The Sapling News

Completely refactored how plant and animal color is processed, leading to fixes like:
* Dragged body parts no longer have the 'error' color (bright pink)
* Dragged leaves take the color of the plant they are about to be attached to
* When dragging the color pickers, the color of the animal changes in real-time, to the correct colors
* When the animal has no secondary color, the secondary color pickers are now disabled
* Billboards (for optimization) now take on the color of the bark instead of the main color of the plant
* Animals that are hurt flash red again

Improved UI for the 'allowed color' mechanic:
* Replaced the weird '4 boxes' light color picker with regular sliders in the planet editor
* There's now a small 'randomize light color' button in the planet editor
* You can no longer place alga and plants if the color is not allowed, for example when you got them from the archive
* Added 'allowed color' to the requirement panel for algae and plants

Finished moisture and drought resistance as a statistic for leaves:
* Added a first draft version of the statistics to all leaves
* Added the statistic to the plant requirements panel seen when placing
* Plants outside the moisture range take damage
* Added 'too dry' and 'too way' as possible death causes

Entered rough body part stats for:
* Leaves
* Eyes
* Mouths (not finished)

Worked on animations for the new body parts:
* Putting new body parts behind the animals to get a tail (like the rattle, club tail and thagomizer) no longer leads to the animation system crashing
* All new mouths now correctly open when the animal is eating
* Added attack particles for the electric eel fins and poison spraying abdomen
* The mouth with the ballistic tongue now has its own eating animation

General UI improvements:
* Redesigned the animal requirements panel, with separate icons for whether an area is suitable for animals and eggs
* Added limits for the night cycle period slider in the planet editor
* The new species names on hover no longer show through other UI elements
* Added a new '300 degree' icon for the eye field of view statistic

Small editor fixes:
* Improved the hitbox for the aquavision eye
* In the alga, plant, animal and fungus editors, hitting 'h' will now remove handles and dust/bubbles, so you can make better screenshots

Completely refactored how body part stats are stored: there now are user editable statistics files in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\The Sapling\the_sapling_Data\Resources\BodyPartStats". This allows me to enter body part statistics faster for the next patch (most of the new body parts still have placeholder statistics), but also allows any player to make changes and see how that affects the simulation.

Finishing up individual (new) body parts:
* Improved hitboxes for all attractive body parts, so you can move and scale them (way) more easily
* Changed 2D icon to be closer to 3D models:
* plate
* attractive fins
* Added folded version for various body parts when put on the side
* Large attractive feathers
* Spine sail
* Other color display
* Other color crest

Fixes to the animal editor UI:
* You can now also remove sexes with the right mouse button
* Fixed a problem where a white joint dot in the animal editor incorrectly remained solid (hovered) until the cursor touched it again
* The 'hanging baby' toggle now only shows for the adults, and only when the JUVENILE form has hands (whether the adult has hands is irrelevant)
* The animal editor now shows the correct default tab when you click 'behavior'
* Fixed animals becoming glitchy/invisible when you put a mouth on the back of an animal

Various fixes for animals with shells:
* making swimming animals with the shell skin types (the turtle ones) no longer crashes the game
* Reworked skintype shells so they could part of the animation system, and thus move more naturally as the animal walks
* Skintype shells no dissapear in the distance
* Body part shells (the slug ones) now also work with the hiding action

Completed the animal noise feature (rattle, cicada tymbals, etc)
* Increased the visualization size, and added a short delay so the sound matches up better
* You now actually hear the sound in the world
* You now hear the sound when looking at the species detail view
* Noise sounds are no longer created every day

Fixed animals that could crash the game:
* Aquatic hanging babies no longer cause game breaking errors
* Fixed problem where animal with >4 legs became so slow they didn't move at all

Small UI fixes for the planet editor:
* Fixed tooltip that was too eager in the planet editor
* 'Randomize all' button no longer leads to a corrupt sandbox

Misc smaller touches:
* Added screenshake for fungi
* Fixed the disclaimer text when you start the game (wasn't showing before)

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].

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.