Reminder: Thrive is open-source. New developers are always welcome! Join via the application form linked here: revolutionarygamesstudio.com/get-involved/
26:40 Can we please get at least 1596 thumbs for this vid??? Both the idea and the community are awesome, and even if it's one of the 99%, the projects to go down Extinction Road, it's probably ahead of 99% of those that do. Let's think of it as an extinct species with ample fossil record. Dead but never forgotten. Also, about those underwater civilizations... ;)
I didn't know if I you were going to see this otherwise so I did this here I love this so much !! I've played probably 30-40of these types of games but this even at this stage is better than all of them combined I also love that it's free as someone who is quite poor it's great that you made a basically AAA level game and I've loved watching spore for since I was like 8 but I could never pay for it . Thank you for making one of my dreams come true! Edit: I only had to watch half and I'm subscribed , I kinda hope the other videos were propaganda for your channel leading up to this!
Hey, Oliver- I'm a freelance video game writer and I've kind of fallen in love with Thrive a couple times, but every time I've looked into it, it doesn't look like there's anything I could give the team. I don't really do technical writing or UX- I'm more a story/dialogue guy. Do you think there will ever be a spot for me on the dev team? Right now, it doesn't look like it...
@@WorldsBeyondImagine Unfortunately it's not really that type of game. I wish I could say there was a use for those skills in helping Thrive, but there probably isn't.
Honestly the fact that Thrive is still going for no reason but sheer willpower is one of the highlights of my internet experience. Literally everyone familiar with the game industry told them “you can’t just keep a game going with no money or professional programmers” but open-source volunteers went brrrrr
If you are interested in free and open source games, check out the story of rogue and classic roguelikes. The community is a bit elitist, but it is fascinating that there are still free games being developed to this day based on a 1980 command line game
That doesn't really sound like "everyone familiar with the game industry". There are quite a few open source developed games that tend to be small in scope. The remarkable thing here isn't that it surviveved as open-source, it's that it survived being purely hopes and dreams for so long.
@@philiphunt-bull5817 CM Kosemen's All Tomorrows has a human descendant that lives underwater but goes on to domesticate animals and then manipulate how they evolve over many generations via selective breeding. They would go on to create methods of getting onto land on a level similar to our version of the moon landing. Quite simply put they don't make technology, they grow it.
The "flood people suggesting an ever-growing amount of random ideas" is definitely a fact of the evolution game community ahahah Even with the Bibites it's hard to not want to please everyone
This is what makes open source/free/community software a challenge. Commercial software is always about delivering a product. You have to say "yeah, that would be great, but we have to deliver a product so no". It's about cutting off innovation so you can actually wrap up a version and call it complete. Without that pressure, it makes it much harder to wrangle everyone involved (who aren't "employees" who have to do what you say) to follow a very specific timeline. It takes a very strong leader with great project management skills to make that work. Those aren't nearly as common as good programming skills. And it's especially hard to get someone like that who ALSO has good programming skills.
I recently started doing a bit of coding for a variant of SS13 (another open source game, albeit in a completely different genre) and the discord community has a bot command with the name wyci. The bot just replies "When you code it." It's a statement with sort of official backing that devs can use to distance themselves from the good idea fairies. "If that feature is so important for you, learn to implement it yourself. I've got other parts of the game I'm working on." It's a much needed cynical take on it and I tend to even use it to shut down (at least temporarily) my own overly ambitious ideas.
That is what's called "an inspiring story" in my book! Props to all the people who have given of themselves over the years to make this happen. Maybe, with your help, it will flourish a little more. Everyone counts.
The project has already surpassed my own level of cellular complexity IRL . Now _that_ is impressive . When I play I will be able to RP as a more evolved form of life , which is just enough to 'splode my ganglia and gets my flagellum wagging like the tail of a pleased Dog -- whatever a _Dog_ is -- .
OH DAMN. You likely don’t know me, but I actually met you on the Thrive forums like 4 years ago and since haven’t really used them, but that’s how I got to know your work! I’m really excited for this video!
I found this channel with the 5d chess vid, and when I looked back at your previous uploads I found weird music for what looked like a game. I went along my merry way and occasionally got the feeling that the aforementioned game was something bigger. As I saw this video thumbnail my suspicions were confirmed, and watching it I discovered that it was built in the engine I work with. I however am young and inexperienced, currently barely able to get the motivation to finish my own solo project primarily built in GD script. I want to avoid the mistakes made by so many of the senior devs on the game so that I don't jump into a project I'm not ready for. I am just going to bookmark this tab as of now, and come back later. I plan to make a game this summer and gain more experience (and work ethic), but I hope to join this project later and contribute when I am ready. Thank you Oliver. See you on the forums (hopefully) sometime in the future!
Protip: do what I did in my never-going-to-be-finished-because-I'm-a-perfectionist speculative evolution project and have an underwater species evolve external digestive organs that can be separated and temporarily survive independently like sessile animals, to achieve the same benefits (increased ease of digestion and resulting influx of calories to the brain) that cooking provided humans - then instead of metallurgy, have a "naturally occurring" source of graphene, which is a very good conductor, "just happen" to be evolved as a really strong membrane or something in some other species which they domesticate...
Damn it oliver you're hitting me in the feels if I hadn't been overwhelmed by the lingering horror of the old forums still containing an absolute monstrosity of my own design and I'm so glad everyone in the community has forgotten about it. Somethings are best left forgotten.
With Thrive I always get the feeling it will be stuck in the cell stage forever. But if it ever gets out of the primordial soup, I just hope it won't be five games in a trenchcoat like Spore turned out to be but a more connected experience instead. (Oh no, I have been infected by the only giving ideas virus! That said, here we go:) This could be done by being able to go back to a toned down versions of previous stages in later stages. Want to experience the cell stage again during the multicellular stage? What about being able to manage your creatures gut biome and helping them digest new stuff? Want to experience the cell stage again during the industrial stage? What about being able to develop vaccines and nanobots in a petri dish? Want to experience the multicellular stage again during the awakening stage? Take control of a single hunter and get your tribe some well needed food or stuff.
It SHOULD only stay in the cell stage. Just do what it's doing, but more. The cell stage was the only part of Spore that was any fun, the only time where the attributes of your creature really mattered. As Spore moved forward in stages, what you did in previous stages didn't matter. Trying too hard to do everything is just going to lead to a let down, like Spore.
@@kamikeserpentail3778 hence why they ended up deciding to focus on one part of the game at a time. They're not going to go to the next stage until the microbial stage reaches a point that it fullfills their dream. Which will probably take another couple years, but if it does ever happen, then they can do the multicellular stage and spend 2 decades on that next.
Hey, a thrive patreon here, I am very happy to say that, at least from what I have seen, development on the multicellular stage has finally begun! They have actually included a prototype for the multicellular stage in the latest build.
From gameplay I've seen of it, it's already looking pretty impressive as a leap from being a single cell, and then having multiple cells be equal parts to one living organism, and I can't wait to see how fleshed out the multicellular stage gets as time goes on
more than a decade and we still want a game that allows you to recreate dragons in an evolution gameplay manner with which we can roam around the earth and multiply. (including me) it is so fascinating and leaving me in awe to still find videos like these, so many years after i discovered Spore way back in my childhood. i hope Thrive will ... thrive and becomes THE creature editor we always wanted. truly a lot of sentimental value is bond with this entire journey, i have not been part of any of this but i fully understand the weight and emotions of it all.
I’ve never played or even heard of this game prior to today, and I just spent 45 minutes of my life watching this all the way through because the presentation and editing is sufficiently superb to keep me interested. Very underrated video.
The current Thrive has endured an arduous and cruel selective pressure and, despite everything, it adapts and overcomes. Just like real life forms, it might fall prey to the predators and sheer apathy in its 'ecosystem', but there will always be someone ready to bear the burden, someone to carry on the genes. And maybe, in the future it will Thrive.
Honestly, even if all they finish is just the microbe and multicellular stages, I'd be thrilled. The other stages would be beyond fantastic, but I'd consider it a job incredibly well done if the first 2 stages are completed. Here's hoping.
Imagine they go all the way to space stage lol. It would be cool if they modeled civ stage off of civ and space stage off of elite dangerous or something. Would be cool af but I can’t imagine all of that with freelance programmers
This. The extra stages, even ignoring the failure of gameplay that is Spore, never interested me nearly as much as the cell and multicellular stage. That being said, I imagine the later stages to actually be easier to program, due to there being more groundwork established for, say, and RTS than there is a complex environment of evolving cells.
I love the fact that JUST as i shared the video with a friend the part about shareing the video came about. But seriously thanks for bringing this to attnetion, i always thought that Spore was a incredibly interesting concept that never went as far as it deserved, hopefully this game manages that
I was so obsessed with this game in the 8th grade that I left a note so if older me ever time traveled back, he would give me a copy of the game on a cd
Man, I still can’t believe this thing is still alive and kicking. I know that the entire game is kinda impossible with how big the scope got, but the microbe stage as it is seems like a solid game on its own and I’m glad it’s finally starting to take shape. I guess I should keep thrive in mind when thinking about personal projects. You can eat an elephant one bite at a time, but probably not the moon. If that makes any sense at all.
Personally, I don't think it should even aspire to go to later stages of evolution. There's so much that can be done at the cellular stage, it'd be a shame to spend a ton of effort making a system that is either disconnected from this current work (like Spore...) or making a system that IS connected but is so entirely complex it is taking exponentially more work with every change.
@@kamikeserpentail3778 there should always be an option to stay in the current stage you are in and stay behind. you could be a bacteria in a multicellular organism while being in the microbial stage. there's so much you could do by having the game being interconnected like by making a good microbe and not wiping out the other microbe you get a deadly disease from that one amoeba that will now kill your species. though if it got that big and interconnected, it would LAG unless it wasn't run by the player, so then it'd be a good idea to have multiplayer. plus since it's not spore the "creatures" that resembled strange things wouldn't exist and would probably be exterminated by players. so even though it's essentially impossible, having other creatures other than the player exist would be a cool idea. even having multiplayer maybe but that would be a huge undertaking so for now I agree. For now Thrive will be taking on 1 elephant at a time, untill it was enough to dig out a section of the moon. though since we don't know about evolution that much, it would be cool if thrive taught us more about how it worked
As someone who played spore without any knowledge of the controversy, I think it's a perfectly good game if you play it without having lofty ambitions. Yes, some of the early stuff is very far from scientific. But people always sleep on the space stage. It's a simple strategy game with huge amounts of depth. You have to terraform planets to make them habitable, and build an ecosystem to keep it that way. It doesn't have a huge amount of variety, but you can't expect much from just a single part of a whole game. The space stage is the stage you spend the MOST time in, so it's weird people focus on the creature stage as the sole factor. The tribal and city stages get boring quickly, so I can only assume people lost interest by that point and didn't give Space Stage a fair shot. It wasn't exactly the game that was promised about evolution and growing a species, but it stands in it's own right.
The creature stage was the stage I passed the most time in, I didn't like the other stages because I found them ripetitive or boring, and now that I look back at it, I passed most of my time in the creature stage because of the creature editor, and not the gameplay itself
one of the major issues of spore is that despite being a game of evolution your previous choices increasingly dont matter, the cell to creature stage is a natural progression, and into the tribal stage your creatures still keep there abilities even if they are less important, but then in the civilization stage they mean nothing and are replaced with vehicles and city building, but then all of that is thrown out of the window in the space stage where your previous choices get you exactly one cool toy and the rest is just cosmetic
The space stage is the one you spend the most time in, and yet it's the most boring without Space Adventures. I've had fun in the space stage back in the day when community features worked so I wasn't limited to a few adventures made by Maxis (also I was 12 so things were simpler). I've tried replaying Spore as an adult and I've had the most fun in creature and city stages. I feel like a better way to play Spore is to finish the city stage, quit the game and launch Stellaris lmao
I just discovered this game today, thanks to this video. I'm wary of over-ambitious projects, and I'm happy with it being just a microbe stage game. People sometimes forget that single cellular life is the most diverse of all lifeforms on this planet. That day to day they forget what they can't see, but when you look into a microscope, you see a world of many shapes and forms.
I think Thrive seems an insane idea. It's basically a game that will take generations to finish, but that makes it so much more important. Nations weren't build in a day, over thousands of years they establish and become better. I hope this game continues to improve over the years. It can only get better from here.
Oliver - this story resonates with me in a way few ever have. I spent my formational years as a game developer by serving as a maintainer for a science-based simulation system in an open source game. I was little more than a 15 year old kid those many years ago, taking responsibility over a system only a few years younger than me which had been abandoned time and time again without fail. I ended up abandoning it myself one day, too. All of the emotions you described in part III of this video - they capture my experience in every way. I never imagined to see that experience captured so wonderfully and put out there for thousands of people to see. There are so few who have shared this experience... I cannot thank you enough for doing it justice via this vid.
Oh man, I remember I picked up Spore in 2012, I was only 8 at the time but I loved it, and I remember hearing about Thrive some time after; I never ended up playing it but seeing this video recommended activated some hidden synapses in my brain. Awesome to see development is still going!
That is, quite the story. I've always heard of Thrive as "those guys" with not very good prospects from the Spore multiplayer community I was in. However I've got to know the project not there, but even earlier by myself most likely. I was just a kid playing the Spores, but I wanted more like many. However I never got too invested in Thrive, perhaps it was the fact that I am not natively English, so as a kid going site searching and forum browsing more unfriendly, or just the fact that it was always in the early access. I sometimes later joined the youtube streams for a small bit, and rarely did I try the game versions with me finding them unintuitive, unpolished and hard to understand. I will say, your story kind of parallels the story of that Spore multiplayer community. It was small, and I found it after it's peak which was when it was on the Sporums and partly on discord. On discord I played with a few people for a few months, it wasn't true multiplayer though, just save-swapping. A bunch of infrastructure for that gameplay was already set up, but a lot still had to be made. As we got more galaxies we got ideas for what to do in them, what kind of out-of-game rules or lore do we want to set up. While certain projects did go on for a bunch of months and occasionally got revived, with only a few active players eventually all of them ended up being dead, with people not being able to properly coordinate to continue on. Many people talked about making a program that would automatically update your game with the files of the current "file turn" or just a better importer on your machine, but none of that ever came to be, even if talked on for months on end. It's sad really, but I was early to understand that that project was not really doing well. Unlike Thrive, I don't see much hope with it. Most activity is random people joining most likely through the forum link, or people leaving due to noticing the server is dead. Problem is also, due to the way Spore is set up, the space stage quickly gets very time consuming and repetetive, without any real goals or gameplay nuances that'd make the late game interesting. The amount of time and reasources it takes to set up a full colony, through terraforming, placing cities, buying buildings and placing the planet structure things, it's just a hassle to make any big empire. Maybe one day we'll get something really akin to Spore 2. Also, I would like to ask, while I do not know all 4 games mentioned in the Spore-like-derivitives, I'm not sure exactly why The Universim is on there. Yeah, Species makes sense even if it is much more of a simulation program rather than a game or something, but Universim feels more alike city builders. Aside from planet panning and the fact you make a city, I don't see much similarity. The evolution of the people (Oh don't get me started on how revolutionary they advertised their technology system in the original promos with how you having different techs would lead to the people tackling problems in completely different ways, only for us to get a static tech tree, with just timers for each tech completely disconnected from whatever progress you have made in the world itself. The techs are also slight bonuses to things or just building unlocks) really is just a slow progress of tech from stone age to space age (I still don't understand how they made medieval go straight to modern when I first thought that was just temporary during development), and at that point one could say Civ 6 is a Spore-like. This comment is probably incomprehensible and badly constructed but I'm too scared to read it all back and I'd probably delete it all if I did. Also you being part of Thrive is like, wow, still an unbelievable connection for me to now have to make. Hopefully we'll see Thrive make great leaps in the near future.
I could be wrong but I think I remember the original dialog around The Universim banked on it being Spore-Like and tbh I'm pretty sure that's the reason it got as much attention as it has. That's likely why it's in that category even though it didn't actually end up that way.
Ah, I see. I can definetly see that being a thing with the early development stuff, I probably just didn't really see what other people were talking about it at the time.
36:01 Hey i remember that promo video! Partly thanks to it I got interested in Thrive and eventually joined the team. You probably realized by now, but these early contributions you made, even if they were amateurish, helped a lot promoting the game early on. This was a really good video and i'm certain it will attract a lot of newcomers like your previous work did. It's very neat that you are using your own platform to help thrive once again and that you managed to stay in the team for so many years. Even if I don't contribute that much anymore, I still appreciate Thrive and the effort people like you put on helping this little game of ours. Thank you.
When you brought up how the localized gameplay guided evolution with the example of camouflage emerging as a trait not initially programmed in, my mind was blown.
Hey, I was one of those on the original Evolutions! forums! You were absolutely right in your characterisation of us (a bunch of kids from the Spore forums endlessly wishlisting things for a game that didn't exist (yet)). I remember submitting music that one of the original Music leads liked, though. My memory of the transition is that we all hated the original guy and realised he was full of shit (Sven Littowski, google him and see what comes up 💀), hence the forum split. Glad to see how far it's all come though, keep up the good work 🙏
Is there any plan for how auto evo will cope with exponentially increasing complexity? Presumably single celled organisms and terrestrial animals and plants will have to co-exist, so it seems like the complexity of the simulation could get out of hand pretty quickly. That's not even accounting for how complex the mechanics regarding how multi-cellular life evolves or if the cells it evolves from remain relevant in successive generations. It seems any workable solution would have to simplify cells down to the point a lot of what happened in that stage doesn't matter aside from the feeling that having played through it gives you and the ancestors of all of your neighbors being products of it. In any case I really hope this project is successful down the road. ............. What if they selectively bred and pruned other organisms to create their tools and habitations out of their anatomy.
I can imagine simplification of each successive stage making your own organism the baseline and starting over with a similar simulation to that of the initial microbe stages. In other words, the player controlled organism is always the first to reach any given stage of the game, and other organisms will always splinter from the player's organism with a few minor exceptions to fill important ecological niches as the player progresses.
If they're smart, their plan is to not even think about that until they're well on their way with implementing whatever the second stage ends up being.
@@lauraclose936 Not quite. You should first figure out if being a multicellular organism is even possible, then worry about the exact design of the human lung.
i remember finding out about thrive through a 4chan post that used its music (some of yours) to set the tone for the dnd campaign they were recapping which led me to subscribing to you and hoping for thrive to succeed now years later and your making these great videos and thrive is still in development so i'd say that was a happy coincidence that turned out well
Oddly, the most surprising thing to hear on this was you saying that you only had 30k followers, and as I was mostly just listening to this video while working on something else I had to check my webpage again "Oliver Lugg 77.2k subscribers" I can't be the only one here who had assumed by the quality of your work that you had a much.. much larger subscriber base. Especially so after the twist of your own involvement in Thrive, which I felt akin to the plot twist of Summoning Salt being a speedrunner, Jenny Nicholson being some infamous MLP content producer, or [insert prominent video essayist revealing their personal history with topic]. Your videos are absolutely fantastic and I'm constantly checking back for more content, thank you for what you do man.
Well this was a pleasant surprise. I had seen your old music content (on the next day after I discovered the game steam!) but never would have expected more thrive content. More thrive exposure is always a very pleasant sight to see. Thank you for making some great jams to listen to while playing not-spore, they were a big part in hooking me in :D
what strikes me as fascinating is that the story of Thrive itself almost seems to match up with evolution itself, just like how single celled organisms formed from the cosmic soup of randomness, so to did Thrive spawn from the random and wild ideas of many around the world
Found you through Thrive and stuck around for your videos since 2020. Thrive has been in the background since 2014 for me, like it always would've been. I could always see that the fire was dim, but never went out. ; ) I still go back to listen to your song Democracy. Really enjoy your music for Thrive ^^ Thanks
It's amazing to see how a person like yourself was able to do what cards life gave you. When I read the wiki story of thrive, it was crazy to see how far they went and so I hope to experience that same feeling.
I will never lose hope on this project. No matter what people might have said and however many people have abandoned the project, it is still the epitome of a true passion project. With every new update, I keep being surprised about its progress and excited for what happens next. I'm glad to see that you also have noit abandoned that hope. Thank you for making this video :)
I personally would download it from steam, even if you end up using the launcher, just to help out the devs. It looks like an amazing game with such potential, and your funding could help it.
man I remember talking to some kid at recess in grade school about spore, and eventually in middle school about thrive years later. I checked it out but never thought they'd ever finish the game. I've had DREAMS about underwater civilizations, honestly just so glad to see that after all this time it actually has something I can play.
Bro, this is amazing! And it doesnt matter if it is "impossible", this is pure passion and you should few proud for being a part of it! Doesnt matter if the project dies out, somethings are about the path, not the final destination. And even if the project dies out along the way, you never know the future, this could be the seed for a new thing to blossom tomorrow. Im absolutely amazed, and wish I could contribute. Now now, wipe out the tears and the sad voice, and view it for what it is: a beautiful flower. And yes, people grow and move on, that's part of life, but like you said, you learned so much by being part of this project, and so have everybody else that participated, so it was not a "waste of time" for anybody, but rather a stage of development for all people involved. It helped all those "silly teenagers" to grow, which may well be it's biggest achievement. Defeatists will always be everywhere, but this project is amazing brother, dont you worry about the negative voices, just enjoy the ride for as long as you're in it
I remember supporting this game for a time before I went broke and had to cancel my patreon sub. I'm so happy that, despite the harshness of such a lofty dream, this game continues to crawl it's ways towards evolutionary videogame thriving!
Great video! I'm gonna get the game because of it, though as a word of advice, the main reason I didn't get the game or even look into it before (despite vaguely having the notion it existed) is because of the perceived lack of content I had the mindset (and kinda still do, and I'm not the only one) of "oh, I'll pick it up when it's finished, or at least when there is more stuff" And I feel like this isn't just a percieved issue and wil be the reason I put down the game pretty quickly after going 'uh, that was neat" So what I would recommend for the developpement guys is to just focus on bulk right now, giving the game more features, replayability, rabbitholes to fall into, average play time, etc, just raw bulk, the same way tiny featurless cells become complex factories in the game, I feel like the main focus should be for the game itself to make that transformation, as I feel the lack of stuff is the main reason more people arent getting the game, it is at least for me
My contribution to the underwater civilization discourse I just found out existed: something like tool breeders in all tomorrows could work. Of course that would probably lead to drastically different gameplay from a terrestrial society and that's probably not realisitc to implement given what the devs already plan to hopefully someday deal with. A game about selectively breeding organisms into ever more complect tools would be neat though. Sorry to contribute to the years old tradition of only coming up with ideas agdkdhf More seriously though, the history here is incredible. The cell stage theyve managed to create is already cool on the face of it but the context of what it took to get here makes it even more incredible! Even if they don't get to further stages I think what they have managed to create is still pretty rad. Hope they're able to keep that spark alive for even more years.
Holy crap this looks so gooood! I'm surprised I've never heard of this. These types of games are so fascinating to me. Edit: there is a similar story to thrive playing out with a game called bibites. Unlike thrive it looks at making an in depth simulation of artificial life evolving on a 2d plane. I highly recommend anyone who enjoyed this video check him out since what he’s trying to achieve is quite similar to the thrive community’s goal of an accurate science based game displaying evolution and it’s intricacies. Bibites is currently being developed by a small group of people lead by a man with what seems to have a Quebec accent. He has a RU-vid channel showcasing his work on the project named “The Bibites: Digital Life”. As I’ve said the subject of evolution is so interesting to me and I love the idea thrive and will definitely be looking more into it.
I remember how, as a teenager, I just drew a cell with a little cell with the idea that "mother cell lauching baby cells to attack other cells!" A decade and more later and I realised that that I asked for stuff that no one would use anyway. Let's say you know more when you become a game developper yourself.
I was a teen lurking on the Spore forums during the Hirnsausen's Evolutions! affair. I remember watching people debate and get increasingly suspicious of Hirnausen, who turned out to be increasingly weird. The thread was huge, and ended up spawning one of the biggest spore memes at the time "the Hugmonster" to make people feel better (before it began drugging people with Advil PM, good old 2010 era internet humor). When people finally found the real photos that Hirnsausen had photo shopped his "game builds" off of, and he admitted that he had faked it so "Maxis would feel pressured to improve the game with the upcoming competition" I remember people discussing splitting off and doing it for themselves. I didn't believe they would get anywhere, even after they named the project Thrive, since I was smart enough to recognize the Venn diagram of people's ideas to people's programing skills that Oliver put up in this video. Though they are still lightyears off of what their lofty goals are, I've got to admit I'm surprised and impressed that they've been able to keep the project going. The fact that they actually have a product on steam now is just amazing to me.
Thrive was one of those open-source dream projects that pulled in a lot of new talent when we were younger. Young people with aspirations bigger than their coding knowledge who are still in high-school and can therefore donate their afternoons for free on a neat project. I suspect the endless cycle of replacing almost everyone on the Dev team with fresh young creatives is the primary reason why projects like this usually take a long time to get anywhere. I'm happy to have seen that changing in recent years, and the increase in progress speed was/is pretty inspiring to watch. I also think that Thrive is unlikely to go beyond the 2D cellular stage that is currently available. Not because it's truly an impossible game to make, especially now that the Thrive Dev team is a lot more cohesive and experienced, but because making a complex 3D game requires a lot of different skills that both new volunteers and the existing Dev team aren't as proficient at. I'm pretty sure the reason Spore is so watered down is mainly because you essentially have to make separate games for each stage of evolution, meaning for Thrive you aren't asking volunteers and crowd funding to make one game, but multiple at the same time. To me, the final iteration of the cellular stage will be the best, most fun, version of Thrive. Complex enough to be fun and engaging, but not some unapproachable monolith of menus and game mechanics ala dwarf-fortress. And that's coming from someone who loves dwarf-fortress. Edit: It also doesn't help when you have a lot of passionate fans talking up or overstating where Thrive is actually at in development. Even in this comment section, there are people talking about how the creature stage already exists. Of course, when people investigate, they find out that by 'creature stage' they meant 'multicellular but still microscopic life' people feel baited. A lot of the ridicule I've seen pointed at Thrive is based on making fun of youngsters typing out their dreams for macroscopic gameplay or advanced civilizations in Thrive, something very blatantly not supported in any version of the game. It's a lot of the same ridicule that Dwarf-fortress faced actually; people would read or watch videos about these epic stories that took place in DF, with giants and dragons and goblins and FUN. But then they'd look up gameplay of the game and see a bunch of text on a screen and laugh. It's very easy to make fun of a teenager that is overexcited, and the internet is nothing if not a merciless place.
I love evolution simulation. I still have spore box set that I bought at midnight on day of release. I thoroughly enjoyed this video and I'm glad I watched it all the way through. I randomly watched a neural network evolution simulation video this morning and now I'm buying my copy of Thrive on steam. A day well spent going down the youtube rabbit hole.
I've been checking up on Thrive here and there since 2015 I think. It makes me so happy to know that it is still going on and on steam with paid employees no less! It is a miracle of a project as it is and I'm so excited for it. I remember hearing the theme music one late night as a teenager, looking at that concept art with tears in my eyes at the majesty of creation and the excitement of the project. My hope is that just like how evolution happened in real life, each stage will be developed exponentially faster and faster! I don't care if it takes 20 more years to be complete, I'm willing to wait and as long as there is even a little bit of progress towards it, the dream is not dead and proves the nay sayers wrong. If it is finished it will be one of the most unique, important, and "revolutionary" games of all time and an inspiration story in game develop forever.
This video touched my heart and inspired me to establish an underwater civilization centered around smelting with hydrothermal vents. Thank you, Oliver Smalliver.
I personally don't think it matters that Thrive took over a decade to reach very little. It's core idea of being open sourced and free means that there will always be devs coming and going, a student with a week of spare time here, a programmer nostalgic about spore there, they come and go, each leaving a little bit of progress, and with time, just like the grains of sand can cut down a mountain the game will grow and continue to move slowly, but ever steadily. And of course, as you've mentioned, the game has been getting more traction recently, and the fact is that this will keep happening. Each new update, every big change, anytime anything important happens the game will receive a boom in popularity, the project revitalised by the influx of fresh people who have never heard of it, and come with the same childish hope as everyone else. It's a long run to go, but the game has made it through the worst and even worse, and yet it prevails. Some may call you crazy. Some may call you stupid. Some may call you a hopeless dreamer. I think that you've done the right thing because against all odds here we are, not quite there yet, but with an actual playable game on Steam, under the wings of an official studio. In the end you could say... the game did *Thrive*
I love thrive, i remember playing the hexagon version back in the day. My cousin showed me the forum back before that launch, and ive been following it from afar ever since. I thought all the prototipes were fun, and each one allways seemed so impossibly better than the last it allways gave me hope. I played the steam version a couple times this week, and was astounded by what a fun experience it has been to play, i couldnt believe my eyes, its everything spore was for me back when i was a wee lad with an enoumours optimistic imagination. To me its an unpolished game, but its already a real game, not a prototype. Everything i want from the microbe stage is basically already there, and its all so much fun.
Honestly, if they even get to multi-cellular (which prob is still unlikely, but honestly after seeing everything should at least be somewhat possible) I'd consider this absolutely revolutionary. That kind of evolutionary complexity in a 3d environment? God, besides my favorite spore stage was always the creature one. Nevertheless, I hope this project the best of luck, you can never have enough of that.
28:23 I remember contributing this terrible UI art for the game back in 2014 when I was 13! I'm now 21 and graduating uni this year. It's amazing to see that progress is still being made on this project. I really hope to see it succeed :)
Thank you so much for opening up about this and showing your heartfelt passion for this project. I always kinda liked Thrive even though it was far from perfect yet. I did a review some time ago and even briefly joined the development team, but had to bail out due to lack of time. There are many directions I would like the game to move, especially in multicellular mode, but it takes a lot of time formulating your visions and then there's no guarantee these will be adopted by the team. I may re-join or start my own evolution simulator project along more simplistic lines.
Thrive - Cell Stage, seems interesting. Personally, I think the main issue with spore is that it's trying to be multiple games at the same time. You don't play Prey or Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the hacking mini-games. Likewise, a creature creator isn't going to have the same gameplay as a space 4x game. I figure the best approach for this kind of game, would be to separate each section out into it's own game, and allow players to import their creations into each game. Theoretically then, as long as the export/import tools are publicly available. You wouldn't even need the same dev team making the games. Also, I would really like to have a 4x game built around becoming a Kardashev type 3 civilization. Stellaris is close, and with mods is basically there, but it'd like some more options.
You can have functionally separate games that come together to form one game just as fine. I'm not sure how familiar you are with software development, but if certain features are independent enough you don't need the same people to work on them. You could have a team that works on the microbe stage and another team that works on the multicellular stage at the same time, and the teams wouldn't have to communicate with each other much more than if they were working on completely separate games with save export/import. It's worth to notice that to match the ambition of Thrive, the effort required to create each stage is indeed equal to the effort required to create an entire game, but that doesn't mean much in terms of distribution. If this was a for-profit game then it would make sense to release the stages as separate games because then you could sell them separately which wouldn't be a cash grab because of the effort. But with their current business model, I don't think there's a reason to release stages separately. It could've done well for Spore, though - they've tried to make five games with the resources and deadlines for a single one
This video broke me for a little while. I, too, when I was young found myself in love with a community. I, too, found myself one day, helping out, dedicating my time to that community. I, too, found myself one day, the most senior staff. I, too, became disillusioned. Stopped visiting, except to do my work. It'd become work, and nothing more.
The sheer insanity of the unimaginable goals of Thrive is a music to my ears and although currently not an option for me to find the time or manpower to help this bonkers dream come true, due to the fact I am preoccupied with starting my own software company, I hereby promise if it were to come to the point of extinction for thrive I will do my best at keeping this utopical project alive and moving forward. The reason why, I not quite get, but this is one of the things which although insane and probably also very much impossible, worth trying for. Great respect for all those who are.
Having recently discovered your channel, man, I must say you do a phenomenal job of creating captivating content. Loving it so far. Well, most of it--cause GOT DAYAM that bell sound is painful every time it plays lol.
33:35 I'm 99% certain that was me. I have no proof, since I deleted my old account along with all the comments years ago, but I was a huge Spore fan, was really into Vic 2 and Quill at the time, and I remember mentioning Thrive on a few channels. I wasn't a dev or anything, I had just heard of it and thought it sounded cool. Crazy to think that little comment inadvertantly kept the whole project alive.
Underwater civilisations *is* possible, but the only way I can imagine for it to happen would be with a amphibian approach I think. Creatures that's just as comfortable under and over the surface, *starting* that part of their technological development above the water but then bringing the progress down subsurface.
If every future stage takes 5 years, assuming we get there, we'll see thrive completed in 30 years. I'm willing to wait to play this game until my forties. Whether it gets fully completed or not, it's wonderful.
Been watching your videos already, and suddenly you make this and I've never really found such a relatable thing. I dreamt of making a game of microbes fighting, but they'd be kinda pokemon so you can search for and collect them, like scientists do. This wasn't actually inspired by spore at all. I was inspired by a game called cell lab, which is amazing but didn't get popular; it involves actually evolving multi cellular organisms that can fight and stuff, but the really cool thing is how they grow and the fact it's not tile based but instead all soft body physics. I made a long google doc for my idea just before I joined university. Made some awful demo with some guy at university, it was pretty much just extremely basic and buggy pokemon with no microbe simulation. I'm pretty sure I knew it would never really happen but it was fun thinking about it anyway. I do still dream of making games and do still have long google documents for them. Never found anyone else who did it too tho, and have never progressed too far. But I probably could make at least something if I actually was motivated to some day, as I've started a software development job. I try and think about how to make things easy on the development side. So it's all 2D and tile based. Also, I've kind of abandoned the desire to make games; instead I'd rather make simulations that are somewhat educational and inspring, that don't eat away people's time. Recently I've been inspired by a project I found called the life engine, which the developer made some interesting videos about. It's technologically very basic, but it's something I can enjoy watching and playing around with for hours. Also it's open source. P.S I have to admit, I did once spend an evening thinking about how underwater creatures would progress technologically.
I've been following the development of this game since the old days. Not closely but I pop in every few years to see how its going. I'm immensely happy to see it continue chugging along out of spite for existence.
I’ve never heard of or been part of any aspect of thrive and even I’ve had thought about and had arguments with only myself about underwater civilizations and then come to the conclusion that metallurgy would ultimately be impossible, the closest any emergent toolmaking underwater lifeforms to having any form of metallurgy is scavenging shipwrecks, which is ultimately not feasible in the long term. The better question that should come after reaching such conclusion is not “what obscure or loophole-ish way could they have metallurgy?”, the better question is “what materials would underwater civilizations use *instead* of metal, and in what ways would they use them?”
You can really tell this game aspires to its ideals when it has you wait the actual amount of time it would take a cell to reach the next evolutionary stage.
I remember stumbling across the Thrive forums many many years ago and looking around in awe. I was a big fan of spore when I was a bit younger and have always been facinated by evolution. I then remember reading something about thermal vents and how snapping shrimp could generate really high tempratures and since high tempratures is what you need to refine metal the other steps are easy. I got away while I could. Then next time I saw anything about Thrive was when I looked at your older videos after finding you through the diplomacy video.
This is some inspiring stuff, man. Maybe one day I'll fully grasp Blender in order to contribute in some other way than helping with the Dutch translation.
When I saw this video at first I haven't watched it but as someone who played spore at a young age this is giving me nostalgic feelings along with lots of sad emotions overall I am glad I watched this video also very happy to come across your channel thank you
Not going to lie I did not think that this amateur-ish Musician for a game that less people than the population of Monaco has more than likely heard of turned video essayist would ever make a video that puts into words exactly why they (and more than likely many others) still have faith in a game this ambitious and conceptually impossible to make that has only just started picking up steam after close to a decade of development. Honestly at this point I have to assume that our collective faith is somehow keeping this impossible game alive simply because we want it to like the Orks in 40k making red vehicles go faster simply because they believe they do. So... I guess I'll keep believing if for no other reason than I want to play the Aware stage since the creature stage was my favorite in Spore and I'm a huge biology, ecology, and evolution enthusiast.
This is the first instance of Thrive that i've come across. The concept and idea of this game is really interesting to me, and in a way, isnt it quite poetic? how a game about change and evolution to ensure ones survival, has taken that exact journey to keep going for so many years... i like that.
Hello, so you’ll probably never read this and that’s fine, but thanks for letting me know about this game! I know steam isn’t the best way to support the devs, but it’s all I can afford to support the game at this time. Seriously I don’t know how I went so long without hearing about it and you made me genuinely excited about this little game that could. While No Man’s Sky may not be the best companion it kind of feels like the love the community/devs have for that one is similar to this! It also reminds me of another indie title Gods and Idols though more in the way of how long development has been.
I loved to play spore when I was younger and later wanted something like this, but actually good. So glad I discovered this video! Oh and I dont care that the game will take decades to finish. I would rather have that than something unfinished (like spore). And the game honestly already is much better than that.
