environment.

One possible solution could be always spawning in another place, not the same where you reproduced, as millions of years have passed, and it doesn’t make you reproduce every 30 seconds in the same blessing cloud every life. Another possible solution could be making every cloud you find not have so much density, which makes you swim around for more time and find other clouds (clouds would be less dense, but more common so nobody starves to death), meeting predators, meeting preys, meeting your species, meeting everything, which would also make the microbe stage last more than 1 or 2 hours. All my last saves I “finnished” the microbe stage from prokaryote to eukaryote in around 1 hour.

That’s it, the compilation of things I have analyzed about the game last week. Thank you for reading and please give your feedback, as Thrive is consisted of discussion, feedback, work, feedback, discussion and work again. I would like very much to discuss this, especially with a developer if possible and get feedback. Any feedback is welcome.

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This is much better than what we had a year ago. Huge props to design team.
Two things though:

  1. Most of the biomes are kind of the same. Like, vents is a good biome. All of the other underwater biomes are just vents, but worse. Surface level biomes are essentially the same. I mean, the main difference between biomes are temperature and pressure, but they are not influencing the gameplay in any way.
  2. Where are all the other cells? It is not uncommon to not even encounter a single cell before gen 7. I mean, why bother with any playstyle except cloud collection if there are no other cells to hunt/defend from? Just ramp up those spawn rates by two or three and the game will feel completely different
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  • organism statistics are kinda funky when it comes to the center/origin hex.

heres the basal organism before adding a flagella, and after placing a flagella in the centre/origin hex and outside of it.



  • iron chunk generation is funky in the cave patch. it feels like there is less iron in the cave patch than the other patches that are supposed to have less iron. I found alot of iron chunks in the bathypelagic and mesopelagic patches and only found 1 iron chunk in the cave patch despite the fact that i only stayed in the bathy/meso for 1 generation each and have been in the cave patch for a few generations.

  • i don’t know if this issue has already been put on the github or not but i’m able to get a ring of toxin to spawn around me after afking for a few minutes in the cave patch

those are basically my 2 cents.

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Alright, it’s been a while since I was able to play this, I see some nice improvements:

  • Performance is much better than it used to be.
  • I really like the new UI!
  • The new auto-evo seems like an improvement too.

Things that could be improved:

  • Unfortunately it was hard to see much of the auto-evo system, since I didn’t see many other cells. This is a problem as well since predation both as a playstyle and a threat are not very present. Perhaps consider increasing the spawning rate, or specifically spawning them right outside the screen, initially travelling towards the player periodically when the player is stationary. (so similar, but slightly different to what happens for compound clouds now)

  • A tree of life to see the relationships between organisms would be very cool as well!

  • Right now prokaryote structures perform some glycolysis to kind-of balance their ATP consumption and account for the cytosol still around the proteins. However, for some reason this glycolysis process is much less efficient than the normal cytoplasm one. It produces 2 ATP instead of 4 (makes sense, there’s less space), but also costs 0.024 instead of 0.012! Keeping these around just means you’re wasting glucose. It also doesn’t make chemical or biological sense. Just reduce that consumption to 0.006, and it’s fine.

  • Compound cloud spawns seem a bit high sometimes when sticking around in a small area compared to when roaming around. This effect could partially be lessened as well by:

  • Fully clear and respawn the patch after reproduction. There’s supposed to be a long time between lives, right? This happens when switching patches already anyway. Right now I often come across a situation where I can just blitz through countless generations just because I found a good set of compound clouds.

  • On that note, “skipping” generations because I had enough compounds stored already is weird as well, especially since you can use it to skip whole biomes when travelling.

  • I really can’t figure out how the speed indicator works. It’s not just dependent on size, it seems to also depend on specific organelles. Perhaps include additional effects on speed in the organelle tooltips?

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So I already wrote a feedback post here but on further playthroughs I’ve noticed some balancing issues and bugs I think need to be addressed:

  • Resource spawning in the caves seems to be broken. In my experience, hydrogen sulfide doesn’t spawn in the normal gamemode (but yet it still spawns in freebuild mode because I don’t know). I’ve heard other players have had trouble with iron spawns in this patch, too, and I’ve noticed it seems pretty sparse for 6% spawn rate.

  • Once your cell gets to a certain size, flagella begin to reduce your speed instead of increasing it. I’m sure this is more of a programming quirk, but it strikes me as bizarre.

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Do you have an example cell where this happens? Please provide at least screenshots.