Species 0.5.0 is out!

Species 0.5.0 is out, and with a second alpha release under our belt we are now a totally professional games development outfit- pfffhahahahah I can’t say that with a straight face.

I do, however, feel like we’ve reached a milestone. 0.5.0 introduces several massive new systems (including temperature, grazing, 3d trees and a water plane) and dramatically changes the look, feel and scale of the game. It’s also a lot less clunky and a lot more streamlined than 0.4.1 was, and the evolution itself is much more interesting and unpredictable than before thanks to tweaks and bug fixes.

Get it here: http://www.speciesgame.com/

It’s still an alpha release, of course. It still has it’s fair share of bugs and oddities, and a long way to go. But we’re on our way.

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Controls
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Left-click to select a Creatures or Species, or Use the Selected Tool.
Use the buttons on the UI (or C/X/Z) to switch between Creature/Species/Ecosystem Selection Modes.
Use the Details And Statistics Button (or Tab) to discover more about the selected creature, species or world.
Use the buttons in the top-left (or ~, 1, 2 or 3) to set the Time Accelleration

RTS Camera
– Pan: WASD, Up/Down/Left/Right, or move the mouse cursor to the edges of the screen
– Rotate camera: Q/E, or Right-click and Drag
– Zoom: Scroll the Mousewheel, Shift/Ctrl, or Page Up / Page Down

FPS Camera
– Move: WASD, Up/Down/Left/Right
– Rotate Camera: Right-click and Drag.
– Toggle Flight: Press Spacebar
– Rise/Fall: Q/E.
– Sprint: Hold Shift.

Orbital Camera (activates in Creature Detail Mode)
– Rotate camera: Right-click and Drag
– Zoom: Scroll the Mousewheel, Shift/Ctrl, or Page Up / Page Down

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New Features
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Biomes (x23)
– Now each with a distinct ground texture, grass billboard, and vegetation type.
– Based on a variable fertility/temperature map, continually updated in real time.
– Biomes include snow, swamps, forests and lava plains.

Trees
– 3d Instanced models (thanks Jade!)
– Edible foliage (because only lollypops uniformally decrease in size as you eat them)
– More realistically scaled trees. (creatures can now walk under the tree’s)
– Hereditable tree simulation.
– Tree’s influence biomes.

Grass
– Biome-specific Billboard grass (purdy!)

Water Plane
– Creatures float, and swim at 1/3rd their normal movement speed.
– Has a heavy influence on fertility.
– Water replaces the crater in prevent

Disasters
– Player triggered only, for now.
– Temperature (enables global warming and ice ages)
– Fertility (enables droughts)
– Water height (enables floods)

Grazing
– Grassy biomes are grazable, providing a secondary food-source for herbivores.

Music
– 5 tracks, set to play randomly with 3 minutes of quiet between each track.

Species Names
– Species now have randomly generated names, (with genuine bio-latin-gibberish!)
– The blank slate slugworms are now officially known as Primum Specium.
– Names mutate during a speciation. (closely related species will have similar names)

New World Page
– Pretty new biome-compatible preview map
– Creature-type Preview Thumbnail
– A variety of new options, including statistic modifiers, vegetation growth parameters and diet efficiencies.

Other features
– Simulation Time tracked. (because everyone likes knowing how much time they’ve wasted)
– Revive Button
– Species List (w/ populations) visible on Ecosystem page.
– Flash of red text when creature hardcap is reached.
– A number of new head types.
– etc.

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Tweaks and Fixes
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Usability
– Explainy Tooltips
– Redundant selection-mode buttons
– New players should be able to find their feet a lot faster. (hint: bottom of your legs)

Fat Torso Mutation Bias
– Fixed.
– Creatures now evolve into a much greater variety of forms. (this is honestly one of the biggest fixes )

Thin Legs
– Increase speed, but come with a stamina cost
– Vice versa for thick legs

Facial Feature Mutation
– fixed an issue that was suppressing the expression of facial features (Species: now with even more hideously surreal faces!)

Meatpile/Corpse size
– Smaller on both counts. (RIP my massive fields of meat. You will be missed)

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Cheers!
Qu

Species 0.5.0 OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE

Species 0.5.0 is now feature-complete (from an engine standpoint). Everything that remains is bug fixes, performance upgrades, and compatability-programming for everyone using Shader Model 2.0, as well as importing various assets from the other dev-team members.

So, with that said, I offer you this mysterious and alluring PNG image with absolutely no hints as to what it could be referring to:

What could it possibly meeeaaan?

…

“You know those fuzzy noise pictures where if you cross your eyes and stare really hard, after a few minutes you’ve got a horrible headache and you still can’t see crap? And everybody else is like “I see it!” and you’re like “WHY DO I SUCK AT THIS SO MUCH?!”

This is like the really easy version of that.”