The Sapling News

As I've focused on the livestream and a new upcoming big update, it's been quite a while since I've released a patch of bugfixes. In the mean time, I have continued to process bug reports, though, and also made improvements to keep the livestream running. As the next batch of videos in September will undoubtedly bring a bunch of new (and returning) players, it's time this work gets released. Apart from some potential hotfixes for problems caused by this patch, this should be the last patch before the next big update!

• Removing old unused information related to alga spores, seeds, eggs, carrion, nests and fungi from memory
  
• No longer save old unused information about fungi to the save file, making save files for very long simulations up to 70% smaller
  

• Removed color from classifier, slightly decreasing the number of species generated
  
• Saving takes a smaller bite out of your memory usage
  
• Various smaller optimizations to handle large amounts of species better
  

• Further optimized how existing animal in a crowded map are loaded in, avoiding unnessary model builds from scratch
  
• Fixed problem where some animals loaded in later not going invisible when the camera moves away, which caused very low FPS
  
• Made mechanism for removing large animals and fungi in the distance more strict, highly increasing FPS when there are lots of those
  

• Fixed egg types never changing (thanks Corbett Collins!)
  
• Stricter definition of land animals: should have land only eggs OR walk (instead of dragging)
  
• Made the evolution of land animals more likely
  

• Fixed the tully mouth and an extra mouth on top (thanks Patrick Pattinson!)
  
• Fixed problem when adding a blowhole (thanks Shemariguess!)
  
• Fixed problem with overlapping mouths (thanks Gruisman!)
  

• Moved the YAML files where players can edit stats to `the_sapling_Data\StreamingAssets\BodyPartStats`, so it will actually work this time (thanks Gruisman!)
  
• Nerfed the temperature protection of shells
  
• Nerfed how much weight long bird legs can carry
  
• Nerfed underwater drag of long bird legs
  

• Fixed exterminating plankton from the species list view (thanks SeedlessWatermelon!)
  
• Whenever a savefile gets corrupt, instead of hanging, the game now closes itself and creates a log file
  
• Fixed an error that occurred when an animal with sex B (or C, D etc) causes a new species
  
• Turned off hanging babies for now, as they were giving too much errors
  

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].

I'm streaming The Sapling, 24/7 for 1 month. We started on planet Wright-1b with a simple alga and underwater animal, turned on random mutations, and now we watch what evolves.

See https://www.twitch.tv/wesselstoop for details!

Announcement video:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• Made it possible for fungi to disperse via water
  
• Made it more likely for new land animals to lose unused fins
  
• Made the emergence of sexual reproduction more likely
  
• Made the emergence of other sexes more likely
  
• Made the evolution of land plants more likely on a planet with seasons
  
• Meteorites block a way larger percentage of sunlight
  
• When the sunlight is blocked after a meteorite, no new plants can get born, so more plant species get extinct
  

• Nerfed all eyes so increasing scale is unattractive during the day
  
• Buffed the pinhole eye, so it's no longer inferior to the compound eye
  
• Balancing statistics for the primitive leaves, fern and needles to prevent bottlenecks
  

• Redesigned two most primitive ears
  
• Fixed ears on top flipping backwards during animations
  
• Fixed the 'looking sideways' eye having white eyelids
  
• Fixed 'obligate night vision' eye's brow being reflective
  

• Fixed the species detail view button (the 'i') sometimes not working when focusing on an organism
  
• Fixed organisms not appearing when loading from the second page of the archive
  
• Decreased font sizes for leaf stats in the plant editor
  

• The liquid storing abdomen when filled (thanks Not Original!)
  
• When animals tried to climb trees that for optimization reasons only had a billboard
  
• Meteorites removing plants that only had a billboard
  

• Fixed fungus caps being forgotten sometimes (thanks TaterTot!)
  
• Fixed messing up versioning in the species archive functionality
  

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].

• Storing fixed family relations
  
• Storing fungi death causes
  

• Greatly increased chances that land animals will emerge
  
• Changed animal color mutation system to much smaller changes, but much more frequently (thanks BananasGoMoo!)
  
• Cleaned up a lot of unused code for mutating animals at random, making it slightly more efficient
  

• In the species list view, you can left click an organism type to 'solo' it, showing only that type (thanks Izaiah Bradford!)
  
• Removed grammatical errors from tooltips (thanks Jordan Moxie!)
  
• Improved hitboxes of filter icons in the save/load menu (thanks Jordan Moxie!)
  
• Fixed white line above the manual save file filter icon (thanks Jordan Moxie!)
  

• If you have another view open, esc will first close that instead showing the esc menu
  
• Esc menu will pause the game (thanks Chared!)
  

• Fixed another cause for the time stopping bug: plants dying from fire (thanks SeedlessWatermelon!)
  
• When changing the ocean level, cells that were underwater previously will have maximum moisture
  
• Removed fire particle effect when billboards are reused on another location
  

• Various changes for an upcoming stream mode, to be used in a Twitch livestream
  

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].

• Turned off a prebuilding system that once saved FPS, but since the new optimizations took more time figuring out which organisms to prebuild; should be make the daily lag spikes less intense
  
• For instincts, the game now looking around an animal for trigger if the trigger is 'feeling', speeding up the simulation when there are a lot of animals with feel instincts
  

• Made the emergence of useful instincts for carnivores more likely
  
• Added old meat as a food type to 'aquatic pointy teeth'
  

• Species categorization now also takes into account the parent species: if two identical organisms emerge in different lineages, they will be considered different species. Note: this information is not saved correctly yet.
  
• In the species list view, below species it now shows the time since the birth year instead of the time alive, better matching player expectations
  
• Fixed forgotten family relations when an alga evolves into a plant
  
• Fixed forgotten family relations when a single plants evolves into grass or vice versa
  

• Removed subslots below the animal, preventing another cause of the plant duplication bug (thanks Griffvador!)
  

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].