The Sapling News

• Decreased moisture in 'beach', 'disaster' and 'flower' scenarios, to better reflect what primitive leaves can handle
  
• Changed the milestones of the 'first animal' scenario, as sight is now required to eat
  
• Fixed instincts based on sights actually activating
  
• Made temperature rise in 'greenhouse' scenario less extreme, because evolving heat losing body parts has become harder
  
• Changed the helper notification in the 'greenhouse' scenario to focus on skin and eggs (instead of body parts) to beat the heat
  
• Fixed plants with various seed types not triggering the final 'flower' scenario objective
  
• Finally removed 'ice age' scenario
  
• Added icon for 'swamp' scenario
  

• Made the sea in the 'first animal' scenario deeper, so you can use the just introduced plankton in a larger area
  
• Hovering an organism over terrain where nothing is allowed (for example, because it outside the play area) will no longer show terrain stats
  
• You can no longer place organisms outside the play area
  
• Made scenario clouds less bright, so the bloom effect (to highlight bioluminescence) in the evening is less extreme
  
• The clouds in the greenhouse scenario are now a little higher, so they don't block the view of the plants
  
• Made pollination occur also if the nectar eaters choose to eat other food (making the 'flower' level way easier)
  
• Made 'completionist' achievement more dynamic, so it does not matter how many scenarios I add or delete
  

• Revised the mouth part evolution tree so you can see some air breathing mouths without using the arrow buttons
  
• The 'attractive mandibles' now evolve from the 'larger mandibles'
  
• Made the 'nectar feeder' and 'nectar feeder with external parts' much better at extracting energy from nectar
  
• Decreased the hitbox size for the 'semi aquatic plant eater'
  

• Various fixes to remove incorrect family tree lines in the plant and animal editors
  
• Eggs that are not the default land/water hybrid eggs now also have hover labels telling you what species is inside (instead of FPS eating errors in the log file)
  
• Fixed the archive button
  
• Made sure the leave buttons (to main menu or desktop) continue to work, even if the autosave right before it fails
  

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].

Loading save file version 9 is still supported, but if you click 'save' now the game will also remember:

• The secondary color of juvenile stages and other sexes
  
• Traits specific to juvenile stages and other sexes
  
• Instinct and diet options specific to juvenile stage and other sexes
  
• The birth locations of species
  
• In the species detail view, not only which species your species is eating, but also in the form of what food type (eggs? fresh meat? etc)
  
• Fungus organism caps
  
• Fungus mutation chance
  
• Energy collected by living plants and animals (to increase the chance they live through the night)
  

• Fixed a problem where plants died after saving and loading: the game incorrectly thought all plants were in an environment too wet and without nutrients
  
• Added an autosave when exiting the game
  
• Removed needless logging from the save/load process, making it much faster
  
• In the savegame list view, sandbox saves now show the sandbox icon
  
• You can now save scenarios before completing the first objective without the game crashing
  
• When loading a scenario, night cycle periods are now set correclty
  
• When loading a scenario, allowed alga and plant colors are now set correctly
  
• Fixed a crash when exterminating populous species immediately after loading a save
  
• Added save file versioning explanation to the load view
  

• There is now a main objective view before you start, including an explanation you get only 1 attempt
  
• Starting the daily challenge now only 'counts' AFTER you click 'let's go' in this new objective view
  
• Added events like meteorites to the objective description
  
• Fixed time stopping bug when the meteorite hits the world
  
• Removed options to the retry from an autosave (which didn't exist anyway) if you fail
  

• Removed the option to mutate organisms that didn't reproduce yet (but just survived long enough) because this messed with the species counts... I think it contributed to the negative population size problem
  
• Removed 'mutate' from the dropdown menus in the sandbox, as mutating doesn't make sense in this game mode
  
• Removed the 'mutate' button from the organism detail views
  
• Added a mutate icon to the species detail view, but only when mutating is possible (so not in the sandbox)
  

• Fixed bodypart hitbox sizes for juveniles
  
• Fixed a crash that sometimes happened when resizing body parts of a juvenile animal
  

• Added grass and fresh meat energy for 'semi aquatic plant eater'
  

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].

• Added grass as a separate food source, so not all plant eaters automatically become grass eaters
  
• Added marine snow as a separate food source, so not all filter feeders automatically become deep sea animals
  

• Added fungi, grass and marine snow
  
• Prey can now also be excluded/focused for their secondary color
  
• Prey can now also be excluded/focused for their skin pattern
  
• Fungi can now be excluded from a diet
  
• Added animal specific color vision bars
  
• Polished positioning of color bars
  

• Eaten plankton statistics are now shown correctly on the species detail view
  
• Eaten grass statistics are now shown correctly on the species detail view
  

• Add fruit and sap food types to 'generalist with external parts'
  
• Added fruit to 'primitive air breather'
  
• Added fruit to 'trunk'
  
• Added grass to 'spike resistant plant eater'
  
• Added grass to 'temperature regulating plant eater'
  
• Added fungi to 'tusked generalist'
  
• Added fruit to 'pointy teeth'
  
• Added marine snow to 'filter feeder with external parts'
  
• Added marine snow to 'deep sea meat eater'
  
• Added marine snow to 'marine snow feeder'
  

• Further polishing of body part positions in subslots
  
• The body part 'attractive tuft of hair' no longer disconnects from the body when you scale it up
  

• Revised the random mutations system for instincts, so it can handle all new instinct extensions
  
• Added new diet options to random mutation system
  
• Added hormone mutation
  
• Incorporated all new skin patterns
  
• Fixed various statistics that were not correctly changed when a bodypart is upgraded or downgraded
  

• Grass in the species detail view no longer looks like a single blade
  
• Added way more blades to the Linux grass shader
  

• The random mutation chance view now scales with the screen size (and is no longer controlled by the GUI scale setting)
  

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].

• The color pickers now show the colors as the animal sees them, unless you are hovering a handle
  
• Made sure all dropdown panels are always visible and not out of screen
  
• Improved hitboxes of all dropdown panels, so you don't accidentally hover a button under a dropdown panel
  
• When selecting something (like an action), the dropdown panel will not immediately close anymore, so you can also set further parameters
  
• Fixed white circles (slot indicators) showing through the diet and hormone views
  
• Removed the glitchy white circle for the compact instinct view (in the organism and species detail view)
  
• Only show the 'display' option if the animal actually has something to display (that is, bodyparts that have a 'folded' state)
  
• Polished positioning of the color pickers
  
• The lower part of the range indicators in the color pickers now also shows being hovered
  
• Added labels to the 'see alga', 'see plant' and 'see animal' instinct condition parameters
  
• Fixed the skin pattern buttons disappearing and incorrectly showing whether selected or not
  

• Fixed a problem where various buttons stopped responding if you used the 'ready' button in the hormone list
  
• When removing hormones, also remove all instincts that reference it
  
• You can no longer click 'feel a hormone' if the animal has no hormones
  

• Different sexes can how have different instincts
  
• All sexes will share their hormones, but can have different hormone behavior (starting and change per day)
  
• Different sexes can now have different diets
  
• Different sexes can now have different nesting behaviors
  
• Different sexes can now have different egg laying behaviors
  
• Different sexes can now have different poison/venom statistics
  

• Added new sound effects to ballistic tongue mouth
  
• Removed default sound from various mouths that were not supposed to make sound
  

• The random mutation chance view now scales with the screen size (and is no longer controlled by the GUI scale setting)
  
• Fixed problem where creating a fungus directly after an alga lead to putting the alga in the world again (instead of the fungus)
  

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].

• Added current locations of organisms
  
• Added origin (birth) location of species (not saved yet)
  

• Shells can now only be placed on top of an animal, and always face the right way
  
• Added a 0.5 second cooldown after placing body parts, which prevents that the 'quick flicker' if a bodypart modifies the torso shape
  

• Fixed the save action failing if there was an animal in the deep sea
  
• Fixed mixing up fungus species after saving and loading
  
• Fixed super old age of fungi after saving and loading
  

• Places where an animal can survive, but only in the deep sea, will now be orange
  
• The text indicating whether the animal will survive will change color to indicate importance (orange if the animal can only survive in the deep sea, yellow if the eggs won't survive)
  
• The ocean current speed will now be correctly recalculated if you lower the ocean height and then raise it again
  
• Fixed the color of the fastest ocean current speed in the information view (was pitch black)
  

• A juvenile animal no longer copies its statistics from the parent; it might be completely different after all
  
• Fixed current resistance of 6 dots (max should be 5)
  
• Added attack to electric tail
  
• A plant's temperature range is now infinite if it sheds its leaves and flowers before they freeze/burn
  
• The trunk mouth now gets a lot more energy from eating soft plant tissue (reason: it has less time to eat now animals sleep at night)
  

• Fixed plant branches not being available in the daily challenge
  

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].