The Sapling News

• 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].

• 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].