Thrive: Progress Update 12/13/2025

From Thrive: link to original post

Today is our last Progress Update before the release of Thrive 1.0 on the 17th of December, and with it the functional completion of the Microbe Stage.

Of course, there will still be updates on the Microbe Stage, especially when it comes to fixing issues and balancing. But our main development efforts really will be focusing on the Multicellular Stage. A major milestone that I think not everyone believed we would actually reach. But it is here regardless.

Development this week was focused on fixing up various bugs and other issues. This includes graphical issues, like the game being darker than intended; various editor bugs; and dying on easy mode actually increasing your population. Meanwhile, on the developer forums, there was discussion on design for the multicellular stage.

This Wednesday will be a big milestone for us, so it would be a tremendous help to Thrive if you can spread the word as wide as you can. We hope to see you playing!

Programming

• New build of the day (BOTD) (available to Patreon supporters):
  • Fixed a massive error with the game being much darker than intended.This went unnoticed for a long time as the game looked normal when debugging, but much darker only in a release version.
  • Fixed a rare error when trying to generate small worlds that prevented specific seeds from working
  • Fixed fun screen filter effects not working at all
  • Fixed preview microbe data checks being incorrect, which caused errors in the multicellular editor
  • Player species spawn rate now immediately updates instead of only updating after the next editor cycle
  • Background task errors are now forwarded to the GUI unhandled errors popup
  • Fixed a bug in the logic for making rotating an organelle free, now it should correctly detect organelles rotated in-place and make that free
  • Fixed error in multicellular on editor exit when cell layout repositioning caused new cell overlaps. This slightly alters all organelle repositioning logic, even for the microbe stage.
  • Fixed errors triggered in multicellular editor in certain cases when the cell editor was not initialized
  • Fixed the button in the options menu for showing tutorials in the current playthrough not always updating correctly
  • Fixed population indicator circles using a low resolution texture
  • Optimized the museum species list refresh to only update deleted or added items instead of all
  • Fixed warnings about the extinction box GUI anchors
  • Tweaked the prototype stage world environments to make sure that they aren't just a single change away from a release mode brightness bug
  • Made MP amount update after duplicating a cell type in case there was some inconsistency
  • Fixed major problem with dying on easy mode giving population rather than taking it away
  • Added extra error checking to the feature for continuing as another species on extinction so that it cannot suggest picking the current species again to play as
  • The food chain tab is now centered on opening and can be dragged around better
  • Fixed the banana chunks not appearing in the banana biome
  • Adjusted a few comments and tweaked the now unused save upgrader to do some issue clean up
  • Updated some of our setup instructions related to Visual Studio Code
  • Updated gdUnit4 to 6.0.3
  • Updated System.Text.Json from 10.0.0 to 10.0.1
  • Updated System.IO.Hashing from 10.0.0 to 10.0.1
  • Updated code checking tools
  • Updated translations

Graphics

• An issue was fixed that made the release versions of the game much darker than intended/was the case in the development builds. So if you're game suddenly looks brighter, that is why.
• The screen filter effects (in the option menu) now work again.

Gameplay

• Discussion on cell adjacency effects in the Multicellular Stage.

Sound

• Nothing substantial.

Theory

• Nothing substantial.

Outreach

• Our main programmer Hhyyryylainen held a programming stream.

Other

• Nothing substantial.