New YouTube Channel

Art (concept art videos and Cheese's microbe model demos)
Game Features (for previewing and showcasing specific features)
Music and Sound
Podcasts
Prototypes and Concepts
Releases (for now would only have Doggit's Thrive Releases video, but will of course gain more pretty soon)
Trailers (would for now include Tritium's trailer and my preview video, among others)

Hello, and welcome to the first of what is hopefully a long line of Thrive development podcasts.
I’m your host, Isaac Krone, better known as ~sciocont, and I am the head of Revolutionary Games.
Without further ado, here are out other guests. We have Jacob, say hello.
Hello, everybody.
And who are you, what do you do?
I’m Jacob Chambers, I work on the website for Revolutionary Games, I also contribute somewhat to the microbe discussion, and I’ve recently been working on some concept art.
Right, excellent. Dani, introduce yourself: what do you do?
Hello, I’m Dani, and I’m kind of in charge of programming, that kind of things, together with Nimbal.
Right, next up is Cheese - hello, what do you do?
Hello, I’ve been creating some art.
Alright, and finally we have Seregon, Nelis.
Yes, hello I’m Nelis, or Seregon on the forums.
I do a bit of everything but mainly I’m an ecologist, or an advisor on the science, but I also do a bit of programming.
Alright, I guess we can begin.
First up is Jacob Chambers, or WJacobC on the forums - he’s going to be discussing some progress on the website and some of our social media outets.
Alright, hello everyone, I’m Jacob Chambers, and I’m one of the main website developers for Revolutionary Games, the creators of Thrive.
I’d just like to say that I have been working hard on the new revision of our website - in case you don’t know, we’re using ExpressionEngine, which is a content management system which will allow us to edit the website on the go so we can keep it updated with all the new information.
I’m also using Twitter Bootstrap, if you’re familiar with that: it’s a framework that allows the website to work across multiple devices, so on your phone, it’ll look great, and on your PC it’ll look great.
I’ve finished working with the framework, and now I’m beginning to work on the CSS to give it the style and the colour scheme and everything that we need.
I should hopefully be done within two or three months, but for now, if you’re looking for all the most recent information, I would go to the current website at www.revolutionarygamesstudio.com, and that will be linked in the description on iTunes so you can go check that out now.
I’d also like to point out, real quick, that we have a Facebook page, which I’m sure a lot of you have liked, and if not I urge you to like that right now and recently we’ve also added a Twitter and a Reddit, Subreddit, so you can follow us @Thrive_Game and please post your messages and all your questions and everything in the Subreddit at www.reddit.com/r/thrive.com, and those will all be linked in the iTunes description.
I’d also like to point at that we will be taking questions from Reddit for the next podcast, so be sure to post your questions there - we’ll be answering them again in this format.
Next up it’s Thriving Cheese - Cheese, what do you have for us?
I’m working on something for Doggit, showcasing some of the microbes.
It’s gonna be epic.
Well, there you have it, Cheese is, as always, a man of few words.
You may have heard he mentioned Doggit - Doggit is our lead composer, and he and the next up, Oliveriver, have been composing a lot of our music over the last few months.
Next, Oliver has a presentation for you on music.
Music will obviously be a very important part of Thrive, and while the rest of the team is busy programming and conceptualising, the music team will be releasing new music.
The music team mainly consists of Doggit, the music team lead, and me, Oliveriver.
I’ll be here in each podcast to give updates on music - showcasing new themes, announcing music bundle releases and giving opportunities for new composers to help us.
For this podcast, I’ve decided to bring newcomers up to speed with Thrive’s music development so far.
Don’t forget that all themes I mention will be available to view on Thrive’s official Youtube channel, ThriveGameIta, and the soundtrack page of the Thrive Wiki, so you can listen to the music team’s latest exploits.
Now, I’d like to begin the journey through Thrive’s musical past with one of the very first themes composed for Thrive, the first you’ll hear in the game and one of my personal favourites - the Thrive Main Theme.
Composed in December 2010 by hongchong7, the music team leader at the time, this theme will be played when you first enter the game and arrive at the main menu, and, as you can probably hear, it fits the bill perfectly.
A rush of string accompanied by piano, and, as you’ll soon hear, a bass and drums, make up one of the most prominent themes in the game.
Unlike most others, which are intended to be more ambient for background music, this theme is intentionally conspicuous.
From the very first moment I heard it and was inspired to join the Thrive team as a composer myself, I’ve had no trouble in imagining the eventual game, full of organisms of all descriptions showing the beauty of simulated life.
The full theme can be heard on Thrive’s ModDB page and hongchong7’s Youtube account, and if you, like me, are inspired to help compose for the project by this theme, you can contact us on the Thrive forums.
Hongchong7 is, sadly, no longer part of the regular Thrive team, but his music paved the way for Thrive’s next, and current, main composer, Doggit.
Most of Thrive’s music composed so far has been his, and he managed the ThriveGameIta Youtube account, so all of his themes will be there, along with some he’s collected from free sound libraries for use in Thrive, and work by many of Thrive’s other composers, such as myself.
Doggit has been the most prolific in the composition of themes for the microbe stage - out of a total of ten by all our composers, he created eight.
All of the microbe themes will be played in the background as you guide your cell towards becoming a multicellular organism, including this one.
Aside from the Main Theme, this is the most viewed video about Thrive on Youtube.
Composed by Doggit, you’ll hear it in the first stage of the game, along with all the other microbe themes.
A slow, soothing piece of music with no main melody, players will hardly notice it’s there, and that’s the point of ambient music - it blends so well into the environment that it literally becomes part of it.
This theme, I think you’ll agree, certainly does this well.
Earlier this year, the first of Thrive’s music bundles was released, giving fans a taste of what the game will sound like.
Included in it are compositions by me, Doggit and hongchong7, and it can be downloaded from Thrive’ ModDB page so you can listen to the music of Thrive whenever and wherever you desire.
Several more are set to be released in the future, and I will of course notify you in later podcasts.
Well that’s just about all from me - next podcast I’ll show some recently composed themes and answer frequently asked questions on Thrive’s soundtrack.
Well, there you have it - expect more beautiful music coming your way from Thrive.
Here’s Dani, one of our main programmers, with some news on programming.
Okay, in the latest release we released a new version of the game engine - that is, the game engine we will use for the final game, and that introduced a new filter, very useful for modding.
That is, scripting - the ability to run LuaScript inside the game and affect how the game runs, and also listen for elements in the game, for example a collision or the player pressing a key, and be able to create these new cells on demand or do any other changes.
So anyone can just write a script, tell the game to run the script and that’s effectively a mod.
Other than that, we recently introduced a physics engine called Bullet - that physics engine will handle all the physics in the game: that is collisions, moving cells and everything like that to make the game seem more realistic, and that will also be controlled by LuaScript if you want.
We are working on implementing GUI elements, if that is how it should be pronounced - that is the visual interface for the game, and that’s the current thing we’re doing right now.
Other than that we are also working on sounds, which will also be controlled by scripts.
Thanks for the update, Dani - next up is Seregon who’s going to explain how the compound system in Thrive is going to influence gameplay.
Okay then, so one of the main systems we have in place in the game which is driving a lot of what’s going on, a lot of what you’ll be seeing when you play, is the compounds system, and this is a system which controls all the compounds and resources you have available to your cell and organism in later stages.
Obviously your metabolism controls how you convert your food, which is likely to be simple sugars, into more useful materials for your cell for attacking your opponent with toxins, which ~sciocont will be talking about later.
And for controlling your cell for reproducing new cells, and for growing the organelles which are the functional parts of your cell.
Most of the processes governing how your cell will work will take place in the organelles of your cell.
You can gain them from other cells, you can find them in the environment, you can evolve new ones, you can upgrade the ones you have and these all give you new abilities - these abilities tend to come in the forms of new compounds you have access to or the processes you have access to.
You might unlock a new food source for you, they might unlock a new weapon, that sort of thing.
Some of these organelles have physical consequences, like flagella can make you move faster.
So, thanks to Seregon’s excellent work on the compound system we can invent some very interesting chemical gameplay tactics.
Since every cell is surviving based on a real simulated metabolism rather than health and food timers as you might see in another game, it’s extremely easy to simulate a wide range of chemical agents and their effects on the metabolisms of cells that encounter them.
To capitalise on this, we’ve invented the toxin system.
Toxins are specially designed chemicals that change the functions of cells - they become available through the mutation of a vacuole into a toxin-producing organelle.
That toxin producer uses energy and compound resources to manufacture and fill itself with the toxin.
When a species initially obtains a toxin-producing organelle, it will be small and its effects rather weak, so it can be upgraded by mutations in the cell editor.
Most of the time, cells will be releasing these toxins into the environment in order to change the functions and behaviour of other cells.
Toxins will be released from their organelle and then float around until they are absorbed by another cell or they decay.
All they have to do to be absorbed is touch the cell.
All toxins have a target and an effect - they can either target an organelle and change how well that organelle does its job, a.k.a. its efficiency, or they can target a specific species and change that species’ behaviour.
This rather broad specification means that toxins have four essential purposes, two of which are very exciting and novel.
The first purpose is, of course, predation - for instance, you could have a toxin that decreases mitochondria efficiency by 70%.
This effect is that any cell that runs into the toxin loses energy, meaning that it’s easier for them to just die and then you can go eat them.
Another toxin could decrease flagella efficiency by 90%, essentially paralysing your cell - you can’t move anywhere and then you’re eaten by another.
Then of course you can use toxins for defence, so you can use lots of the same strategies as predation here.
So, you can use toxin y, which is going to target and repel predatory cells, and it’s going to have a specific cell, and its effect is going to be that cell’s AI swims away from you.
Another toxin could just be something that stays in you - you don’t inject it into the environment, but if you’re killed it gets released and it targets the mitochondria of the cell, reducing their efficiency, and then the AI should learn not to eat you.
Next comes one of the clever uses for toxins, because toxins don’t necessarily have to have negative effects.
You can use them to help others in your species or another species, introducing altruistic behaviour through chemicals.
You could have a toxin that increases chloroplast efficiency by 10%.
If you are a cell that doesn’t move around and you just photosynthesise, you could be releasing this constantly to help other cells around you of your species.
You could have a toxin that increases endoplasmic reticulum efficiency by some amount, so that means your other cells are going to reproduce faster.
You could also have a toxin that is a food product, maybe with higher energy than the normal glucose that you find floating around, and that would mean that other cells would choose that before the glucose.
Finally, toxins can be used to relay intercellular messages and control other cells in your species because they can modify behaviour.
This should constitute one of the first steps towards multi-cellularity, which is intercellular communication.
So you could, say, have one toxin that affects your own species and tells them to swim in the direction the toxin came from - it’s a distress signal: if you’re being hunted, you can call for help.
Another toxin could be like a distress signal but it could tell all of your species to run away.
Finally, you could have another toxin that tells everyone in your species to say, “Hey, release a defensive toxin because there’s a large group of other cells coming towards us and they may be dangerous.”
Toxins are going to be the most crucial part of mid-to-late cell stage gameplay.
Everybody’s going to pick them for some reason or another, and you’ll have to learn which ones are friendly and which are not, but we’ll try to make that pretty easy with a mix of visual and audio cues.
We really hope you enjoy this idea as much as we do, and we’re really excited to be implementing it as soon as we can.
Here’s Jacob again, he has a call to action for you guys who want to be part of the game.
Hey everyone, so just one more thing, I urge all of you to join the forums and help us - the forum address is www.thrivegame.canadaboard.net, and that will be linked in the description as well.
You can also find us at www.revolutionarygamesstudio.com - we really need programmers, artists and musicians, especially programmers.
If you know how to program and it sounds like a fun game, something you would like to help, we desperately need you to make this game a reality.
Artists, we need people who can work 3D models - if you know how to use Blender that would be fantastic, we’ll be sure to use your models in the microbe stage which we’re working on right now.
Musicians, we always need new themes, we can always use another song or two.
I also urge all of you, again, like us on Facebook at Thrive, follow us on Twitter @Thrive_Game, and post on the Subreddit/r/Thrive.
So, thank you all and that is all.
Well, that’s the end of our podcast - hopefully next time we’ll have questions from you to answer and some more content from the microbe stage ready for you.
That’s all from us, thanks for listening, this has been the Revolutionary Games Thrive podcast.
Bye.