0.8.1 Release General Feedback

[hhyyrylainen]

@AnthropocenianAge

The newest version appears to lag my game far more often. My game stutters a lot more than 0.8.0.0. FPS drops to 5 regularly. It was never this low, and did not happen in 0.8.0.0. What is possibly causing this?

My guess is that we have so many chunk types now that each time a new one spawns, it causes a major lag spike as the engine will only then load the graphics and shaders for it.

Does the stutters get better like if you first play for like 5 or so minutes, then exit to the menu and start a new game?

@Maxamax_v

I haven’t played much of the new version, and I don’t know if this is the placebo effect, but I noticed the game seems to be way smoother.

Hmm interesting.

Still, I’ve put on my TODO list to try to make a graphics preloading system before we are done with the microbe stage to ensure any graphics loading stutters are during loading screens of the game.

@AnthropocenianAge

There is very little perceptible difference when turning on and off thermal view. Perhaps making the orange tint pop more, and/or choosing a more reddish-orange color, would help.

Which patch is this in? I think for the vents the thermal vision is very visible. That is also the only patch where thermosynthesis is useful, so it is not much of a problem if the vision is not really usable in other patches.

@AnthropocenianAge

Why in the Cell Processes, does it show Thermsynthase having 0 degrees C?

Is it always or just when not generating ATP? I had to balance things very low in terms of “temperature” usage per second as otherwise moving between hot and cold areas was not really usable at all. So some tooltips for example show the value as zero as a side effect.

@AnthropocenianAge

There should be a red “Warning” flashing somewhere on screen about getting too close to a Radiation chunk, since I accidentally went too close out of curiosity and died from too much radiation. Maybe radiation damage should slowly increase as radiation level increases, instead of occurring once reaching maximum radiation levels.

The radiation bar appears and starts flashing before taking damage. And at least for small cells, they do not die even if full on radiation and only then moving away. But if for example you had a bigger cell then it might not turn out so well due to radiation decay rate not being as well balanced. So could you provide more details?

@AnthropocenianAge

I could not see how I unlocked the Melanosome, since the tooltip was too long and I cannot scroll down to see the rest of the Eukaryotic organelle unlocks.

You just need to unlock other stuff first. My idea in general here would be that we would only show like 2-3 unlock conditions at most, and the player needs to unlock those first before seeing more. Though that hasn’t been done yet.

I opened an issue as I think this was before just a TODO in the code or something I talked about on Discord:

Do something about too long list of unlock conditions that goes offscreen

@AnthropocenianAge

It was difficult to find Radiation chunks. Perhaps increasing their occurrence to 1% would help.

It’s intentional that they would be rare. So that they aren’t too huge of an environmental hazard, and that the gameplay would be different from iron gameplay were you just have chunks everywhere. But as more feedback comes in the balance can be reconsidered. You should contact the game design team about balancing issues.

@AnthropocenianAge

It did not feel like a very large difficulty jump with the Auto-Evo strength while playing Normal. However, it might be for new players. Perhaps Auto-Evo strength could be adjusted to be default 40% for Normal, and default 60% for Hard.

I don’t feel like changing to 40% from 50% would be a significant change. And for hard mode it is meant for people who are already very familiar with the game and always come to us to complain that the game is way too easy. So to avoid adding a bunch of complexity that new players would get hit with, the solution so far is to really crank the hard mode to require understanding everything in the game. But again more balance feedback on this can change my opinion here.

@AnthropocenianAge

The pressure range flexibility seems to be low. Perhaps when enabling “Non-LAWK”, pressure resistance flexibility range can be increased to twice than what it is in “LAWK”.

People complained about in the RC that the maximum pressure tolerance range was too wide, so I limited it quite heavily as a response.

@AnthropocenianAge

I don’t know if this planned, but it would be useful for the Chemoreceptor to also be able to detect Radiation chunks. Perhaps it can be an upgraded as a separate “Radiation Receptor” instead, if it is deemed unrealistic.

We talked about this in the dev Discord and it was decided to not be added for now for two reasons:

1. It would make more sense for a general “detect chunks” feature for it so iron and cell chunks could also be detected
2. radiation is not a chemical so we can scientifically explain why the feature wouldn’t work the same way for radiation as it works for finding other resource clouds (so chemicals that leech into the water)

@aah31415

I think melano unlocks itself if you happen to live within a patch containing radiation sources even before becoming an Eukaryote, which means that melano is always going to be unlocked if you choose to start in the vents.

This is not the unlock condition. You need to take radiation damage.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Also noticed that some auto-evo made species don’t seem to be fit for their “niches”. For example, this double-membraned species:

Lives in Epipelagic, with it being the sole and only species in it’s patch (meaning it cannot predate on pretty much anything but the corpses of other cells of it’s kind).
Now, the food chain tab says that it feeds off of glucose clouds and sunlight. However the patch only contains 0.019 glucose, aswell as 13.25% Oxygen and 15.2% CO2, which as I suspect shouldn’t be enough to sustain this species in such a patch. Which is strange because the report also says that the populace of this species is stable and remains at the same number as before.

[hhyyrylainen]

I had an auto-evo specialist look at that species. And depending on the environmental conditions it can survive or do really well. So as such the species is not really like a “bug”. Instead this is again one of those situations where auto-evo could be improved. Which is basically true always in the game; we are always waiting for the next person to come along and make improvements to auto-evo.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

I saw there is this pattern when it comes to oxygenation in the current version (assuming a vents start):
1 - No oxygen is present due to lack of species capable of photosynthesis
2 - After surface patches are reached, prokaryotic photosynthesizers emerge, raising O2 values to around 20-30 percent
3 - After player attain a nucleus, the prokaryotic producers get replaced with eukaryotic producers, which usually consume more oxygen than they produce
4 - Oxygen concetrations fall to around 10-15 percent, with a notable thing being the inversion of usual oxygen concentrations due to depth (whereas usually the deeper you go the less oxygen there is, after the emergence of eukaryotic producers the depths below might end up richer in oxygen than the surface)
5 - The oxygen conditions presumably stabilize somewhat at more or less (more likely more) 10 percent concentrations

[hhyyrylainen]

Interesting. I’ll note though that this release shouldn’t have had any real effect on the dynamic compounds. That should all still be similar to what happened in 0.8.0.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

I’ll also give an example for this
Here’s a patch group/region that looks like this:

push

push floor
(I know it looks bad but I’m trying not to upload images to the forum as they take up lots of space)

In the epipelagic patch, there’s just one eukaryotic species capable of photosynthesis (it also happens to be the same species I described 4 posts above). Oxygen percentage is 13.25% here.
Below that patch is mesopelagic (blue square), which also has an eukaryotic species, through this one obviously doesn’t do photosynthesis. Nevertheless, concentrations of Oxygen there is 13.83%, over half-a-percent higher than at the surface.
The underwater cave biome to the left of mesopelagic is inhabited by 3 mixotroph-ish eukaryotic species which together bring the percentage of Oxygen in that patch down to 10.01%.
Below mesopelagic there is a sea floor patch, inhabited by 3 prokaryotic species, out of which only one has just a single metabolosme protein part. This patch’s Oxygen concentrations is 15.53%, which is whole 1.7% percent higher than in mesopelagic and 2.28% higher than at the surface.

[hhyyrylainen]

I don’t know how you managed it but your save has multiple cell colonies in invalid state. Members in them are missing the AttachedToComponent which is critical for them to function. I had to put in extra safety check code before I was able to even run your save. But then I think I was able to pretty much confirm that the issue is very similar to what I saw, though the player cell also loses all glucose immediately for some reason with your save. The slightly good news is that the invalid colonies weren’t the player colony, just seemingly some AI colonies, so testing the other problem with the save is still easily possible.

---

And well I almost physically facepalmed myself when I saw this in the debugger:

So yeah the problem is that I didn’t intend for multicellular cells to get the environmental effects component at all, meaning that it ends up with 0 values for everything, instead of just skipping adding the component like the idea I had in my head when I was writing that code.

Actually, I literally just forgot to write one line of code, this one:

I probably forgot it as originally I didn’t have that property in the component so when I added it later when developing further, I most likely forgot to update that one place in the code with it.

---

And yeah, with that one line change things work fine in your save.

So there will be a patch on Monday.

(this is the fix commit I made)

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Good, a part of the multicellular problem has been solved, through other parts are still awaiting their fixes.

Also

@hhyyrylainen

And depending on the environmental conditions it can survive or do really well.

I did state the environmental conditions in which this species lives (which made me doubt it can actually live in such an organelle configuration)

@aah31415

double-membrane

@aah31415

Lives in Epipelagic

@aah31415

only species in it’s patch

@aah31415

feeds off of glucose clouds and sunlight

@aah31415

patch only contains 0.019 glucose, aswell as 13.25% Oxygen and 15.2% CO2

@aah31415

report also says that the populace of this species is stable and remains at the same number as before.

Edit: So autoevo species apparently can evolve myofibrils in microbe stage…

[AnthropocenianAge (AnthropocenianAge Arthropleura wants to give you a hug!)]

@hhyyrylainen

Does the stutters get better like if you first play for like 5 or so minutes, then exit to the menu and start a new game?

The framerate gets worse the longer I play. The framerate did get better when I exited to the main menu. I wonder if the lowered framerate has to do with the new caching mechanics and settings?

@hhyyrylainen

Which patch is this in? I think for the vents the thermal vision is very visible.

I could barely tell, unless I squinted my eyes, that there was a difference in thermal vision versus no thermal vision in Volcanic Vents.

@hhyyrylainen

Is it always or just when not generating ATP?

Yes. Thermosynthase always shows 0 degrees Celsius under the Cell Processes, even when it is generating ATP. The color of the text changes from red to white, however, when it is generating ATP.

@hhyyrylainen

The radiation bar appears and starts flashing before taking damage. And at least for small cells, they do not die even if full on radiation and only then moving away. But if for example you had a bigger cell then it might not turn out so well due to radiation decay rate not being as well balanced. So could you provide more details?

I was a Prokaryote, and died from full blast radiation. I was a small cell, only five hexes. The flashing did not occur until the radiation bar filled completely, unless it started flashing earlier, and I did not notice it due to the radiation bar filling too fast. When I gained the Melanosome as a Eukaryote, I noticed the radiation bar flashed earlier; maybe it flashed at the same point due to having a larger Radiation capacity as a Eukaryote compared to being a Prokaryote. Perhaps the Radiation Decay Rate does need to be more balanced.

@hhyyrylainen

You just need to unlock other stuff first. My idea in general here would be that we would only show like 2-3 unlock conditions at most, and the player needs to unlock those first before seeing more. Though that hasn’t been done yet.

Ah. That is a good idea. I actually planned on playing as a Radiothermotroph, but I had to change plans when I could not see Melanosome unlock conditions on the tooltip.

@hhyyrylainen

You should contact the game design team about balancing issues.

How do I get into contact with the design team about balancing issues?

@hhyyrylainen

And for hard mode it is meant for people who are already very familiar with the game and always come to us to complain that the game is way too easy. So to avoid adding a bunch of complexity that new players would get hit with, the solution so far is to really crank the hard mode to require understanding everything in the game. But again more balance feedback on this can change my opinion here.

It makes sense. I will play on Hardmode next to see if the Auto-Evo strength needs tweaking.

@hhyyrylainen

People complained about in the RC that the maximum pressure tolerance range was too wide, so I limited it quite heavily as a response.

So you will increase the pressure range a little bit?

@hhyyrylainen

1. It would make more sense for a general “detect chunks” feature for it so iron and cell chunks could also be detected
2. radiation is not a chemical so we can scientifically explain why the feature wouldn’t work the same way for radiation as it works for finding other resource clouds (so chemicals that leech into the water)

I look forward to seeing this general “detect chunks” feature.

@hhyyrylainen

You need to take radiation damage.

I assume, like with the other organelle unlocks, that the times a player needs to be irradiated varies based on difficulty?

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

@AnthropocenianAge

How do I get into contact with the design team about balancing issues?

Deus, the leader of the game design team, is present here in the forum. If you wish to, you can bring them to start a discussion with them.

[hhyyrylainen]

@aah31415

Edit: So autoevo species apparently can evolve myofibrils in microbe stage…

There’s already an open issue about this:

Prevent auto-evo from evolving multicellular organelles in the microbe stage

@AnthropocenianAge

The framerate gets worse the longer I play. The framerate did get better when I exited to the main menu. I wonder if the lowered framerate has to do with the new caching mechanics and settings?

It could do if you are running out of RAM. Post the stats on how much RAM you have and how much Thrive is using after playing for a while.

You can try reducing the memory caching size and I think also the resource unload time to make sure RAM is cleared faster.

@AnthropocenianAge

I could barely tell, unless I squinted my eyes, that there was a difference in thermal vision versus no thermal vision in Volcanic Vents.

To my eyes the difference is very clear:

@AnthropocenianAge

Yes. Thermosynthase always shows 0 degrees Celsius under the Cell Processes, even when it is generating ATP. The color of the text changes from red to white, however, when it is generating ATP.

Yeah, since posting I’ve seen some more stuff and usually the usage of temperature is so low that it gets rounded to zero. I don’t have a good answer as to what to do about that.

@AnthropocenianAge

unless it started flashing earlier, and I did not notice it due to the radiation

Following inverse square law the radiation strength goes up massively if you bump into the radioactive chunk, which is always an extremely bad idea.

@AnthropocenianAge

Perhaps the Radiation Decay Rate does need to be more balanced.

For today’s hotfix I’ve doubled the radiation decay rate when you are taking damage from it.

@AnthropocenianAge

So you will increase the pressure range a little bit?

Maybe? I’m not really planning on it so someone else should spearhead the development for the change.

@AnthropocenianAge

I assume, like with the other organelle unlocks, that the times a player needs to be irradiated varies based on difficulty?

It does not. No difficulty option controls how fast radiation builds up or how much damage it does. The damage is set to just 1 total radiation damage so basically any tick of radiation damage is enough to unlock it.

---

Also I’m just about to publish the hotfix 0.8.1.1 to fix multicellular.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Will 0.8.1.1 have a separate feedback thread or will this one be renamed for the hotfix?

[hhyyrylainen]

It will not have a separate feedback thread.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

I see that the tolerance feature still seems to be showing up in the multicellular editor, but oh well atleast it’s possible to beat multicellular now.

I can also report that there no longer seem to exist problems with falling down when you’ve jumped too high in the land habitat.

[hhyyrylainen]

Ah, now I finally realize what you meant…

It’s the not adapted messages which are shown. I could have extremely easily hid them if someone had shown a screenshot like this to me three hours ago:

But as this is not critical a fix will be only in the next release.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

I can guess maybe a few people will come around asking about this between now and 0.8.2’s release…

[hhyyrylainen]

I made a fix (I also discovered one more bug in multicellular where changing patches causes errors and only works after exiting the editor):

Disabled tolerance warnings in multicellular

But it will only be included in the next release, which is probably not going to be another hotfix (unless someone manages to find another common game-breaking bug).

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

@hhyyrylainen

here changing patches causes errors and only works after exiting the editor):

Yeah, I noticed something was wrong when trying to move patches in multicellular but I forgot to report it.

@hhyyrylainen

(unless someone manages to find another common game-breaking bug).

Probably not going to happen as no such bugs were reported neither for the RC nor for the “main release”.

[lady_deaths_head]

Amonia should be yellow not orange. It looks too much like iron and is hard to distinguish when there’s no iron near it to compare the colors. I imagine it’d be especially difficult for someone visually impaired.

[AnthropocenianAge (AnthropocenianAge Arthropleura wants to give you a hug!)]

Actually, I am pretty sure Ammonia (NH3) is a colorless gas. Pure liquid Ammonia is colorless, too. Ammonium (NH4+) salts can vary in color depending on the compound, but they are most of the time whitish in color.