Well here it is finally, my “finished” roadmap, which if people agree or at least mostly agree I’ll edit onto the wiki. I worked on this instead of the macroscopic prototype, hopefully it is worth it.
So here’s the roadmap split into release ranges (the ranges work so that 0.6.x releases incrementally add the features listed under that version, and once all are complete we can release 0.7.0).
0.6.x (the combat and part upgrades updates)
- Implement upgrades/specialization system (basic implementation done) Related issue: Implement rest of the organelle upgrades framework
- Implement part unlocking mechanic (with endosymbiosis lite being one option)
- Finish Binding Agents (Need additional benefits for colonies, bugfixing) One bug: Fix the weird workaround and investigate the corner cases in microbe colonies
- Damage delay or knockback for offensive pili (issue)
- Toxin system customization and rework
- Implement Stamina system and speed boosting
- Rename predatory pili to a more neutral term
- Implement new damage effects to better convey cell is being harmed
- Cilia upgrades and pull mechanic (basic implementation done)
- Rework cell rotation to be physics based
- Try to fix Pilus should block being engulfed more often
- Chemoreceptor should have option to detect other cells
- General combat balancing
- Make cell chunks emit more compounds (related to combat and scavenging balancing)
- Look for a more proper way to calculate collision force (might need to wait for Godot 4.0)
- Add a button to eject all engulfed things
- Tutorial should be prevented if game is entered through the auto-evo exploring tool
- The player being engulfed tutorial should not appear if the player can’t be digested
- Convert save screenshot to PNG to buffer directly instead of using a temporary file
- Microbe engulf storage full tutorial should have an end trigger
- Ingested Matter amount can be NaN (this needs a workaround at least ASAP by clearing things to 0)
- Microbe editor: Deleting hex plays the hex placement sound
- Implement variable light levels in the cell stage to help balance photosynthesis (Day/night system)
- Feature to allow swapping to a related species on extinction (selectable only in easy mode)
0.7.x (the graph updates)
- Implement the Thriveopedia
- Add creation loading panel to gui and code (related to Thriveopedia)
- Reworked auto-evo report to be much more graphical, also auto-evo prediction. Should solve: Add some way to view preview images of species in the report tab
- Create a cache that is stored on disk for PhotoStudio (for better reworked auto-evo report performance)
- Food chain editor tab
- Present option for migrating player species without the player moving themselves
- Compound production + Implement diffusion of compounds and gasses between patches (dynamic gas compounds is at least a part of this)
- Add hydrogenase
- Rework player starting compounds to allow for more flexibility (we probably should show this in the editor and let the player pick as long as the total amount is below some threshold). Related issue: Make initial compounds proportional to player’s compound usage
- Make organelles able to turn off with Add button in the process panel to pause a process
- Add alternative ATP balance mode based on what source of ATP organelles use
- Add a way for the player to control organelle split order
- Show the resource organelles use for ATP generation in ATP bar tooltips and Add tool in editor to explore ATP / compound balances without all resources. Also good would be good to have: Make compound balances show the situation at ATP equilibrium
- Add the full process panel to the editor
- Create a better icon for process running speed in process panel
- Add best organelle suggestion shown in the editor
- Add a tooltip to auto-evo predictions to show the previous total populations
- Make extinct in patch auto-evo result say split off
- Make auto-evo not claim a species is extinct if external effects rescue it
- Implement someplace that shows the used energy sources per species
- Auto-evo prediction panel and extra info don’t react to language change
- Timeline history cleaning logic has a bug
- Timeline should not claim the player is extinct if rescued by external effects
- Global timeline doesn’t show total population correctly
0.8.x (world and auto-evo updates)
- Planet Generation and Customization
- Patch terrain generation and differentiation
- Add fog of war for the patch map
- Compound Toxicity and Environmental tolerance
- Radiotrophs. Issue: Add radioactivity as an energy source
- Environmental events
- Improved microbe backgrounds
- Fix background image artifacts and Bathypelagic background textures have non-tiling section
- Improve water currents functionality and visibility
- Move away from using percentages in the patch conditions
- Marine snow (chunks) spawn density should depend on existing species
- Navigator panel doesn’t detect other world entities other than compound clouds and cells
- Fix microbe AI once again having amnesia when loading
- Make organelle storage amounts in tooltips use localization
- Make biome light properties actually affect the graphics (might get done with the day/night system)
- Make player species members dying or reproducing on screen affect the population
- Factor movement into Compound Food Source
- Increase player auto-evo strength to 80% once the algorithm feels good
- Auto-evo does not change its prediction upon patch change
- Auto-evo needs to update prediction upon rigidity and behaviour change
- Rework the crude extinction system into something proper
- Review chunk food source balancing
- Investigate auto-evo generated species that immediately starve to death
- Add some benefit in auto-evo calculation from chemoreceptor
- Make some auto-evo calculations be affected by organelle upgrades
- Make auto-evo take lysosomes (new digestion) into account
- Patches that link regions together should be more obvious
- Replace all Godot prints in auto-evo with storing events
- Add button to run multiple worlds in a row in auto-evo exploring tool and collect statistics
- Show the total spent auto-evo time in the auto-evo exploring tool
- Change patch map generator to not need to abandon regions
0.9.x (finishing things off updates)
- Bioluminescence
- Thermoplasts (full implementation, basic is done)
- Achievements. Issue: Implement achievements system · Issue #2665 · Revolutionary-Games/Thrive · GitHub (also for Steam)
- Reworking the spawn system (only if necessary). Related issues: Add per spawner caps for entities, Make cloud spawns less random and more time based, Rework spawn system to be encounter based. Likely obsolete issue: Investigate a way to parametrize the bias for spawning in front of player
- Expanded tutorials for the microbe stage + hand holding mode selectable as an option that enables even more aggressive tutorials. Add tutorials like Add a tutorial on death when using multiple ATP production types, Add tutorial for negative ATP balance, Add a tutorial for taking ATP damage in engulf mode, Add an editor tutorial that triggers with negative ATP balance, Add a tutorial about loading a save if the player dies too much
- Reimplement the context dependent hints system
- Make proper short tips for the microbe stage and the editor
- Improve the separation of big cells on divide
- Make membrane meshes properly 3D
- Make a nice cell division animation
- Split ToolTipManager.tscn to multiple files
- Make clouds look like they did in 0.3.4 (if can be done with reasonable effort, or at least visibility should be improved) Related issue: Increase perlin noise texture size or get UV scaling math right
- Add a separate sound effect for binding mode
- Improve the process panel display
- Create a different cutscene for when starting in the warm pond and probably for panspermia
- Adjust initial tutorial welcome to the game message for different starts
- Review how game difficulty settings death penalty works in terms of the coefficient and constants
- Compound bag useful compounds shouldn’t be saved
- Improve the game performance as much as possible. Potential things to do: Try setting render bounds on the Microbe node based on size, Investigate if cell graphics can be rendered using MultiMesh
- Fix lag spikes from organelle duplication in very large cells (if auto-evo or the player can create so big cells that they cause problems, if only unrealistic cells cause this problem this is a low priority thing)
- “Final” microbe game balancing
1.0.x (the road to multicellular updates)
- Microbe stage is finished
- We should have at least the early multicellular no longer marked as a prototype by this time
I went through all of our issues on Github, which is why I picked up quite a bit more than I expected, but I think most of those are needed or should at least be attempted to see if they are easy as they’ll add some needed polish to the stage (I did put in a few easy things in 0.6.x that aren’t really needed just to fill it out a bit). But do feel free to say if some issue is not required to have a perfectly enjoyable microbe stage and we can discuss. Some of the feature lists seem a bit long but there’s quite many bugs in there that don’t really need discussing and can be done easily. I think I overall got the amount of stuff to do to be quite equal (with just 0.6.x being quite bare) even without needing to break the “theme” of the updates too much. 0.9.x has more bugs than new features as I think we’ll really want to polish things then and as always happens, we’ll probably have picked up a ton of more bugs by then which we’ll need time to sort out to not have the bug backlog keep growing.
Once this discussion ends, I’ll update the wiki and put things into a better order where the new features are put between the bugs to make it easier to build milestones for releases (0.6.1, 0.6.2, 0.6.3 etc.).