Sapiens News

It's been a slow few months of development, with a number of sicknesses slowing things down, and some big tasks requiring the update of a lot of assets. But we finally have an update!

I had planned to work on more features first, but this contains a fix for the graphics driver related crash which needed to be addressed quickly. So we're getting foundation blocks and 1x1 floors a little early, and more content and gameplay features are not too far away.

New in 0.6.1:

• Adds foundation blocks as a new option for building
  
• New textures for mud brick and stone block walls, floors, roofs and paths
  
• Adds 1x1 floors
  
• Improved frame rate
  
• Mud brick structures now degrade much slower in rain
  
• Fixes graphics driver related crash
  
• Fixes a bug where tile paths were not rendering some of the tiles
  
• Fixes bug not being able to plant close to garlic
  
• Lowers the population soft limit to 150 from 200
  

This update adds seven different breeds of fish! It also brings new detailed textures and shaders, improves all animal models and behaviors, adds a range of colors for alpacas and woolskins, and contains a number of bug fixes and balancing tweaks.

Fish can only be caught via spears at the moment, which can be thrown from the water. Fish hunting and canoes in general still need some more work, and angling will be added within the next couple of updates. However fish are already a nice addition and a valuable food source.

In other news, Majic Jungle has an employee now, it's finally not just me! Paddy has been working on all of the new models for this update, and we'll be continuing to refine these new models, as well as improving a lot of the other models, textures and animations.

And this is just a start, there is a lot of new content in the pipeline.

New in 0.6:

• Adds fish
  
• Improves Alpaca, chicken, mammoth models and animations
  
• New detailed textures and shaders for all objects
  
• New lighting model improving consistency, especially when moving between indoors and outdoors
  
• Adds a variety of alpaca wool colors
  
• Improved mob spawning, migrating, and general behaviors
  
• Improves water rendering, with major improvements for both high and low quality
  
• Fixes for multiplayer, making it easier and more reliable to invite and connect to Steam friends
  
• The role assignment UI now shows sapien age and distance, and allows sorting
  
• Adds option to invert mouse movement horizontally
  
• Adds option to disable chat notifications in multiplayer
  
• Removes the need to research every type of cooked food individually
  
• Gather, store, and transfer plans can now all be completed in the dark
  
• Canoes now correctly require wood working and not wood building
  
• Fixes bugs where they got stuck delivering or picking up resources
  
• Fixes bug where send/receive orders could get forgotten when your tribe hibernates
  
• Reduced birth rate, especially if food levels are low
  
• Faster spear hunting and baking research speeds
  

Hi everyone!

A new update that has just gone out, which adds two major new features: Canoes, and point and click mode.

Canoes are simply hollowed out logs, which provide a small amount of storage space, room for one sapien, and very fast transport over water. As well as making it quicker to retrieve distant resources, they also make it possible to trade with more distant tribes.

Point and click mode is a whole new separate camera/control option, where instead of a first person 3D view, you can have a visible cursor always, and click on objects easily. This is a highly requested feature, is now the default, and should work well for many players, however the 3D camera mode will stay, and you can switch between them at any point in the settings or with ctrl+tab.

As well as these two major features, there are many other tweaks and fixes. The population now grows faster, and levels off at a higher maximum cap. Your sapiens will now walk faster and further to complete tasks than before, and there are some quality of life features like a new chop & replant option, and contour/strata lines on the terrain to add detail and make the lie of the land clearer.

This is not a “major” update, it’s just another step on the way, and we’re not done with boats and water yet. Right now I’m working on fish, and the next coming update will have new modes of water transport, a number of different fish, and fishing, but log canoes are a good start, and I wanted to get this in your hands now.

I hope you enjoy the update!

- Dave

Full release notes:

• Adds canoes
  
• Adds point-and-click camera/control mode. This is now the default, you can switch back to first-person/3D mode in the settings or with ctrl+tab
  
• Adds chop and replant order
  
• Adds configurable contour lines on the terrain to help you determine altitude changes
  
• Investigation tasks now provide some context to help distingush between them
  
• Increases population caps and birth rates
  
• Increases walk speed by 50%
  
• Rock and tile paths now require only one rock/tile per path segment
  
• Digging dirt/sand and dirt/sand paths is now faster
  
• Reduces mammoth spawn rate in the early game
  
• Doubled the distance that sapiens will travel to complete orders
  
• Increases camera ray hit distance so you can issue orders for objects that are further away
  
• Fixes multiselect bug where sometimes you couldn't issue terrain clearing/digging orders even though some selected vertices were valid for that order
  
• Fixes crashing bugs
  
• Fixes bug where items in storage areas on uneven terrain appeared to float
  
• Fixes bug where the function keys wouldn't work to open the tribe/build/settings menues if a menu was already open
  
• Fixes bug where keyboard shortcuts didn't work when the resources panel was open
  

With the release of the Sapiens 0.5 multiplayer update, a lot of the previous roadmap is now complete. Your feedback has helped to lead the direction of the game, and I have a few new features I want to add, so it’s time for a complete new roadmap!

This roadmap covers all of the features I intend to add before the 1.0 release. There are many more features I’d like to add beyond that too, but this is a good set of launch features that can be achieved in a reasonable timeframe.

VR is the only removal from the original roadmap, all other omissions either have been implemented, are still planned, or have been replaced by other equivalent features. The VR market has changed substantially in recent years, and my goals and priorities for Sapiens have changed a bit, but I do still genuinely want to support VR one day.

These updates will mostly be going out in much smaller bite-sized releases from now on, and if you want to keep a close eye on development and help test new features as they are developed, please do join us on the Discord.

-Dave

Phase One - Travel, trade and culture

• Canoes to transport goods and sapiens quickly by water
  
• Fishing, new animal species, animal husbandry and pack animals
  
• Trading of research, technologies, luxuries, animals and sapiens between tribes
  
• Improvements for a nomad play-style, with movable shelters and beds
  
• More types of quests, challenges, and random story events, like crop failures
  
• More diverse personalities, behaviors and social interactions, and a family tree panel
  
• A need for recreation, with new activities to help your sapiens relax
  
• Increased variety of sapiens, animations, expressions, and vocal phrases
  

Phase Two - Conflict and advancement

• All conflict will be optional, with peaceful modes
  
• Attack other tribes and defend against raids with new weapons like bows and swords
  
• New tools for commanding and managing separate groups of sapiens
  
• Burial, cremation, and stretchers/sleds for moving incapacitated sapiens
  
• A need for water, with the addition of spring water sources
  
• Game controller, Steam Deck, and Steam achievement support
  
• Share world creation seeds along with starting locations and world configuration
  
• New paths and roads, furniture, structures/walls/roofs, fences, signs, doors and gates
  
• New ovens, iron tools, wheeled carts, improved automation, and new industries
  

Notes

• VR was previously listed in the roadmap, but has now been delayed indefinitely
  
• A single player campaign is now planned for Sapiens, but this will be after the 1.0 release
  

New in 0.5.0.79:
- Fixes bug where you couldn't enable mods in previously created worlds
- Fixes crashing bugs when using translation mods, enabling storage sharing, and a couple of other rare crashes