The Sapling News

* Made leaf models with even fewer polygons, which should greatly increase the frames per second (= a smoother experience)
* Removed a lot of invisible polygons from the sandbox terrain, which should greatly increase the frames per second
* Changed the prebuilt organism library to somewhere which is always outside the camera frustrum, so it's not 'considered' for drawing and animating, which should greatly increase the frames per second
* The game now reuses procedural materials whenever possible, so the GPU has less work to do (more FPS) and the game needs less RAM
* Added various question mark tooltips to the editors
* Fixed the render distance for babies
* Fixed crash/glitches after loading savegames with instincts
* Fixed 'feel' instincts being saved incorrectly in a savegame file
* Fixed scenario redirection after loading and then winning a scenario
* Player edited soil and family relations are now also stored in a savegame file
* Stopped optimization technique that fakes models that are not ready yet from also being used in the desert level
* Toned down the sun shaft eye candy during some times in the day night cycle
* Recolored the 'eats meat' icon
* Small improvements to where plants can grow for the sandbox and flower level

* Choosing savegames!
* Autosaving
* Camera improvement: it's much harder to go underground
* Camera improvement: rotating around a moving animal no longer leads to glitches
* Added animal temperature panel during placement
* Flying and climbing animals can now eat at any height
* Fixed procedural walking glitches for bird feet
* Got rid of ugly white edges in habitat textures
* Small fix for temperature resistance calculations for plants in the editor
* Fixed hand edited sandbox soil textures; you can now also see them immediately after coming out of an editor
* Fixed lots of new unlocked body parts overflowing the alert box in the editors

* The fight & flight update is now out on Linux too!
* Animals with bird legs no longer get stuck in the floor
* Random rotations for animals after placing manually
* Random rotations for animals after visiting the editors
* Random rotations for animals after time jumps
* Notification: you unlocked the sandbox
* Improved description mountain level
* The species example organism is now always the last one you build, taking away a lot of confusion!

Today the Fight & Flight update is available for evolution simulation game The Sapling. This second big update extends the game with eggs, fur, feathers, family trees, an extended combat system, gliding and most importantly: wings.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Over the past few weeks, all of these new features have been introduced one by one in a series of devlogs. An overview, as also shown in the trailer video:

• Bodysizes
  
• Edit soil
  
• Family trees
  
• Attacking instincts
  
• Defense
  
• Instinct and sense visualization
  
• Scales, feathers and fur
  
• Eggs
  
• Beaks
  
• Sitting in trees
  
• Gliding
  
• Wings
  

Besides these new features, there is still a long list of small bug fixes and enhancements, so expect many smaller polishing updates over the coming days and weeks. Once that is out of the way, the 6th and final video devlog for this update, about the game's music, will follow.