Sapiens News

Hi everyone!

I’ve been making great progress on the next big update, and have some news to share, Sapiens 0.5 will come with full multiplayer support!

Sapiens 0.5 will be available to everyone in 2-3 weeks time, on the unstable branch, with the full stable release coming in July.

We’ve been running a private test with members of the community playing together on a persistent dedicated server for the past few weeks. Initially things were a little rough, with a number of bugs and performance issues to iron out. But despite this, it was clear early on that multiplayer was amazing.

I still enjoy just sitting down and playing Sapiens from time to time, but these multiplayer sessions have been by far the most enjoyable for me. Watching other tribes grow, checking up on their progress, stealing their ginger roots when they were offline, just general good fun.

Multiplayer adds a whole new dimension to the experience, and so I felt it was worth spending a little longer to get in and fix those bugs and optimize it now, and ditch the “experimental” disclaimer.

The main result of that extra time is that we’re now able to support more sapiens, and more players. These optimizations benefit single player too, so I have now doubled the sapien population soft-limit in single player, and I’ve removed the camera restrictions too, so you can freely move and explore as far away from your tribe as you like.

This work is just about complete, and so I’m moving back to finishing off other 0.5 features, fixing a few bugs in the new sleds and AI tribe trading mechanics, things like that. Overall it’s really coming together, and I can’t wait for you all to be able to play, even more so now that I’ll be able to join some of your worlds and see what you’re creating. Not long now!

-Dave

Thanks everyone for all of your support throughout 2023!

The 0.5 update is progressing nicely, and over these past couple of weeks I’ve made a lot of progress on multiplayer and AI tribes. But with the update just about to enter the first testing phase, it’s still going to be another few weeks before it’s ready. So while you’re waiting, and with over 70 mods available, now is a great time to try out a few!

If you haven’t installed any mods before, Sir Lich’s new Christmas 2023 mod is a great place to start, to add a purely visual festive vibe.

Vanilla Tweaks makes it easy to configure a wide range of new options to change the gameplay and interface, and set things up just the way you like.

Chop and Replant is a handy mod by Witchy that adds a new button to the radial menu, allowing you to automatically replant trees that have been chopped down.

Some role assignment automation is coming to the vanilla game in 0.5, but AutomatedRoles (also made by Witchy) gives you the ability to automatically mange your tribe’s roles already, with a bunch of control too.

Bone Crafting adds a bunch of bone related content, with furniture, bone broth, a giant axe and even wind chimes

And Time Control Plus adds some handy information to the clock.

Some of these mods require Hammerstone, which is a base mod you’ll need to install first. If you need any help installing mods, there is a great tutorial on the Sapiens wiki.

And if you’re interested in making your own Sapiens mods, this community created mod development wiki is a fantastic place to start, and the discord linked there is great if you want to get more involved or have questions too.

I hope you have a great holiday season, and we’ll see you again in the new year!

-Dave

Hi Sapiens fans! I've been working hard on the big 0.5 update, and it is getting closer to being ready for testing. There are still a few more weeks of development left to go, but it's definitely time to share some details about what's coming.

So what's new? Firstly, AI Tribes! Now in 0.5, when you are picking a tribe to lead, the other tribes around will actually be there in the game. They'll have their own villages, and you can send some of your sapiens over to meet them.



Once you have met an AI tribe, you can then trade with them, or complete a variety of optional quests. Trading uses a "favor" currency, where you gain favor by providing resources that they need, or for completing quests. You can use this favor to ask them to deliver resources in return, and the more favor you have with a given tribe, the better they will treat you.



Given that AI tribes will sometimes be some distance away, 0.5 also introduces sleds, which are a movable storage area. You can set them up like any other storage area, and use them to deliver larger quantities of items directly, or as part of a transfer route.



As well as AI tribes, there are a large number of other features and improvements. Here's a few of the bigger ones:
- We have a new notification list, so you can go back and look at what happened if you missed something
- There is now an option to auto-assign roles. If no sapien is available to complete a task, it can automatically reassign someone else
- New tool racks, shelves, and smaller and larger storage areas
- Much improved tribe selection and less restrictive map zooming, so it's a lot easier to find the right tribe and location to start.

And there is still more to come! One great thing about working on interactions with AI tribes is that most of that work was also required for multiplayer. So in 0.5, I'll be shipping experimental multiplayer support, and it's shaping up really nicely. You will have simple options for managing whether you share resources with other players, so you will be able to work together to build a large village and pool resources, or build up separate villages and trade (and later, fight) with each other, or some combination of both.

The 0.5 update won't have any conflict yet, but it's planned for 0.6, along with the full release of multiplayer. I am expecting to release 0.5 early next year.

Keep in mind that the features I've mentioned here and these screenshots are a work in progress, there will still be changes before the update is released. If you would like to keep up to date with progress, you can join the discord, and I'm now posting frequent progress updates here on the Steam discussion forums too.

It's been longer than I would like to get this update out, but we're on the final stretch now, and I'm really excited to get it into your hands as soon as I can!

- Dave

With this update your tribes will now function much more efficiently, and if they still don't quite do what you want, you now have a lot more control by prioritizing orders.

New in 0.4.2:
AI and fixes:
- You can now prioritize any order at any time. Sapiens will tend to choose prioritized orders to complete first.
- You can then deprioritize orders again to restore them to the default prioritization level
- Different plan types are now prioritized differently by default, so idle sapiens are much more likely to choose a recruit or hunt order than a store order.
- The outputs of prioritized orders retain the prioritization, so if you prioritize a gather order on an apple tree, then the store orders for the apples will also be prioritized
- If you manually assign sapiens to an order, they will drop everything and are much more likely to continue to work on that order.
- Sapiens are now a lot more likely to continue a single task to completion. Hunting in particular is much improved.
- Taking a required tool to an order site now requires the order's role, instead of the general labor role. This improves efficiency as that sapien can then complete the order, and it stops tools getting stuck lying around waiting for the right sapien.
- Telling a sapien to stop, or manually assigning a sapien to an order now causes them to drop what they were carrying
- More Fixes, optimizations, and UI improvements

Balancing:
- More visitor tribes in the early stages of the game
- Visiting sapiens tend to stay longer
- Crucibles now degrade when used
- Reduced quantity of manure produced, as it was excessive and degraded performance
- Reduced quantity of sapien vocals when time is fast forwarded

0.4.1 is a minor bug fix update, mostly fixing issues relating to AI around compost bins, but with some important other fixes too.

- Fixes issues with sapiens getting stuck delivering to compost bins
- Fixes issues when restricting the use of rotten resources in the resources panel to disable composting
- Sapiens will now carry and deliver multiple items in one load to compost bins
- Compost now degrades after a year, as it was building up indefinitely and causing problems
- Improvements to AI prioritization
- Fixes issues when running on Linux under Proton
- The hammer now degrades when blacksmithing
- Sapiens no longer get hungrier while sleeping, which helps avoid having sick or injured sapiens starve and leave

Though this update does contain some AI improvements, I'm working on another update with some more major improvements to the priority system and AI too, so you can expect 0.4.2 soon.