The Sapling News

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].

Added a 'cinematic camera' menu in the sandbox, which allows you to:
* Hide the UI
* Hide the weather
* Set the time of the day without influencing the simulation
* Change the camera speed
* Set fixed camera positions and rotations, and have the camera animation between tem

Other camera changes:
* Added SHIFT as a camera speed boost button; if you fly the camera in one direction for 2 seconds, a hint will show to teach players about this
* Shortended the delay noticeable when dragging the camera with the mouse; the camera feels more responsive now
* Highlighting organisms is now disabled if you move the camera
* The camera position in the organism detail view is now always as close to the current camera position as possible (no weird camera flips anymore)
* The camera no longer moves slower on smaller maps
* The camera position in the organism detail view no longer is very close to the ground on smaller maps

Main menu changes:
* Added an extra 'game mode' selection view, with a warning the the sandbox will be unlocked after one scenario (lots of new players were confused by this)
* Added icons to the filter buttons in the load view
* Added a button to go to the save file location in your OS
* Also made 'x' to skip the disclaimer work with Caps Lock turned on
* Increased the the text size saying you can use x to skip
* The green background when showing the title during the intro now fills the whole screen
* Made title font during the intro the same as above the main menu
* Put a warning below the ice age level (will be overhauled in the future)

Fixed flowers and the flower level:
* Plants can be pollinated by animals again, and thus the main objective of the flower level triggers again
* All nectar mouths can create wax nests now
* Also unlocked the crab mouth by default, so you can go the 'insect route' if you want
* Changed the ground softness so you don't need mangrove roots everywhere
* Fixed the progress bar not responding for two of the objectives

Misc:
* Made animal color mutations more likely
* Made it possible for animals to also mutate to become brighter or darker
* Made gasfruit animations smoother, so it really looks like they are floating
* Removed high white clouds from the sandbox
* If you click 'redesign' after mutating, you now continue to have access to unlocked bark and roots

[h3]Following a series of 7 weekly devlogs, and a period of weeding out the most annoying bugs, the Food & Fire update is now available to everyone. As of today, the beta branch no longer exists and the price has seen a slight increase, as indicated earlier.[/h3]

• For a 1 minute summary of the update, see this Youtube short.
• For a 'normal' patch log, explaining all changes since last week, see below.
  

[h3]Old save files[/h3]

The Food & Fire update uses a new save file format. Although I have tried to also support the previous save file format, several users indicate that this was not 100% successful, and they cannot load save files created with the previous update. In case you really want to continue with your old world, you can still access older versions of the game by using the 'previousupdate' branch here on Steam.

[h3]New since the previous small patch[/h3]

Added 2 new aquatic seed types that sink to the bottom and germinate there; there's an extra explanation text to explain the difference to floating seeds. This fixes two problems:
* Aquatic plants so far usually did not survive, because normal seeds die when touching water
* ALL grass species just continues growing under water (now they need special seeds)

Fixes for disasters:
* Fixed the strange, mostly black, colors seen temporarily when increasing or decreasing the ocean level
* Tweaked the bloom effect: during the night, made the bioluminescence brighter but fire less bright
* Wild fires no longer spread to plants submerged in water
* Changes to the soil made by meteorites are undone after some time
* Grass now also dies from the fog caused by meteorites
* Removed the confusing global temperature drop during the fog caused by meteorites
* Made the y position (height) of the volcano model the same everywhere, independent of terrain, so it no longer sticks out sometimes
* Fixed global temperature changes causing temperatures above the maximum temperature (which caused perpetually dormant plants)

Fixes for the planet editor:
* Added sound effects when placing volcanoes
* Made the animation to switch from the spherical to the flat planet faster
* The toggle button to switch between the flat and spherical planet is now locked during the animation
* The terrain overlay button now have a sound effect
* The terrain overlay buttons now pulsate 2 times when touching a slider selects them automatically
* Fixed various smaller reasons that could cause the volcano position on the spherical planet to glitch out

Fixes for the plant editor:
* During the mountain level, don't show the root handle below the fibrous root (because you can't use it anyway)
* Realized (and fixed) that I never configured the 'provides energy' stat for many seeds
* Made the rotation with mouse movement faster

Misc fixes:
* The list of common death causes in the species detail view now also mentions 'old age'
* Fixed the missing texture for the blue iris eye (black in the previous build)
* Fixed a glitch with floating plants caused by their ancestors having stilt roots

Refactor (changes under the hood):
* Gave body parts persistent identifiers, so when new body parts were added and you load an old save file, they are not all mixed up.

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].