Species 0.14.1: the Hearty Breakfast Update (that's a much better name, my thanks to the steam user who suggested it), has now been released to the Stable branch on Steam. Eggs are the centerpiece of this update, but there's a lot more than just them to talk about. The game has undergone a lot of refinement and I've made small improvements in just about every domain. These include... Eggs: Creatures can now lay eggs as an alternative to giving birth to live young. The primary advantage of eggs is shorter pregnancies, but it also renders the offspring vulnerable to opportunistic scavengers. Egg laying is governed by two genes: Pregnancy Length and Egg Length. Pregnancies: Carrying a pregnancy to term now consumes a great deal more energy and time than before, making them a much more potent test of a creatures ability to gather food and survive. Broodiness: Creatures now need to make a decision to begin a pregnancy instead of it happening upon reaching automatically. This allows adult creatures to stockpile food and seek a mate prior to doing so. (Note: parthenogenic creatures can begin a pregnancy even if they fail to locate a mate, but they will still try regardless). Diet: The dietary spectrum can now be subdivided into grazing herbivores, browsing herbivores, frugivores, ovivores and carnivores. Notably, at some point I made it much easier than before to maintain populations of scavenging carnivores and opportunistic predators. I'm not sure which of the many changes in 0.14 prompted this behavior, but it is welcome nonetheless.
Combat: Creatures in combat are now highlighted with big red circles, and take turns trading blows until one creature dies or flees. Predators will pounce on their prey to initiate combat, and creatures fighting over food will no longer try to kill each other. Temperature: Exposure damage is now more aggressively applied, especially when creatures are sleeping, and creatures will be able to seek shelter under shade-giving tree's to negate up to 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). Fatigue: Creatures get sleepy earlier than before, resulting in shorter but more frequent naps. This also gives them more ability to seek shelter before exhausting themselves and losing the ability to move. Ambient Sounds: Biome-specific ambient soundscapes, plus a few for altitude, shores and underwater. Procedurally Generated Fur: Fluffiness continues to be fluffy.
Mass Creature Suggestions: Creature suggestions are no longer limited to the 'Play as Creature' mode. You can give an entire population of creatures the same suggestion by selecting them all and right clicking on a target.
Regrowth-based Population Control: The option exists for population control to adjust plant regrowth speed instead of food efficiency. This is likely to result in larger population booms and crashes than the default, but is also more realistic. Thought Log: Press 'T' while a creature is selected to show the thought log. This was intended purely as a debug tool to help me diagnose AI problems, but I enjoy how it gives the creatures a voice and will probably refine it somewhat in the future to make it part of the game proper. Stability Improvements: 0.14.1 is significantly more stable than the 0.13.X releases were. Almost all known crashes and a great many unintended behaviors have been fixed. There are still some known crashes that can happen with low performance, so I recommend keeping the FPS in double digits for best results. Note: By far the most effective way to keep FPS high is to reduce the creature cap. Technical Changes: 0.14.1 is built on .Net Core and Monogame 3.8, which is substantially different from the older versions. I'm not expecting any issues stemming from this on Windows, but the Linux and Mac builds are untested. If you're running the game on a Linux or a Mac and have any troubles, please get in touch. Cheers, Quasar