The Sapling News

Large:
* Algae near the shore can now evolve into plants
* Aquatic animals are now also restricted by ocean current speed, making huge population boosts less likely, and giving them reason to evolve
* Fixed a bug preventing aquatic animals from evolving into air breathing animals
* Completely overhauled how animal positions are tracked, making time jumps with a lot of animals much faster

Small:
* Fixed disappearing alga models problem
* Optimization: disabled animations for invisible algae in a few more situations, increasing framerates for large underwater worlds
* Backfins and tailfins can now evolve separately from side fins, taking their own evolutionary path
* Optimization: removed unneccessary checks for swimming aquatic animals, increasing framerates for large underwater worlds
* The algorithm that decides which animal models are built now prioritizes common species, which is both faster and gives a much better display of the variety
* Avoid reproducing in crowded areas (which would make them even more crowded)
* Fixed a simulation bug where children of existing species did not do damage to plants and algae when eating them (that is, they had an infinite food source)
* Fixed glitches related to instincts 'go away from x' near the edge of the map
* Fixed glitches related to algae being eaten even before than can grow
* Fixed a simulation bug causing underwater nests
* The species list view now remembers which filters were (de)activated
* Ocean current speed is now determined by distance from the shore, not wind speed, to make it more gradual and reliable
* Made the game write some more information to the log file, in the hope of catching another 'impossible animal'

Large:
* Redesigned the view to load savegames; now with filter buttons and more information per save file
* When failing a scenario, it now includes options to go back to 3 checkpoints (instead of always starting over from zero)
* For all objectives, there is now a progress bar so you get more feedback on whether you are going to succeed

Small:
* Manual edits to the soil stats are now also stored in the savefile
* Redesigned the objective view; now all information is one page (no tabs anymore)
* The game now displays skin type statistics when hovering skin type buttons
* When changing the global temperature in the sandbox, the soil colors are now updated immediately
* When loading a sandbox world, any changes to the global temperature are applied only once (instead of twice)
* When choosing a smaller map size, the temperatures will become less extreme (can be restored manually)
* Fixed the 'white world' bug that appeared when using seasons in the sandbox
* Polished the UV of the creature scenario, so maps projected onto the terrain (for example indicating where your creations will survive) more accurately depict the simulation
* Fixed a bug where algae could be placed over the edge of the map
* After a timejump, a message is shown 'rebuilding organism models, this may take a while...' instead of everything just freezing
* Added a new death cause: seeds fell in water (although it only shows up rarely)

Various camera improvements:
* When using the WASD/arrow keys, you can no longer fly into the terrain; the camera will automatically go up to stay 'above land'
* When you stop moving the camera, the focus point will reset to the terrain in the center of the screen. This prevents unexpected camera behavior in mountainous areas.
* If you lose control of the camera when tabbing out of the game, you can now 'get it back' by simply using WASD/arrow keys again
* Fixed a problem where the camera would go wild when zooming directly after coming out of an editor

Various bulldozer button improvements:
* The area cleared now perfectly matches the size of the circle, independent of map size
* Plant seeds that were about to hatch are now also removed
* A small 'falling rocks' particle effect and sound are now played with each usage, making it much more fun to use
* The bulldozer mode now is automatically turned off when using another part of the UI, preventing weird interactions

Notice: this patch introduces a new savefile format (sav7). While the old format (sav6) does still work, there should be far fewer problems with games started AFTER this patch is installed.

Large:
* Added a ´randomize all´ button to the planet editor
* Made it possible to have nests with the intermediate stage eggs
* Added smaller map sizes to the planet editor, for less powerful PCs
* Added option to locate a random living example of a species in the species list

Small:
* It now also gets dark under water at night
* The underwater sunrays now fade out at night and fade in again in the morning
* Moved planet editor UI into separate tabs, to create some more space
* In the planet editor, made slider handles follow the mouse cursor better
* Redesigned random mutation chance view
* At the side of the map, you can no longer see the air color when under water
* The camera and sound now correctly switch to 'underwater mode' when following an animal
* Fixed the sharp edges in the soil color (caused by water having less extreme temperatures)
* Fixed the hatch animation for eggs with a hard shell
* Plants can no longer evolve negative sizes
* Fixed the ready button overlapping other UI features when selecting a nest

Large:
* Added 'alive' and 'extinct' species filter buttons for the species list view
* Added a GUI scale option (for larger monitors)
* Finally figured out (and fixed) a major reason for corrupt save files: long fur was not fully supported
* Finally figured out (and fixed) a major reason for hanging games: recent changes to extinction notifications did not fully support when plants were outcompeted

Small:
* Finally figured out and fixed what caused instinct mutations like 'if hear the color green, do x', 'if you hear too warm, do y'
* Added an autosave and memory cleanup before the player starts a time jump
* Primitive (aquatic) mouths no longer evolve out of nowhere (in particular, on land animals)
* Fixed smoke particle effect in the disaster scenario
* Fixed the scripted organisms in the ice age scenario
* Fixed incorrect red areas indicating where animals cannot live in the ice age scenario
* The alga, plant and season editor music volume now also matches the music volume in the settings
* The water sounds and the animal cries (in the world and the animal editor) now also match the sound effect volume in the settings
* Made all filter buttons and their labels in the species list view larger, and redesigned the 'sort by birth year' icon to better fit the style of the rest of the UI
* Algae are now vertically centered in the species list view
* Increased the hitbox size of 'next/previous page' buttons in the species list view
* Fixed filter button opacity after disabling filter in the species list view
* Fixed sorting by population size when using 'pick color of existing species'
* Improved positioning of the red pulsating warning text in the animal editor
* Fixed rounding error for the 'minimum ocean depth' visualization, shown when placing a new alga
* Made sure soil stats overlays turn off when you open other UI (like the notification list, or the mutation chance view)
* In the planet editor gradient bar legends, fixed incorrect pixels at the beginning and end

[h2]Large[/h2]
* Predators no longer eat when not hungry, to prevent their food source going extinct
* Predators only eat eggs when they see multiple, to prevent their food source going extinct
* Optimization: don't show animations for animals further in the distance (except animals that can fly)
* Optimization: don't calculate knee bend angles for animals further in the distance
* Optimization: don't immediately disable unused 3D models; move them out of sight for a while first (enabling/disabling is expensive)

Importantly, the first two changes allow for much larger carnivore populations, which in turn results in carnivores evolving on their own in the sandbox!

[h2]Small[/h2]
* Optimization: shortened the render distance for underwater animals
* Optimization: use the terrain height sampler also to determine camera height
* Optimization: use the terrain height sampler also to determine where plants, eggs and animal babies should go
* Optimization: created light weight variant of mouse hover logic (oa without tooltip options) for organisms, so it can handle large amounts of organisms better
* Stopped carnivores eating meat of their own species (because in some situations populations could sustain themselves indefinitely this way)
* Added percentage of deaths to extinction notification
* Fixed bug where the death cause notification only considered deaths TODAY
* Fixed incorrect 'random mutation chance' toggles after going into an editor
* Fixed bug where omnivore species populations were artificially kept small
* Fixed bug were the game lost track of recently evolved algae after loading a savegame
* Added warning message when feet don't touch the ground to the movement panel of the animal editor
* Moved several vertices in the small lobe fin models a bit lower, to increase the chance of them touching the ground
* Changed 'first creature' level objective for clarity: your creature only needs walking limbs, it does not actually need to be able to walk
* Fixed bug where you could click plants while in a UI view, like the time jump view
* Fixed underwater music losing the lowpass effect if you changed the time speed
* When random mutations are turned on, sight related instincts can now also mutate the darkness/brightness of their trigger color (forgot to add this so far)
* Removed various asset bundle related error logs shown each time opening the animal editor