The Sapling News

• Completely overhauld camera rotation. It feels much smoother now, in particular for smaller mouse movements (thanks Neptun!)
  
• In the cinematic camera panel, you now have much more finegrained control over the slower region of the camera speed slider (in exchange for less control over the faster region).
  
• There's now a button in the cinematic camera to export the camera path between the first two camera presets. It's stored as a JSON file in the game's save folder.
  
• The camera no longer glitches out when rotating besides the terrain (thanks Krzysztof Michalik, Amora Feray and Kazandaki!)
  

• Fixed a problem with procedural animation system getting confused about single eyes/horns on the back of an animal, causing the plant duplication symptom (thank Hope Crazy!)
  
• Fix for a situation where animal models were cleaned before they existed, fixing the timestopping bug (thanks seagullman87!)
  

• Bandaid: all population sizes are now quicly recounted before opening the species list view
  
• Fix: when grass dies because of a temperature or ocean level change, the population sizes are now correctly updated (thanks Krzysztof Michalik!)
  

• The species list view now remembers the chosen organism type filters (thanks Izaiah Bradford!)
  
• Fixed accidental camera movement and clicking organisms when the species detail view was opened after focusing on an animal (thanks Akleughuglouh!)
  
• Fixed the game not resuming after hitting ESC in the notification list view (thanks Akleughuglouh!)
  

• You can no longer click on the volcano button in the sandbox if you don't have volcanoes. (thank Izaiah Bradford!)
  

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].

• Made the mouths 'aquatic generalist with external parts' and 'ballistic' water/air hybrids
  
• Tweaked energy collected from eating meat, so eating meat is always a better choice than eggs or live prey, making carnivores more viable long term
• 
  
• Made egg eating less effective and old meat more effective for 'obligate aquatic meat eater' and 'sword'
  
• Made 'meat eating mouth on stalk' more powerful
  
• Added blood as food source to the 'meat and blood feeder' (thanks Nefilol Seflll!)
  

to make pregnancies shorter and live birth more viable (thanks Mazus!)

• Halved all embryo development times for mouths
  
• Halved all embryo development times above 1 for attractive body parts
  
• Set maximum extra embryo development for limbs to 1
  

• Fixed large leaf appearing to be huge in the list view
  
• Fixed some leaves floating besides the plants instead of scaling
  
• Fixed deep roots sometimes appearing besides the plant
  

• Added animal body part scaling to mutation system
  
• Fixed glitch when the system tried to mutate leaf scale for a plant that has no leaves
  
• Decreased the change of losing torso parts, to decrease the chance of bipedalism
  
• Added a new mutation: duplicating torso parts, to increase the chance of gaining limbs
  
• Added the option for attractive body parts to be copied to other locations (on top of the animal, on the back)
  

• If an animal species has sexes, the game will now show arrow buttons to rotate through them
  
• Made species 'eating' and 'eaten by' clickable, so you can jump to the species and learn more about them
  

• Increased statistic dot size for mouth stats
  
• Fixed typo 'animal' in daily challenge
  
• In the animal detail view, correctly name the 'hide' instinct (thanks al!)
  

• Larger animals now have better cold resistance (was already the case for fatter animals)
  
• Fixed negative species caused by overwriting plants of the same species (thank Xander Winans!)
  
• The aquatic generalist mouth with external parts is now unlocked by default in the greenhouse scenario
  

* aggressive meat eater, pointy teeth, meat beak, venomous fangs, aquatic meat eater with external parts, aquatic obligate meat eater, generalist mandibles, aquatic generalist with external parts, meat and egg eater, attractive mandibles, generalist, aquatic air breathing meat eater, scavenger, scavenger beak, aquatic pointy teeth, sword, primitive air breather, jaws, meat eathing mouth on stalk, tusked meat eater, aquatic meat beak

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].

Fixing bugs is hard if you can’t make them happen on purpose, because you won’t know if your changes worked. As an experiment, I'm asking players to help find the exact steps to trigger certain bugs, with cash rewards and a mention in the patch notes as a thank you. At the time of writing, there are rewards for negative population sizes, plants duplicating, wrong species family trees, and camera problems.

See https://thesaplinggame.com/bounty for details

• Removed expected age: now, as long as there is detritus in a location, a fungus has a 90% chance of staying alive. This means they can become very old.
  
• Fungi now live in cycles of 60 days, only showing themselves the last 20 days of the cycle. This prevents every world being full of mushrooms all the time.
  
• Made larger fungi less likely by decreasing temperature and wind resistance with size
  
• Fixed inverted temperature resistance statistics when hovering a cap in the editor
  
• Added a LOD mechanism to mushrooms, so they dissappear when you zoom out, to save performance
  

• Made short grass better in low temperatures and long grass better in high temperatures, and vice versa
  
• Tiles with grass now always have detritus, as it represents a constant cycle of grass plants dying (and being replaced)
  
• Fixed plant behavior when dropping grass in a place that already had a plant: it no longer becomes transparent, and no longer moves a bit as if replaced
  

• Added leaf scaling to the random mutations system
  
• Fixed potential illegal state that could be achieved by mutating some fin types in subslots
  
• Fixed mutating carapaces (turtle shells)
  
• Fixed plants with detached roots
  
• Found and fixed another reason that caused animals to incorrectly show plants as their ancestor
  

• Added more variation and intuitive statistics to minimum and maximum temperature
  
• Buffed moisture resistance, to open up a larger part of the leaf tree to wet planets
  

• Shortened top row button tooltip delay
  
• Fixed 'millenNia' typo that has been there for 5+ years :(
  
• Better error message when trying to create an animal that fertilizes eggs externally, but doesn't lay eggs asexually
  

• Fixed position of large leaves when moving in the wind
  
• Fixed plants far away from the camera continuing to move fast when the player switches to normal time speed
  

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].

• Fixed a gamebreaking problem that could emerge with hormone instincts after an animal lost a hormone
  
• Fixed a save file corrupting problem related to saving instincts and diets for the non-default sex
  
• Removed various log messages slowing down the simulation when sped up
  

• Areas automatically get their nutrients filled up by nearby water, so in these areas plants can evolve without the need for fungi
  
• Added more random variation to the 'starter plant' that evolves from algae
  
• Fixed a problem where the shown statistics of the stilt (mangrove) roots didn't match its statistics in the simulation, leading to plants not growing in 'high moisture, max softness' areas
  

• The daily challenge now uses a less extreme variant of the planet generator, to prevent planets that are too hot or windy for starter organisms
  
• Medium moisture is now the default planet setting (instead of maximum)
  
• Fixed seed selection mechanic, so it should no longer be possible to get the exact same daily challenge two days in a row
  
• Fixed bugs that caused the daily challenge to not always lock for the day after trying
  
• Fixed 'animals that change sex during lifetime' objective not registering
  
• Time is now paused until you click 'let's go'
  

• Sleep pattern buttons are now greyed out for the smallest body size, because their lifespans are so short that they will die before they get tired
  
• Dropped support for multiplacement mode (CTRL)
  

• Hearts to indicate mating now only appear when the animal is somewhat close to the camera
  
• Zzz to indicate sleeping now only appear when the animal is close to the camera
  
• Merged all colored spheres for the flypaper trap into 1 object, so they no longer have a measurable impact on performance (fewer draw calls)
  

• Fixed a bug where opening the detail view for multiple species in quick succession caused their names to be mixed up
  

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].