Hey everyone!

It's been a while since the first BIOME alpha, and quite a lot has happened since then!

Alpha 1 introduced the new evolutionary framework and gave us a first look at what it could do performance-wise. But it was also missing a few fairly important things. Like, you know... being able to close the game without losing your entire ecosystem.

So let's start with that!

Saving and Loading!

You can now save your BIOME simulations and come back to them later!

Most of the save-writing and compression work happens in the background, allowing the simulation to continue after its state has been captured. There can still be a pause while preparing a large snapshot, but you don't have to wait for the entire file to finish writing before things start moving again.

Loading, returning to the menu, and quitting also wait for accepted saves to finish.

Because a save that was almost saved isn't particularly useful lol.

A few limits: this is BIOME world saving. Importing 0.6 worlds is not planned, and saving individual BIOME Bibites into the old Bibite Library is still missing.

Expressivity: carrying something doesn't mean using it

One of the features discussed in Alpha 1 is now implemented: Expressivity affects what actually appears in a Bibite's runtime structure!

A module can remain in the genotype without being expressed in the organism. Its associated nodes won't appear in the active network when that module isn't expressed.

This makes the difference between the Genotype and Runtime panels much more meaningful: one shows the inherited description, while the other shows what is actually running.

Why is this interesting?

Because evolution can potentially retain structures that aren't currently being used, rather than having to completely delete them. Changes in expression can then bring those structures back into play in future descendants.

Think of a lineage carrying a rarely expressed module. Most descendants might get along without it, while the ones that express it get to test whether it is useful in their particular environment.

Of course, failing to express something essential can also produce a nonviable offspring. Evolution gets more possibilities, including more possibilities to make terrible decisions!At the same time, we spent a lot more time balancing the probabilities between network increase and structural deletions, so we'll see if that helps bibites getting ever incresing networks.

Two new Modules!

Random Module

The Random module produces a new normally distributed value every simulation tick, with inputs controlling its mean and variance.

This gives networks an explicit source of randomness that they can influence. It could be useful for varying movement, exploration, or other behaviours where doing exactly the same thing every time isn't the best strategy.

Inheritance Module

This one is particularly interesting!

The Inheritance module lets a parent pass a runtime value to the corresponding module in its offspring. The child then keeps that inherited value constant throughout its life.

The value passed on is controlled by the parent's network, rather than being limited to a fixed genetic parameter.

So a parent's internal state can potentially influence a value its descendants start with!

This is a small building block, but I'm very curious to see what evolution might do with it.

Implemented missing systems

We've implemented many missing systems from 0.6

Swallow whole pellets that fit their mouth and stomach.

Grab, hold, release, and throw bodies.

Vomit stomach contents through negative swallow activation.

Added metabolism-scaled ageing and collision damage.

Reworked reproduction costs to account for offspring anatomy.

Other improvements and fixes

Improved entity dragging across simulation speeds and while paused.

Added pellet tooltips showing material, amount, energy, mass, and freshness.

Improved Biology panel values and runtime network inspection.

Fixed several mutation and network-initialization issues.

Improved selection and camera-follow handling when targets disappear.

Corrected loaded settings reaching the simulation before it resumes.

Fixed several autosave timing, retention, and automatic-reload issues.

Added further Burst compilation to mutation and statistics processing.

Addressed several sources of NaN and infinity values.

If invalid physics values still occur, the game can save the affected world and warn you to share it with us. A new setting, enabled by default, removes affected entities during loading while keeping the original save file unchanged.

Please do send those saves! They are much more useful for investigating than “my Bibite disappeared and then reality broke.”

What's still missing?

BIOME is still an alpha, and plenty of the familiar 0.6 tools haven't made the jump yet.

The Bibite Library, species and ancestry tracking, historical graphs, towers, pheromones, and the planned procedural Bibite visuals still need further work.

I'm especially curious to see what you find with the new modules, and whether rarely expressed structures start producing interesting surprises over time.

Thank you all for supporting this enormous rebuild, testing the alphas, and reporting all the wonderfully cursed things your Bibites manage to do. <3

Have fun, and let me know what breaks!

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