Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution News

So... it has been a while since I last spoke.

I have posted the full details of my hiatus the Species development blog. I'll provide a shorter version after the link, but I'd recommend reading the full story here:

An update, an explanation and an apology

Keeping it simple: I was suffering from untreated mental illness, which I am now getting treated. Thanks to finding the right medication for me, I have more motivation and energy than I've had in many years and am eagerly throwing myself back into development.

I'm sorry for seemingly abandoning the game. I don't think there was anything I could have done to prevent the hiatus, but I should certainly have communicated my situation better. I have no excuse. I'm sorry.

Species 0.14.0 is on it's way: it will introduce eggs to the game, as well as including a significant overhaul to pregnancy and diet, and a number of notable QoL improvements. And yes, I'm planning to dedicate a good long while to tracking down and eliminating those irregular crashes. The most common ones have already been addressed.

I hope in time, with regular releases and my fair share of hard work, I can regain your trust and help rebuild the wonderful community that formed around this little game.

Gratefully,
Quasar

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab.

Changelog

* Fixed a problem with creatures becoming unkillable undead abominations trapped eternally in a permanent 0 HP state of "Dying".
- Looks like they managed this by changing their state from "Dead" to something else before the world could detect that they were dead and despawn them.
- Also by pledging their souls to unknowable occult forces or something, the little rascals.
* Fixed a problem with creatures unecessarily continuing a fear response after combat, even after other emotions have surpassed fear.

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab.

Changelog

* Fix a multithreading-related crash when a creature modifies it's Behaviour Tree while another creature is accessing it via combatInstance.
* Fix a multithreading-related crash when a creature's target is set to null in while it is attacking aforementioned target.
* Fix a multithreading-related crash when a creature's combatInstance is set to null while it is attacking
* Fix a crash when a rover cannot pathfind around player built fences (this may occasionally result in a some very confused rovers)
* Ignore a potential crash when loading the clade diagram: keep loading the game and reset the clade diagram instead.
* Added some additional error detection to catch problems before they become crashes.

You can opt in to the experimental branch by right clicking on "Species", selecting "Properties" and going to the "Betas" tab.


Changelog

* Overhauled hunting behaviours
- Predators will stalk their target while outside detection range, conserving energy as they approach
- Predators will chase their target once within detection range
- Prey will flee if they detect an incoming predator
- Predators will pounce on their target when close enough, dealing bonus damage and initiating a combat instance

* Overhauled combat instances
- Creatures will lock on to each other and take turns trading damage until one dies or flees.
- Predators will lock prey into combat to prevent a flee-fight-flee behavior loop.
* Food source competition
- Aggressive creatures will get angry at other creatures trying to eat their food, and may attack them.
* Added red circles to highlight combat taking place.

* Fixed an issue with some of the more sporadically-used particle systems (blood sprays, pings, strike effects) not rendering
* Fixed the rover camera pitching up when driving forward with W or Up
* Tweaked creature camera movement to be simpler and easier to control
* Added default positions for rover and creature cameras
* Tweaked shade-giving tree's to provide shelter from both hot and cold temperatures, providing up to 10 C offset towards an average of 20 C at their base.
* Tweaked cannibalism to be slightly viable instead of a complete non-starter.

* Improved support for content mods (body parts, skins, etc)
- Texture mods can now be loaded from *.bmp, *.gif, *.jpg, *.png, *.tif and *.dds formats
- Stats and Mutation Mapping can now be stored in the same file

Changelog:

* Added Cost/Benefit analysis to mouseover text when playing as creature.
- Technically, this is just leftover debugging code. But it's cool to see and it make's the creatures decision making a bit more transparent.
* Fixed an issue where creatures would consistently underestimate travel costs
* Fixed an issue where climbing cost would sometimes generate a NaN error and result in creatures ignoring the affected food source.
* Fixed an issue with the Immediate Family Tree displaying no more than 3 children icons.
* Fixed a crash when the Sat Map loaded a reference to a creature that wasn't bound to a Species.
* Fixed a crash when the Species Averages view was opened.
* Threw another fix at the crash coming from the Immediate Family Tree, hoping it would stick this time.
- There's always a stubborn one every update, isn't there?