Project History

The following is a detailed account of the project’s history. Many of the events early in its evolution are uncertain as the users who witnessed them are no longer part of the team.

Some of the older sites linked have since descended into the seven levels of spam hell. We’ve provided the links for posterity, but recommend you only click them if your antivirus is up to scratch. Links marked with (*) are full of spam, others should be safe.

Zeroth Era: Spore's Backstory

Up to Feb 2009

Conceived as early as 1994, the original concept for Spore featured a procedurally generated universe with player-created organisms, machines and nations. At the time, Maxis was an independent game studio co-founded by designer Will Wright, the man responsible for the idea of Spore. In 1997 the studio was acquired by EA, and over the next few years improvements in home computing and video game technology meant Wright’s concept could actually be developed. By 2005 early previews of Spore appeared to live up to Wright’s hopes, and many fans of simulation and video games in general were hooked.

A schism emerged within the Spore development team. According to Wright, one group of developers wanted heavy realism while another wanted to emphasize cuteness and child-friendliness. There have since been accusations that the cute camp was backed by EA sales directors in the hope of appealing to children, hence selling more copies, but these claims have never been confirmed. Whatever the reasons, after missing its slated release date of 2007, Spore was released in 2008 to mixed reviews. Critics praised its effortless editing abilities but found gameplay shallow, with many of the features highlighted in the 2005 presentation missing. Fans loved the creativity aspects but some were angered at how EA/Maxis had shied away from realism and depth. In their view, it didn’t live up to its grandiose vision.

Almost immediately fans called for sequels or expansions to fix these issues, and while Maxis created several DLC packs, none addressed the core complaints: no realistic evolution, needlessly cute aesthetic and lack of gameplay depth. Concepts for improved versions abounded, but few had any rigor or attainable goals.

First Era: Evolutions!

Feb 2009 - Mar 2010

In early 2009, a Sporum user called Hirnsausen posted screenshots of a game called Evolutions!, claiming it was a scientifically-minded Spore-like game being developed by students at Berlin University. The announcement thread has since disappeared due to a forum glitch, but there is an archived version of the first few pages. Evolutions! promised realistic-looking organisms, evolution by natural selection in the surrounding environment and extremely detailed graphics. While some Sporum users were convinced, others questioned how such a complex piece of software could exist without any fanfare elsewhere. After posting several more “screenshots”, Hirnsausen admitted the entire thing had been a hoax. His stated intention was to convince EA/Maxis they had competition in the hopes they’d address Spore’s issues.

While EA never even noticed, several users decided it wouldn’t be a crazy idea to make the hoax a reality, developing their own spiritual Spore successor. Some notable members of this team were Hirnsausen, ParadoxJuice and ~sciocont. Hirnsausen took the lead of the Evolutions! development team and wrote a basic design overview, setting up a forum dedicated to the project (which has since gone offline save for occasional archive captures). The Evolutions! concept took the idea of Spore and ran with it to extreme levels, adding editors for everything from organs to events, all set within a realistic simulation of evolution by natural selection.

The Evolutions! project went about as well as anyone could expect of a disorganized team of dissatisfied Spore fans, many of whom were teenagers or younger. Some people did develop comprehensive gameplay mechanics (such as ~sciocont’s organism editor) but it was mostly talking about unfeasible mechanics with little to no proper work being done. Prototypes never progressed beyond the most basic (and even those were made in Scratch). Only outlines of gameplay systems could ever be created.

During this time many other notable figures from Thrive’s past appear, including US_of_Alaska, Tenebrarum, Commander Keen, Inca and The Uteen. They joined the Evolutions! Forums at some point that year.

In an unnerving mirror of Spore’s development, a rift appeared in the Evolutions! team. This time, however, the rift was between Hirnsausen and almost every other user. Spambots became frequent on the forums, but Hirnsausen was absent too often to deal with them and didn’t give administrative privileges to anyone else. Calls for changes went unanswered, and the label of development was misleading at best, so people got frustrated. Some users set up a backup forum (*) containing the most important concepts just in case the worst happened.

Feeling abandoned, some users broke off from Evolutions! in early to mid 2010, taking the most fleshed-out concepts via the backup forum and one other forum to a new development forum (*). A poll was conducted and Thrive was chosen as the new name. This forum was the centre of Thrive development for most of its history.

Hirnsausen, ParadoxJuice and others continued trying to get Evolutions! back on track, but it disintegrated when their forum went down permanently. Some users, including ParadoxJuice and Inca, eventually discovered Thrive. Others have never been heard from since.

Second Era: Non-Development Development

Mar 2010 - Mar 2013

By the time 2010 became 2011, Thrive was its own entity. The forum was bustling, now with ~sciocont in charge and plenty of moderators to deal with spambots. Members returned to locations such as the Sporum to promote the game and ask for developers, having shed the weight of Evolutions!.

Sometime at the beginning of this stage several programmers appeared (Bashinerox and roadkillguy being the most important to the narrative). Bashinerox was clearly more skilled than any of the previous programmers, and for once it seemed procedurally-generated organisms would see the light of day. Until, with no explanation, he disappeared.

Many had placed their faith in Bashinerox to do the proper development, which until then had been rare. Since most forum users were still ex-Spore fans hoping for something amazing to replace it, the forum was largely a hub of speculation and baseless ideas. There were exceptions of course, mostly from the senior members and moderators mentioned earlier, but most discussion could never really pass for development. As a result, Bashinerox and the other programmers felt they’d been unjustifiably tasked with creating impossible features, which is a fair judgement.

Even so, the team expanded their web presence from 2010 to 2013 in several ways. In the hope of creating a solid outreach system they created an IndieDB page featuring more professional news updates. A recurring Devblog also emerged on the forum, written by ~sciocont (and later NickTheNick). From the outside and even from a cursory glance of the forums the project looked like it had traction, but below the surface very little was happening. In three years some incredibly detailed concepts emerged, but there wasn’t a prototype to speak of. In late 2012 Seregon started work on the Thrive codebase on GitHub, which we still use today, but at the time it was experimental and only involved engine work.

In mid 2012 the frustration at the lack of progress resulted in roadkillguy, the last remaining programmer, announcing his resignation (*). He believed the team was in the wrong state to ever create anything tangible, having been founded by ideas people who had a distorted perspective of what was achievable, rather than programmers who knew how difficult it would be to implement ideas suggested by ‘everyone and their dog’. The project was effectively little more than a sponge for Spore 2 wishlists.

To add to this, the team’s roster of members was being renewed fairly regularly. Three or four stayed for this entire period, but elsewhere members left and joined left, right and centre. It’s at this time though that the first Thrive members still with us arrived (NickTheNick, Seregon and Oliveriver). Several members tried to attract programmers elsewhere on the internet, and there was a general refocus towards the Microbe Stage exclusively for the time being to keep targets achievable, but if the project was to survive something else needed to happen.

Third Era: Boom and Bust

Mar 2013 - Jul 2015

By early 2013 the project had recovered a little from the crisis of 2012. Beyond all belief, the first internal releases emerged, but these were no more than tech demos. The project still had little chance of success. In March, a few anonymous Reddit users changed everything.

Outside of the Evolutions! and Thrive bubble, opinions of Spore had hardened. Even the most devoted fans were abandoning it, and it was often used as a prime example of EA’s issues as a game studio. Like the original Sporumers, many were hungry to see Wright’s concept revived, to get the evolution game they’d dreamed about.

One day in March 2013, someone posted a screenshot of comments on the Spore 2005 demo angry at how it hadn’t lived up to anywhere near its potential. Someone posted a link to Thrive’s forums in the comments, and another user submitted the link as its own post. Thanks to the communal need for another Spore, it quickly reached the front page and the Thrive forums were overloaded with newcomers. This event is known as the Reddit Boom. It was a mess, but within the huge influx the project received something it desperately needed: programmers.

Nimbal was the most important of these new programmers. Together with ~sciocont (still around and still in charge), NickTheNick and others, he formulated the first version of the Game Design Document. For the first time, the project had achievable features laid out properly for a programmer to understand. A few others coded prototypes too, incorporating basic evolutionary changes, compound processing systems and an early draft for the microbe editor. In the few months following the Reddit Boom, the project saw its fastest period of development and engagement. Thanks to WJacobC the team set up social media outlets, and Oliveriver built an early version of the Thrive website to replace the IndieDB feed and forums as the center for Thrive outreach.

All these changes should be taken with a grain of salt. roadkillguy returned in the midst of activity and still derided the project’s direction. In retrospect we can say the project had started on the road towards success, but there was still a lot to do.

The superficiality of Thrive’s progress became clear the following year, when the initial burst of activity wore off. Programmers were still working in the intervening time, but updates were still relatively basic. Developer jjonj joined around this time, and from late 2013 to mid 2014 was the only programmer actively working on the engine.

In an effort to focus development further, the team introduced an application system to separate developer discussion from the fan discussion which had plagued the project’s history. The first version of this involved a separation of the forum into two sections, with members having to post an application thread to be accepted into the developer section. It was successful at reducing useless discussion in the places that mattered, but led to the side effect of the forum as a whole tipping far more towards the fan discussion the change had meant to eliminate.

Thanks to the new perspectives of extra members and renewed understanding of the project as a whole, this period saw the greatest shift in the underlying Thrive philosophy. It may have started out as a revitalization of Spore, but soon the motives changed to the general pursuit of a good simulation game. A lot of concepts in the old days were directly inspired by Spore, but by the end of this period Spore rarely even came up in development discussions about game mechanics. Now the team feels it's misleading to label the game simply as Spore 2 or a Spore successor, although we realize much of the project's popularity comes from that assumption. There are some undeniable concepts inspired by Spore, such as the overarching game structure and use of stages, but the direct mechanics have changed massively since their first inception, necessitating a move away from the mechanics of Spore.

Actual development in this period was slow but meaningful. Nimbal created the first version that looked vaguely like a game in October 2013, shortly before his departure, and jjonj picked up where he left off, adding elements such as GUI and an editor. In mid 2014 moopli rejoined (having joined in 2013 but leaving soon after) and sped up the release of 0.2.3. Its flagship features were new AI species, reproduction budgeting and save/load states. Unfortunately, it took until February of 2015 for the next release, 0.2.4, to be finished, typifying the slow but steady nature of the project at this time. Other events of note include the arrival of tjwhale and StealthStyleL, and the departure of ~sciocont, the team’s only remaining link to the past.

Fourth Era: Actual Cell-Shaped Cells

Jul 2015 - Aug 2016

By mid 2015 it was clear the forum structure wasn’t working. Add to that the fact the forum host had started adding spam links to posts and development seemed to be moving further inwards thanks to the core team’s reliance on the newly utilised Slack, and it was obvious something needed to change.

Over several months the team expanded the idea of separation for the good of development by setting up two forums: a new development forum and a community forum. Now fans were free to run wild with ideas as they pleased (and, as it turned out, a startlingly large number of forum roleplays) while proper development happened elsewhere. The application system was revamped to an email-based system run through the website, with the new development forum invitation-only. By June 2015 the entire system was in place and the old development forum, which for so long had served as the center for Thrive, was abandoned. It was a necessary change, as since then the old forum has become malware central.

In mid 2015, TheCreator joined as a programmer and started work on the procedural membrane needed for 0.3.0. This was the first time the game had actual cell-shaped cells. It arrived in late 2015, followed shortly by 0.3.1 in early 2016.

Since then, development has progressed at a leisurely pace, determined by members’ free time. The team has progressed beyond its roots to a more secure footing, with semi-regular releases and well-defined web presences (as well as a second edition of the Game Design Document). We’re still waiting for roadkillguy to return again and tell us nothing has really changed.

From mid 2015 onwards, the team has published Devblogs as news installments on the website. Some of these have concerned releases, while others are either minor progress updates or announcements of other events. The most notable of the latter were a discussion of how to create evolution games with the developer of Species: ALRE (who first made contact some time in 2014) and a general Thrive survey. At the same time, outreach on Facebook and Twitter has stepped up, helping sustain the sense of progress needed to keep motivation high.

At the time of writing, the release of 0.3.2 is on the horizon, featuring compound clouds. It’s incredible that the project has somehow sustained itself for so long despite all its trials and the impossibility of the whole venture. Although it's had a turbulent past, and actually looked like it was about to die off at times, Thrive's now stronger than it's ever been.

For further reading on Thrive’s history, see here and here.

Aug 2016 - ???

So what now? What will become of Thrive? Can it ever succeed?

From late 2014 onwards, the team has been waiting for the game to reach a stage where it’s attractive enough to newcomers to reliably convince them to get involved. When cells were made of hexagons and compounds were emitted as discrete packets that wasn’t the case, and while 0.3.2 isn’t perfect, it’s still far more promising than the earlier releases.

Soon after the release of 0.3.2, once the team understands the plan and has everything in place to help newcomers, we’ll begin a proper outreach effort. The aim is to recreate the effect of the Reddit Boom but be more successful at dealing with its aftermath. In 2013 the project looked problematic, but since then we’ve taken major steps to tidy up, formalize concepts and create a more reliable appearance. Hopefully this time more programmers will stick around and the project can finally reach a stage of self-sufficiency, not reliant on certain members’ free time.

We feel Thrive has the potential to do amazing things if only this obstacle could be removed. An open-source project of this magnitude without funding has never been attempted before to our knowledge, but to come so far and not die is encouraging. We hope to foster a community of science enthusiasts and game developers building from those first foundations made years ago. We hope to achieve Will Wright’s vision of a procedurally generated universe, although this time we’re taking it one step at a time. Someday we may progress beyond the Microbe Stage, and that day will be a momentous occasion.

Someday we may reach the end of the Space Stage and look back on all of this in wonder. The project is already the sum of seven years’ work (even if a lot of it wasn’t really development) and this goal will take far longer. As players’ spaceships enter the Ascension Gate at the end of the game for the first time to begin their crafting of evolution from the start all over again, we hope they’ll appreciate what it took to get there.

Future Wiki editor, please delete this section and replace it with what actually happened.