1.0.0

Our efforts to make Thrive feel more like a full game continue with the release of the Thrive launcher. Although it makes no changes to the game itself, it vastly simplifies release downloading and management and paves the way for improved game file functionality in future.

In this release:

• The launcher automatically gathers the list of releases from our main GitHub repository and allows you to switch between them. You can choose which version(s) to download from a list and the launcher will handle all the downloading and unpacking for you.
• RSS news feeds for our website's Devblog and latest posts from our development forum, keeping you up to date with the Thrive world whenever you run the launcher to play.

Instructions:

Download and unzip the launcher for your operating system, then run the .exe within its folder.

Planned features:

• Ideally we're hoping to add delta file updates, meaning that each time a new version is released, only changed files are downloaded to overwrite your existing copies. This has the massive advantage that you'll no longer need to download the ~700 MB game every time we give you a new version. The engine files are by far the largest and won't change often, so delta updates should be far smaller.
• Some way of managing mods. We have a few mods already, but replacing the necessary files for each can be confusing. In future, we hope to streamline this process.
• Improved visuals. If you're an artist or programmer with HTML or CSS experience, we'd love for you to help out here.