Introducing Thim's Thrive Fork!

Modding
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I’ve been a developer for about a year now, contributing to Thrive’s 0.5.4 release onward. Sadly, as I’ve grown more busy in real life, I’ve found myself no longer able to support the kind of sustained work it takes to get a Thrive PR up to production quality. Ideas for stuff I want to play around with, however, have abounded. In addition, sometimes I think of a change that I know how to code, but don’t want to take up the resources to review and test.

After considering it for a while, I decided to fork of my own version of the codebase and use it to develop independently, in a more experimental direction.

After a few mad late nights of coding, I now present to you: Thim's Thrive Fork by raggaaa

This is a different version of Thrive, that will likely diverge more over time as I come up with more whacky ideas. While I like what I’ve been able to do with it so far, keep in mind that there are a few things that you’ve grown used to that I can’t promise with this fork:

  • It’s not written to work with any launcher. If you want a new version, you will need to go back to the itch page and download the zip
  • I’ve dropped support for all languages except English, since I would have no way of ensuring other translations are still accurate.
  • I plan to maintain zero support for save compatibility. This is a very costly feature to support with new changes. Load a save from an older version (or if you’re really dumb the main Thrive version) at your own risk.
  • In general, expect bugs. I don’t have a play-tester to give a new perspective, and I’m using a pretty good computer so I might not catch lag spikes before players do.
  • While I plan to steal changes from the main repo, sometimes it won’t be worth it, or won’t be compatible with code I changed. Expect an increasing amount of “missing” features over time.

If none of that scared you off, feel free to give it a download and check it out! Feel free to comment with any “I did this, and this weird thing happened” but reports, but I will be ignoring any “it just won’t open” issues. I’d also love to hear specific feedback on the experimental features I added, but please leave suggestions to other threads.

It’s always better to contribute to “real” Thrive first and let me steal your stuff, but if you want to contribute to just Thrive’s one-dev B-team, I’ve got my own repo: GitHub - adQuid/Thrive: Thim's variant of Thrive.. I will be allowing dumber stuff on that repo than the main one.

I will post in this thread when I have a new version uploaded, which will happen at completely arbitrary points as dictated by my enthusiasm.

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First version is out! (obviously)

Stuff I stole:

  • There’s a new game menu new, with difficulty options. Ask Oliveriver about it, because he’s very proud of it. Note that some of the buttons don’t do anything yet, and with this repo they might never do so.
  • New cillia organelle, although I overhauled how they work from what will happen in 0.5.9 when it comes out
  • New spawn system to make compound clouds appear more consistently, and let more microbes on screen (technically I stole this from myself)

Stuff I wrote:

  • You now start as the first organism instead of the Last Universal Common Ancestor. That always seemed more fitting to me.
  • You now have a random amount of mutation points per cycle, which increases slightly if you’ve died more, to try and simulate stronger selective pressures. If you die enough in a row without going extinct, you get a free editor cycle out of pity, but your population can’t go back up until you reproduce the right way.
  • Cillia pull things toward you when you enter engulf mode
  • Chunks spawned on death reflect the size and composition of the microbe that died
  • Membranes that don’t let you engulf also have a base speed of zero. To let plants survive, there is also a background rate of compound absorption. That means plant gameplay is now “in”, even if it isn’t “fun”
  • Added a second kind of toxin vacuole, that shoots a different kind of toxin that attacks a cells ATP instead of health.
  • Balanced out pilus to be a little less of a tiny katana and more a tool to block engulfing.
  • Added some “title slide” screens to introduce the game in a way that’s a little more “Carl Sagan” and a little less “science shotgun to the face”
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Jokes on you, I never used those membranes to begin with

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lol relatable

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Can you de-capitalize the new toxins name, my mind just instinctually gets infuriated by its all caps, for some reason.

Next ed

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Aww my first bug! I uploaded a hotfix for it.

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also, you have the problem of microbe parts not being sized right

IDK if this is a problem for you or the dev build

I also have the problem of auto Evo not putting anything on the first sunlight zone thing

I’m getting a screenshot rn

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That I wouldn’t know. Got a screenshot?

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image
image1715×875 52.2 KB

Is there a prototype macro for this, or not implemented?

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Do you need more screenshots? also this
Microbe AI failure! System.InvalidCastException: Specified cast is not valid.
at MicrobeAI.Think (System.Single delta, System.Random random, MicrobeAICommonData data) [0x00023] in :0

Overall Improvements tbm

  1. Fix the sizing problem (If possible, not that important)

  2. Fix whatever that ai think the problem is

  3. The auto Evo for the first sun layer is good, some entered, just took a while

  4. Increase and or add an organelle to create//produce phosphate, for later stages it is a pain to get it done

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A new version has been uploaded: Thim's Thrive Fork by raggaaa

Stuff I stole:

  • Added the art gallery. not really nessicary, but I thought it was cool.
  • Stole a lot of bug fixes and a couple performance improvements from the main repo
  • World seed now displays in the editor in case you didn’t write it down on paper at the start of the game (everyone does that, right?)
  • Toxin no longer disappears if it hits a chunk. This makes poisonous microbes as dangerous as venomous ones.

Stuff I made:

  • Added a title card for transitions to Eukaryotic and Multicellular gameplay.
  • Reformatted Auto-evo prediction to hopefully make it easier to understand.
  • Hovering over a microbe in the environment will (usually) display some auto-evo related data. This mostly serves as a debugging tool for me.
  • Adjusted spawn system to have microbes look more natural when swimming on screen
  • Also adjusted spawn system to handle mobile vs immobile species
  • Game balance changes, mostly aimed at finally putting plants in their place
  • Microbes can now fire toxin in any direction instead of only out the “front”
  • Organelles decay faster. Might help lag a bit
  • Immobile player cells can’t turn anymore
  • Editor now displays estimates of compound balance at rest and in motion. Keep in mind they aren’t perfectly accurate
  • The pilus now has a chance to cut organelles out of the target microbe.

I was not able to do the Lamarkian behavior evolution I said I would do on the last Thrivestream, but I have made some of the AI refactors needed to make that happen. My first priority for the next release, however, will be an overhaul to the auto-evo, hopefully to the point of being able to support NPC species in multicellular stage!

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Very intresting this is going well

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one thing that would make this far better is a system that allows for cells to increase the amount of time that it takes to digest things as well as something that makes cells inside your cell give you any excess of anything they produce as well as gives the engulfed cell get some of the ammonia and phosphates you collect if you choose to do so and let them reproduce while engulfed. as well as the engulfing system to make that all possible. basically endosymbiosis framework(if i understand what framework is) and how early endosymbiosis worked and when it is fully coded a few generations after the endosymbiosis event you no longer need to use space that could be storing things like iron chunks to have the endosymbiont as it becomes an organelle.

EDIT: i found a bug for the text that says “when the bubble ran out of energy physics took the molecules back”. it says that when your energy hits zero even if you do not take damage from lack of energy

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There is a variable for that in the thrive statistics

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i said i was not taking damage from lack of energy

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Interesting; I’ll look in to that!

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After a long wait, I have another release ready: Thim's Thrive Fork by raggaaa

This update doesn’t have many fancy features other than concave membranes, and mostly focuses on subtle improvements to core gameplay. The auto-evo has been completely overhauled, which you should notice in the form of less hodgepodge looking species around you, and with the spawn rates tweaked you should also find yourself less swarmed by yourself!

In addition to this lackluster update, the other news is that, aside from any hotfix I might do if anyone reports bugs, this is likely to be my final release of this experiment. My own progress has been slower and Thrive’s progress has been faster than I expected, to a point that it might make more sense to re-fork the code and just transfer over the changes I wrote than bring the main repo’s changes back. That said, the auto-evo refactor was the last thing I really wanted to do here, and now that’s done about as well as can be (if you want more detail on that I’ll be posting on the dev forums)

I doubt this will be my final word on Thrive. Given all the code refactoring slated in the next couple months, my current plan is to swing back around in late summer, and see what interests me then. I’ll let everyone know if I’ve got something cool to show off.

Until then, enjoy the ultimate edition of Thim’s Thrive Fork!

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I appreciate the optimistic support, but there’s a chance it won’t be complete until the summer is basically over.

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how do i make it run

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If you unzip the zip file, there should be an executable in there, that looks like a blue face. Click on that and it should run.