0.8.1 Release Planning

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With 0.8.0 out it is time again to make one of these threads.

I already copied many of the not completed issues to the new milestone (and set a tentative release date for February): Release 0.8.1 Milestone · GitHub

For this release I’ll be working on the fastest issues to do from the microbe roadmap to try to reduce the size of the remaining roadmap as fast as possible.

What is everyone else planning to work on?

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My immediate focus is to solidify concepts surrounding environmental tolerances, as the concept is spread pretty loosely across various posts. Beyond that, I will follow up on more concepts.

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First, I’ll try properly adding the new Easter egg. Then…

  • Adding some more kinds of sulfur chunks
  • Redoing iron chunks to look more appropriate for microscopic scale
  • More changes to organelle models
  • More adjustments to membrane visuals
  • Adding background terrain models
  • A few more organelles
  • Other small additions
    That might be a bit over-ambitious, but we’ll see. :smile:
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I wanted to advocate that, if possible, developers with the necessary experience help us figure out our currents. Currently (lol), one of Thrive’s flaws is a lack of replayability and diversity in gameplay. This of course will be aided by the inclusion of future road map items, but I foresee some difficulties in maximizing this once polishing comes around.

One of the ways that Thrive lacks diversity of gameplay is in patches essentially being different wallpapers, plus and minus some variance in compounds. Introducing currents, and varying these currents across different patches (contact me for concepts related to that if you pick up this work) would be a very good way of introducing unique gameplay across different patches. Combining that with terrain should result in a solid base of gameplay diversity across patches.

The big thing holding us back previously was a lack of an ability to represent currents graphically. Other games, like Spore, often represent currents by spawning particles and having them go in the same direction, with more dense particles indicating a stronger current (9:45 in the linked video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDjWYlLVUqc&t=409s

Before that however, currents would need to be adjusted to be more stream-like, as currently, it acts more like random noise. Once again, the ability to have currents be different across different patches - choppy in the surface patches, winding and powerful in the bathypelagic/mesopelagic, calmer in some patches, etc. - would be important to this mechanic.

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Unfortunately I won’t be able to contribute much for this update either, but should I find sufficient time on my hands, my focus will now be on assessing the current state of Thrive’s gameplay and determining how to get the new features to better harmonize with the old. And of course, classic balance tweaks should I be able.

That is to say, to make sure gameplay is feeling good.

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