The Sapling News

Today, the first build of the Scary & Sexy update is available on the beta branch on Steam. Saying that it's experimental is an understatement: there are still hundreds of known bugs, to be fixed in small patches over the coming weeks. Once things are stable enough, it will be made available for everybody (not just the beta branch).

For an idea of what this update contains:
* A Youtube playlist of 6 devlogs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQQCZ0BbgSc&list=PLLKMinLKRdXxSFGcKxGSRh_hMQMIjp4fK&index=6
* Overview on the player maintained wiki: https://the-sapling-encyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Scary_%26_Sexy_Update

At the moment, the content of the next big update is being revealed step by step on the The Sapling YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheSapling . The most recent video saw the announcement of the name of the update: Scary & sexy, including both horror elements and elements related to sexual reproduction. We are only halfway though: only 3 out of the 6 devlogs for this seasons have aired at the time of writing.

The update will be available on the beta branch on October 31. It usually takes about 2 months before it's stable enough to be released to everyone on the main branch.

Game crashed on startup

Reason: I forgot the game tried to fetch some information from an old website, which now has another function. I've removed this behavior.

Improvements to the species detail view:
* For animals, it now shows what they are eating, but also what they are eaten by.
* For both 'eaten' and 'eaten by', it now shows the food type (meat? eggs? blood?). This is not saved yet, so you will lose this information if you save/load.
* The stats tab is now always the first one.

Balancing evolving ecosystems:
* Before, after turning on random mutations, most aquatic ecosystems lost all biodversity because 1 strong omnivore predator ate all young of the others, and relied on algae for the rest of its calories. The size restrictions (how much smaller does a young animal need to be before you can eat it) are now much stricter so eating young is less OP.
* Decreased the energy carnivore mouths could get from eating eggs.
* Mothers that are ready to give birth, but cannot find a good place (in crowded environments), will now continue to move instead of standing still, waiting for a place to free up.
* Plants evolving from the grass shape to the 'single plant' shape now have the matching seed (as opposed to always the primitive seed).

UI fixes:
* Fixed the question mark tooltip for light reaching the soil
* When pressing 'm' in the editors, to work with user generated body parts, a rudimentary mod panel now appears

Misc:
* Fixed an error, caused by the animal species name generator, that often appeared with high animal mutation rates
* Fixed a problem where the game could get into creature placement mode after reloading for memory reasons

Overviewed of tweaked body parts:
* https://the-sapling-encyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Jawless_Mouth
* https://the-sapling-encyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Facultative_Aquatic_Carnivore_Mouth

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].

This patch is mainly about a huge optimization for algae and lots of changes to the planet editor, but there are lots of smaller things, for which I'd like to thank the players on the forums (special shout out to Uber/Ace and Material Ghost) and the many players emailing me.

Algae optimizations:
* Algae that get born out of the visible range of the camera are no longer even created (as opposed to created but hidden). If the camera moves closer, they are created 'just in time'. In worlds full of algae, this can lead to framerate increases of ~30FPS (!)
* When moving the camera in and out of the water, no longer all plankton is turned on/off... instead, only the ones close to the camera, decreasing the lag spike.

Polishing and fixing the planet editor
* There now is a habitability score, indicating the likiness of plants and land animals evolving before you start a world
* When in spherical mode, you can now drag to rotate the planet
* When in flat map mode, the size of the map increases and decreases to indicate to chosen map size (only a visual effect)
* The plant colors now have more explanation and question mark tooltips
* Improved the explanation text for wildfires
* Added a title and subtitle instructions for the season editor
* Added tooltips for the icons in the season editor
* Centered the 'ready' button and made it respond to mouse hover
* Volcano placement mode is now turned off if you switch tabs

Balancing:
* Nectar eaters get a bit more energy from nectar
* Herbivores get a bit less energy from soft plant tissue
* Various omnivore mouths no longer eat eggs
* The strongest ocean currents now require less speedy animals

Disaster fixes:
* Manually changed ocean levels no longer reset after going into an editor
* Moving the camera directly after launching a meteorite no longer leads to meteorites floating in the sky
* Doing a timejump right after a meteorite no longer results in perpetual darkness
* Doing a timejump right after a volcano eruption no longer stops the eruption process

Fixes for the 'locate organism' feature (the magnifying glass)
* Instead of sometimes failing, this feature will now quickly try again until it finds a good example organism
* Locating organisms now also works for plankton
* Clicking before hovering any button in the species list view no longer closes the species list view

Changes to the mutation mechanics:
* The addition of animal body segments is now more likely (so creatures can evolve longer necks or tails)
* Readded changing bark type

Bull dozer circle:
* Now also removes underwater creatures
* Now with the option to 'invert' (so remove everything outside the circle)

Misc fixes:
* The presence of mist no longer prevents the sound effect options from working
* Weather sound effects are now also muted underwater
* In the detail view, plankton in the world is now clickable for more information on the species
* In the detail view, clicking on the family tab multiple times no longer duplicates the rotating models
* Fixed the positioning of the UI in the 'see' dropdown for the lower instinct slots in the instinct editor
* When mixing multiple seed types in one plant, you should now see the correct color for all of them

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].