The Sapling News

[p]Apologies for the inconvenience everyone! I was stupid enough to release a patch that introduces a major bug right before the devlog period. As editing the devlog videos eats all of my time, and they have a deadline, I couldn't fix it before today. But the last video is uploaded now, so here you go :).[/p]

[p]It all starts with new legs, like ones inspired by the kangaroo and insects, but the old walking system just couldn’t handle them. So I rebuilt the system from the ground up, with shorter iteration times and way more polish. Now animals can hop, climb steep terrain, and even walk with insect or reptile-style legs. But this is only the beginning: the real theme of the update is hidden in the first episode…[/p][p][/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[p]Back in May, I asked a simple question: what happens if you place a few primitive organisms on a brand new planet, switch on random mutations, and let evolution run… for an entire month?[/p][p]To find out, I launched a 31-day Twitch livestream using The Sapling. Starting with just a basic alga and an aquatic animal, we watched as life on planet Wright-1b unfolded in real time. Every adaptation, every extinction, and every surprising twist played out live.[/p][p]Over the course of those 31 days, we saw:[/p]

• [p]Algae abandoning the seafloor to drift freely across the waves.[/p]
• [p]Dordias rising as king of the seas, with sharper eyes, stronger fins, and teeth.[/p]
• [p]The first land animals evolving legs, followed by faster descendants with long limbs, bipedal forms, and eventually protective shells.[/p]
• [p]Seeds hitchhiking to new continents by clinging to the fur of aquatic animals.[/p]
• [p]A meteor impact plunging the planet into darkness, allowing fungi to take over and fungus-eating animals to thrive.[/p]
• [p]An ice age reshaping ecosystems, with plants adapting by going dormant and animals finding new survival strategies.[/p]

[p]To share this story beyond the livestream, I created daily shorts narrated by Leo Richards, known from Natural World Facts. Many people asked to bring everything together into one complete video, so I made an extended cut that combines the highlights with new narration and extra footage.[/p][p]Watch the full 31-day recap on YouTube[/p][p]This project wouldn’t have been the same without the community. You named continents, suggested disasters, and even kept a living wiki running during the stream. Thanks for being part of this journey - here’s to many more evolving worlds![/p][p]Wessel[/p]

As I've focused on the livestream and a new upcoming big update, it's been quite a while since I've released a patch of bugfixes. In the mean time, I have continued to process bug reports, though, and also made improvements to keep the livestream running. As the next batch of videos in September will undoubtedly bring a bunch of new (and returning) players, it's time this work gets released. Apart from some potential hotfixes for problems caused by this patch, this should be the last patch before the next big update!

• Removing old unused information related to alga spores, seeds, eggs, carrion, nests and fungi from memory
  
• No longer save old unused information about fungi to the save file, making save files for very long simulations up to 70% smaller
  

• Removed color from classifier, slightly decreasing the number of species generated
  
• Saving takes a smaller bite out of your memory usage
  
• Various smaller optimizations to handle large amounts of species better
  

• Further optimized how existing animal in a crowded map are loaded in, avoiding unnessary model builds from scratch
  
• Fixed problem where some animals loaded in later not going invisible when the camera moves away, which caused very low FPS
  
• Made mechanism for removing large animals and fungi in the distance more strict, highly increasing FPS when there are lots of those
  

• Fixed egg types never changing (thanks Corbett Collins!)
  
• Stricter definition of land animals: should have land only eggs OR walk (instead of dragging)
  
• Made the evolution of land animals more likely
  

• Fixed the tully mouth and an extra mouth on top (thanks Patrick Pattinson!)
  
• Fixed problem when adding a blowhole (thanks Shemariguess!)
  
• Fixed problem with overlapping mouths (thanks Gruisman!)
  

• Moved the YAML files where players can edit stats to `the_sapling_Data\StreamingAssets\BodyPartStats`, so it will actually work this time (thanks Gruisman!)
  
• Nerfed the temperature protection of shells
  
• Nerfed how much weight long bird legs can carry
  
• Nerfed underwater drag of long bird legs
  

• Fixed exterminating plankton from the species list view (thanks SeedlessWatermelon!)
  
• Whenever a savefile gets corrupt, instead of hanging, the game now closes itself and creates a log file
  
• Fixed an error that occurred when an animal with sex B (or C, D etc) causes a new species
  
• Turned off hanging babies for now, as they were giving too much errors
  

I often forget to read comments below release notes, so if you have questions or bug reports, feel free to reach out via the Steam forums or [email protected].

I'm streaming The Sapling, 24/7 for 1 month. We started on planet Wright-1b with a simple alga and underwater animal, turned on random mutations, and now we watch what evolves.

See https://www.twitch.tv/wesselstoop for details!

Announcement video:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]