Hey everyone! I'm so glad to be able to present you all the 0.5.0 update of The Bibites!

We have a lot to cover today, so let's not lose too much time and get right into it!

But let's go with the boring stuff first:

Modernity

Starting Menu

I mean... look at that... Night and day. I had forgotten how bad and lame the 0.4.2 menu was... 
It feels weird to boast about doing what's nowadays standard, but I'm proud nonetheless. I'm getting better and so is the sim.

Tooltips Everywhere

No more will you ever wonder what a button or a setting does 😎

Saving/Loading

In 0.4.2, in order to load or save a simulation, you had to first start a simulation, and then had to physically go through a file explorer to locate the save file you wanted to load.  Unacceptable!

We now have dedicated panels that allow you to go through your saves, see the important related information to each, as well as see a nice preview of the map of this simulation, accessible from both the menu and in-game. And if you don't want to bother with that, you have a nice "Continue" button in the menu to load the most recent save.

Settings

Same as Saving/Loading, you could only change the App's Settings while running a simulation, and it was ugly. We now have a dedicated panel accessible.
The next thing I should probably make sure to add would be a key bindings section  🤔

Information panel

A far better-looking information panel is here for you! With a few new functionalities as well 😏

But enough with the boring stuff! Onto the main new features!

Main Additions

Scenarios

One of the main comments I kept getting, was that it was really hard to create interesting experiments due to the amount and complexity of simulation parameters. So I decided to add Scenarios, a way of adding a simpler interface on top of the countless parameters, offering you a few curated interesting simulations right out of the box while still giving you a little bit of control. Of course, you can still then go into the nitty-gritty and create the exact environment you had in mind, and then save it as a scenario to share with others!

Zones

You can now also easily create your own zones, and place them precisely over the map to materialize the exact environment you want to create. Especially since you can now change a few settings on a per-zone basis, like the pellet material to spawn (only plants and meat for now), pellet size, relative fertility, and zone movement, allowing you to create different environments in the same simulation and see how bibites adapt differently to each region! You'll also get a nice estimation of the biomass and pellet count, allowing you to finely tune your scenario.

It's pretty basic for now, but the idea is that this is the first step toward making complex biomes possible as development continues.

Default Bibites

Another comment that I kept getting, was that it took too long for the first bibites to establish themselves and reproduce. The default "virgin" bibite that spawned at the start of every simulation was pretty bad, and even slight modifications to the simulation's parameters could potentially make it unlivable for them.
So, I decided to add a selection of Bibite templates that comes with the simulation. These bibites are used as the "virgin" bibites across the different scenarios, as some environments require specific adaptations, like the Whale, specialized in filter-feeding in dense environments with a lot of small pellets, or the Camel, specialized in efficiency and that can go on for a while between each meal. 
Of course, you'll also be able to save your own bibites and use them as the starting bibites in your own scenarios!

Changing Simulation Parameters After Starting

That's self-described. I added the possibility of changing some parameters during the simulation! Not all of them are there, as there is still a lot of "baking" behind the scene that prevents being able to just change the values and all the simulation's system adjusting reliably, but I'm slowly working my way up the list and adding more. This also allows you to save the current settings as a scenario, for future use.
In the future, this panel could allow the addition of "seasons", where some parameters could vary cyclically over time, but we're not there yet. 

Pellet-placer tool

That's it. I added a tool that allows you to pen-in pellets. Give a pile of plants to your favorite bibite as a reward for being who they are, or just use it to paint ugly drawings as I did there, I don't care, and I'm not your mother, you're allowed to have fun.  

Brain node icons

Better understand at a glance the brain of your bibite. At least, once you learn the different icons and what node they represent.
I mean... it's still very confusing and complex, it's Artificial Life, after all, simple would mean boring. But it's a lot better than it used to be 

Exhaustive List of everything else that is different

New Features

• Added per-material decay options (you can now make plants rot too if you want)
  
• Ruler on the bottom-left corner of the screen to help you make sense of distances and scales
•  Clicking on a tab in the information panel brings you to a random bibite with that tag
• Added Multiplication Node/Neuron (multiplies inputs instead of adding them, very useful for state controlling behavior)
  
• Added save file retro-compatibility for most versions
  
• Removed bibites and free pellets (like meat from dead bibites) from biomass restrictions
  
• Choose the age and mutations on bibites that you spawn in!
• Bibite mouths' hitbox now scales with their diet (herbivores have wider mouths and will catch pellets more reliably)
• Added warning when parameters would lead to a high pellet count (and potentially bad performance)

Smaller Changes

• Bibites' grab strength now scales with the diet gene (herbivores now have a weaker grab)
  
• Added "Additional tools" Panel in the main menu containing links to the wiki, sprite generator, GitHub, etc.
• Added buttons to open the various save folders
  
• Added camera controls (arrows and WASD both work, -/+ changes the speed)
  
• Added default tagging options for virgin bibites
  
• Pressing  the 'Home' keyboard key brings you back to the center of the sim
  
• Added the Sprite Generator back in (in "Additional Tools" in the main menu)
  
• Reworked void-avoidance so it's island based
  
• Optimized Pellet code (having lots of pellets will have a lot less impact on your sim's performance)
  
• Changed Vision System so that it's no longer synchronized between bibites (less stutter, more performant)
  
• Moved Virus Options to unstable features (please, don't play with it, I'm not proud of it 😔)
  
• Moved the project to Unity version 2020.3.41f 
  
• Increased Time precision (from float to double) that should fix some display problems with long-running simulations
  
• Added pellet icons to material settings and pellet placer
• Screen resolution will be automatically selected when the game is opened for the first time (can be changed in the settings)
• Added a few warnings when doing dangerous stuff

Fixes

• Fixed some settings being reset on game load
  
• Fixed some settings not being saved 
  
• Added missing energy sliders when playing with the virus options
  
• Fixed Linear Brain Nodes not computing correctly
  
• Fixed ABS Brain Nodes not computing correctly
  
• Eggs are now counted in tags
  
• Mouths can now be correctly grabbed and attacked
• Connection weights are now properly saved when a node is added to the brain
• A lot of fixes to the expanded brain panel (still can't get tooltips to work reliably there 🤬)
• Fixed bug that would not update some scripts after save reloading
  
• Prevented moving the camera and other controls when editing fields
  
• Fixed various elements rendering on top of the UI
  
• Fixed Events triggering even when hidden by UI
  
• Camera zooming is disabled when the cursor is over UI
  
• Can't grab bibites/pellets through UI anymore
• And a lot more UI Problems 😂

Things Planned for 0.6.0 

• Automated Speciation System + Tree of life
• More Statistics + Graphs
• In-game Bibite editor/creator
• First steps toward the BIOME Algorithm and Unity DOTS
• More Zone customization options

I look forward to your feedback! The last changes were done pretty much last minute and weren't thoroughly tested through and through, so it's possible that there are going to be a few problems or bugs that were missed. If there are a lot of them or just a big one, I'll release a patch as fast as possible!