The Sapling News

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].

This patch contains a fix for the problem with the forgotten music volume after a automatic reload many of you have reported! Furthermore, it contains various new features related to terrain modification, which required a new savefile format (8). Savefile format 7 is still supported.

The terrain now changes after disasters:
* The terrain height around vulcanoes now increases after an eruption. For volcanoes in the middle of the ocean, this means volcanic islands.
* Meteorites now create a crater in the ground.
* Soil around volcanoes now become more rocky (less soft) after an eruption

Other changes related to disasters:
* Made the ground water and temperature changes ater volcanic eruptions and meteorites strong at the center, but gradually weaker further away
* Updated the meteorite notification
* Fixed a crash that occurred when you dropped a meteorite and then skipped time.

The soil now recolors dynamically every 10 years:
* After burning, terrain now becomes scorched for a while.
* Grass no longer has a 'ground plate' of its own, but influences the soil color. This allows for more more gradual transitions, similar to the ones we already had for snow.

Improvements for the mutation mechanics:
* Primitive plants (evolved from algae) can now also have fibrous roots, making it possible for land plants to emerge on wetter planets
* Fins on top are now way more likely to develop
* Animal diets are now way more likely to change
* Instincts are now way more likely to emerge

More food balancing:
* Carnivores are way more aggressive now, so they actually survive and can evolve on their own
* Nerfed grasshopper mouths even further: they will drown faster and get even less energy out of soft plant tissue

Fixes to saving/loading
* When saving a plant evolved from an alga, the seed type now is stored correctly!
* Planet rings are now stored in the savefile
* Fixed a problem where saving during a season with ocean level increase, and then loading again, led to the ocean level being even higher
* Added 'slots' for a number of future ideas in the new save file format

Misc:
* Fixed a problem where getting up the surface to breath took too much time for aquatic animals with blow holes, causing them to drown

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].

Changes to temperature on your planet:
* Added the option to add a ring around your planet, making the equator (below the shadow) colder
* Seasonal temperature changes are now way less extreme near the equator, giving plants a 'safe haven' to evolve

Temperature related fixes:
* Fixed that plants using wind pollination weren't aware of the temperature (which allowed them to grow in very cold and hot places)
* Fixed that some seed types (like the ones sticking to fur) weren't aware of their temperature limitions (which allowed them to grow in very cold and hot places)

Instinct fixes:
* In the instinct editor, dropdowns no longer disappear when you move the cursor down too slowly
* In the instinct editor, dropdowns now disappear when you click anywhere next to them
* Prevent mutating animal cries if the animal can't make any sounds
* Prevented instinct mutation from mixing up various instinct options ('if you [feel] food' instead of 'if you see food')
* Slower animals can now also use 'go towards' instincts again
* Fixed a problem where algae 'forgot' their colors in the underlying simulation (still visible), which stopped color seeing instincts from working
* Added a missed mechanic where colors of other animals couldn't be detected underwater

Fixes to statistics:
* I still haven't been able to fix the problem with negative population counts, so I've now added a workaround that counts all organisms from scratch every now and then. Negative species are still possible, but they should be less common now.
* You can now click the 'info' button for the species detail view for aquatic animals
* In the species detail view, the death causes now have a smaller font, so you can read the full description
* There now is a 'poisoned' death cause
* There now is a 'ground too soft' death cause
* In the timejump statistics, a species is only counted as 'terrestrial' if it ALSO breathes air (in addition to being able to move on land)

Small UI fixes:
* Made the intro sequence background fitting on larger screens
* Decreased the font size of the time jump notifiction 'prebuilding frequent species', so it fits on one line

Misc:
* Fixed black eyeballs for eyes on stalks
* Fruits can no longer mutate into illegal shapes, causing the game to crash
* Decreased wind strength in mountain level

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 focused on improving the 'late game' experience, adding things requested by the more experienced players.

New performance related settings:
* Alga, plant and animal caps!
* A setting to limit how many species are prebuilt when loading a world: fewer means faster loading, more means more accurate plant and animal models (less reusing other species' models)

Optimizations:
* Removed unused box colliders for plant body parts, adding ~10FPS in situations with many plants
* Simplified check if a growing plant reached its target size, adding ~2FPS in situations with many plants
* Skip checking for gliding and flying animations if the animal cannot glide or fly, adding ~2FPS in situations with many animals
* Added a low poly variant of the stilt root, with the smaller parts disappearing if the camera moves away, adding ~5FPS in situations with many stilt roots
* Preload the stilt root object instead of building it from scratch for each individual plant, adding ~2FPS in situations with many stilt roots

Simple balancing:
* The 'grasshopper' mouth now gets way less energy out of soft plant tissue
* Plankton spreads twice as fast now, so filter feeders don't immediately exhaust their food source
* Blood can only be eaten from animals larger than the predator

Changes to time jumps:
* Redesigned the time jump view, adding a progress bar
* Added an interrupt button (useful for long jumps)
* Added basic information on the number of species, so you have something to keep an eye on during the jump
* Added 15000 and 20000 (that is, longer) duration options

Added rudimentary support for player generated body parts! See https://thesaplinggame.com/ugc

Fixes for animal sounds:
* Made animal calls audible from much further away
* In the instinct editor, disabled the option to 'call' if available mouth cannot make a sound

Improvements for lighting and post processing effects:
* Decreased bottom lighting in the sandbox (mainly used for lighting to rock part of scenario maps), removing a weird nighttime glow on brighter plants and animals
* Removed sun shaft effect at night, also removing a weird glow on brighter plants and animals
* Decreased bloom effect slightly

Misc:
* Fixed sitting in trees

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].