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 thesaplinggame@gmail.com.

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 thesaplinggame@gmail.com.

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 thesaplinggame@gmail.com.

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 thesaplinggame@gmail.com.

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 thesaplinggame@gmail.com.

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.
  

Reactivated the terrain shadows created by organims, and for the rest a lot of UI improvements:

Polished the organism detail view UI (when you zoom in to an organism):
* Added a button so you can go the relevant species detail view in one step
* Fixed the species status label being updated too late (you saw the status of a previous species for some time)
* If an animal dies, the organism detail now stops automatically
* Made the animations faster

Editor UI fixes:
* Changed the fruit editor so buttons and handles now dissapear when using them would create an impossible fruit
* In the animal editor, fixed the animal poison traits button getting more and more transparent each time it was clicked
* Gave the 'ready' button in all editors a higher resolution
* Fixed clipped 'max ocean current' label in the animal editor

Polished the species detail view UI:
* Clicking on related species in the family view now also changes the focus species in the rest of the detail view
* Made temperature limitations easier to interpret, using infinity signs and red/blue colors

Improved the wildfire sliders:
* Added an exact percentage to all wilderfire sliders
* Redesigned the disaster panel to create more room for future sliders
* Fixed the fire chance slider button having the wrong color after using it

Polished the cladogram view UI:
* Also save and show grass species relations
* Removed arrow buttons to other starting points if not applicable

Generic UI fixes:
* The extinct message is now aware of dormant eggs (like the dormant seeds in the previous patch)
* Using the 'reintroduce species' option for algae now triggers the correct filters in the species list

Scenario related fixes:
* Carrion is visible again
* The introduction of roots now has a moving circle to draw attention to it

Fixed impossible animals:
* Animals with both developed and primitive feet no longer create a problem for the walking animation controller
* When random mutations make an animal longer, things like tails are now moved to the last animal segment (instead of the game crashing)

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 thesaplinggame@gmail.com.

The Q and E buttons can now be used for vertical camera movement, like CTRL and SHIFT

Fixes related to seasons:
* You will no longer get an extinction message if there still are dormant seeds (like for a seasonal plant)
* Plants that are dormant (shed leaves) now have a 'dormant' status labels when you zoom in on them
* You are no longer in 'add alga' mode after editing seasons
* There now is an absolute max age, to prevent immortal 'always dormant' plants
* Dormant plants now take damage from fire

Balancing body parts:
* The first vertibrate carnivore mouth is now better with meat and less generalist
* The first generalist arthropod mouth can now survive longer out of the water
* Small changes to eye color ranges so the progression makes more sense
* The game now also recognizes obliglate blood feeder mouths (like the bat mouth) as full mouths

Finally implemented postponed fruit shape features:
* The fruit shape now also mutates
* The fruit shape is taken into account when two plants 'merge' as a result of sexual interaction

Visual fixes and improvements:
* The meteorite model no longer hangs in the air after impact
* Filter feeders now sim closer to the surface, where the plankton is
* Removed shadows by mountains, because they were always glitchy anyway
* Fixed problem where clouds of various wheather types were sometimes rendered as if under water
* Fixed problem where snow was sometimes rendered as if on top of the snow cloud

Misc:
* Removed various glitches related to animals that just escaped being eaten
* Fixed the textual representation of 'if you see food'-type instincts (was 'if you see SOMETHING' before)

Code hygiene:
* Fully removed the old instinct view from the game
* Fully removed the old 'ovule' system from the game

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 thesaplinggame@gmail.com.

The beta is now finally on Linux too! So far, I couldn't get the grass shader to work there (that is, in OpenGL), which I've solved for now by turning OFF tesselation. This means that on Linux, grass will be less pretty with fewer strands of grass.

Plankton fixes:
* Fixed plankton species classification (used to be based on body parts they didn't have)
* Fixed plankton ocean depth requirements (used to be based on the alga height, but plankton doesn't have a height)

Animal editor UI fixes:
* Overhauled the statistics panels for eyes and mouths, to better represent the new situation
* Increased the size of the food type icons in the animal editor 'food' tab

Instinct list view UI improvements:
* Removed the white outline of the color and brightness sliders
* The audio slider handle position now match the cursor position more closely
* Improved the position of the dark 'range' background of the sliders
* The 'ready' button now responds to being hovered
* The audio slider handles now indicate being hovered by becoming darker instead of brighter

Epoch UI fixes:
* Fixed the glitch you got when pressing ESC in the epoch and species detail views
* Finally got the 'maximum number of organisms' statistic to work

Species detail view fixes:
* Most common meals and death causes are now in the correct order
* Fixed that you could no longer zoom to organisms after using the species detail view and the cladogram view

Scenario and understandability improvements:
* Added more food types for the first carnivore mouth
* The arrow buttons in the plant and animal editors, to see more body parts, now pulsate to attract attention
* There is now a tooltip for the 'hanging baby' toggle you get when you add hands to a creature
* The wildfire risk now also has (correct) legend labels
* The attention getter circle on the alga handle, to teach new players they can grow and shrink algae, now only goes away after you used it correctly
* The attention getter circle for the camera preset buttons in the mountain level is now on the correct location

Audio improvements:
* Added instinct list and diet view sound effects
* Removed perpetual 'rain' music from the scenarios
* Tweaked baleen mouth cry pitch
* The water splashing sound effect is now less loud
* The water splashing sound effect is now linked to the 'sound effects' setting
* The wildfire sound effect is now linked to the 'sound effects' setting
* All weather sound effects are now linked to the 'sound effects' setting

Plankton now floats below the water surface!

Other alga fixes:
* The glitch with anchored algae at incorrect heights is now fixed
* When lowering the ocean level, all algae that are now on dry land die immediately
* Fixed that plankton particles were sometimes visible when the camera was above the water surface
* Plankton particles now have the correct size in the cladogram view
* Changed alga model growing speed, to have less of a 'jump' when the alga becomes an adult (was really noticable with the highest time speed)

Volcano fixes:
* You can no longer put volcanoes on top of each other
* The weird pink stages after placing volcanoes is gone
* You no longer get volcanoes next to the map if you change map size
* You can now click everywhere, even with the volcano cursor

World UI fixes:
* The button 'mutate' when looking at a creature works again (was always unavailable before)
* The animation 'buttons sliding in one by one from the top' is now played much more frequently
* The objective button for the scenarios is animating correctly again, so you can actually use it

Instinct view fixes:
* Decreases font size so you can see the full text for all labels
* The 'see color' color picker now shows above the instincts for the lower instincts, so it doesn't go below the screen

Plant editor fixes:
* The mount points no longer lose their position when rotating with WASD
* All leaves now perfectly attach to the stem or branch

Scenario fixes:
* Changed the soil stats for the greenhouse scenario so it is playable again
* Disabled the root tab in the plant editor for scenarios where it does not make sense
* In the first scenario where the alga holdfast is not unlocked yet, the labels are now also greyed out

Misc:
* I think I solved the problem where grass could evolve into giant individual grass plants

Corrected spelling to vOlcano :P

Plankton and algae fixes:
* Only non-plankton algae can now involve into plants
* Plankton can now evolve into macro-algae and vice versa
* Plankton is now limited to 1 per cell, and no longer stacks (plankton towers)
* Algae are no longer invisible after manual placement
* Mutating an alga no longer leads to plankton by default

Grass fixes:
* Grass now continues to spread after saving and loading
* Grass does now mutate into single plants and vice vesra

Plant editor and seed fixes:
* The camera no longer goes wild when selecting rotes while rotating
* You no longer get a crash if you have two different seeds and then use the space bar

Plant fixes:
* You can no longer evolve plants where the roots are far below the rest of the plant
* There are now low poly models for all possible fruits, so your fruit design in the world looks similar to how it looked in the plant editor

Instinct editor fixes:
* Using the instinct editor no longer accidentally removes bodyparts
* The game no longer glitches out after removing instincts

Ocean level fixes:
* Starting the game with a season with non-default ocean hight no longer leads to a crash
* Raising the ocean on smaller map sizes no longer leads to strange organism sizes

Sandbox UI fixes:
* The epoch view should now work with all screen sizes
* The game no longer incorrectly shows the sandbox panel during organism placement

Misc fixes:
* The scenario list no longer shows duplicate scenarios
* The default resolution is no longer your native one (because the game only supports 16:9, while your native might be something different)

The content of the next big update will be revealed step by step in a series of 6 weekly devlogs, starting with this one:

[previewyoutube=TDa7hEZ4DjY;full][/previewyoutube]

Turns out the ice age fixes in the latest patch actually broke smaller map sizes, which was totally missed during playtests. This should fix it, apologies!

Let me know if there are any other problems you encounter (in particular things that worked before this weekend), via thesaplinggame@gmail.com or the Steam forums.

[h2]Achievement fixes[/h2]
* Fixed the completionist achievement never firing
* Moved the completionist check to the main menu

[h2]Visualization fixes[/h2]
* Adding aquatic animals with wings no longer make the game crash (but their animation is still not correct)
* Fixed eyesight and hearing ranges displaying on the terrain floor

[h2]Simulation fixes[/h2]
* Aquatic animals with 'go towards' instincts now actually go towards it
* Plants no longer die of old age during dormancy
* Blow holes are no longer counted as 'mouths' for eating purposes
* The first flower with petals now can also spread pollen by wind
* Added a potential fix for the plant multiplication bug
* Added a potential fix for aquatic animals with the 'go away instinct' going to non-existant places

[h2]UI fixes[/h2]
* Using the notification list view no longer breaks all other UI
* The population counts are now updated every time you open the list view
* Fixed the list view round buttons being irresponsible when coming out of the family view
* The random mutations menu now scales with the screen size
* In the animal editor, you no longer need to touch the brightness slider before the animal color is updated live while using the hue slider
* The Shift+C cheat menu now has a background

[h2]Camera fixes[/h2]
* Moving the camera while clicking the 'roots' button will no longer make you lose control
* Slowed down the camera in the plant editor when using the up/down arrow keys
* Deactivated the up/down arrow keys in the animal editor

[h2]Ice age fixes[/h2]
* Saving and reloading no longer makes the ice disappear
* Going into an editor no longer makes the ice disappear

This is the first video of a new series, showcasing simulation videogame The Sapling, where we follow one planet for a longer time. We study all the ecosystems that all evolve, and how they change over time.

[previewyoutube=x7Kc40SryVc;full][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Added cheats[/h2]
* Shift+C activates cheat modus; the current cheat command string will be shown near the bottom of the screen
* The cheat 'continuous' makes the game run in the background (not officially supported)
* The cheat 'hideui' hides the UI
* The cheat 'showui' shows it again
* The cheat 'slowcam' slows down the camera speed

[h2]Species and family views[/h2]
* You can now sort all species by name
* In the family tree, when there are more than 6 children, it shows the 6 most populous ones (instead of the 6 ones that emerged earliest)
* The page indicator below the species list view now shows numbers instead of dots (more convenient for larger/older worlds)
* When leaving the family tree and entering the species list, it automatically browses to the page of the species you were looking at in the family tree
* When looking at the species list while the camera is low to the ground, it will no longer highlight organisms in the background

[h2]Visualization fixes[/h2]
* Manually created animals now always look exactly as the player designed them (optimization has been turned off for this use case)
* Decreased the chances of showing a non-walking animal as a substitute for a walking animal on land for performance reasons (optimization has been turned off for this use case)
* The 'locate a random organism of this species' (looking glass) button now also works for species with low population sizes
* Fixed problem where combs could glow white as if luminescent
* Manually placed algae now grow at exactly the location where you drop them

[h2]Simulation changes[/h2]
* Made the check to prevent animals reproducing in crowded areas stricter
* Color is now also taken into account when classifying algae into species
* Increased the chance of meaningful seasonal adaptions for plants
* Prevented seasonal adaptations to 'cross' each other (maximum temperature lower than minimun temperature)

[h2]Saving/loading fixes[/h2]
* Saving and then loading a game in a warmer or cooler season no longer changes the base temperature of an area
* Same fix for wind strength and shallow ground water
* Star light (allowed alga and plant colors) is now set correctly after loading a save game

[h2]Season fixes[/h2]
* The game no longer crashes when you delete the current season
* The game no longer restarts at the year 0 when you change a season before going into an editor

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

[h3]Large[/h3]
* Added new main animal stats tab in the animal editor, showing you whether your creation breathes, moves and lays eggs on land or in water
* Added music to the season editor
* Implemented 'edit seasons' button in the world, so you can redefine your seasons whenever you want

[h3]Small[/h3]
* Set terrain height sampler to higher accuracy, decreasing the amount of animals floating above or sinking into the terrain
* Improved knee bending calculations, decreasing the amount of feet floating above or sinking into the terrain (Inverse Kinematics)
* Pressing multiple arrow (and WASD) keys simultaneously now makes the camera move diagonally
* Releasing arrow (or WASD) keys after pressing multiple simultaneously no longer makes the camera stop
* Fixed unexpected camera behavior after opening the speciest list view or the objective list view
* Fixed unexpected camera behavior after using the arrow (or WASD) keys while focusing on an organism
* Added extra growing circle to get your attention when the algae handle is introduced
* The animal body part length handle can now also be used when there is something at the back of an animal, like a tail
* Fixed swimming animation glitch when swimming at the surface
* Fixed swimming animals floating above shallow water
* Fixed animals that would drag on land swimming too low
* Made the visual and audio transition to and from the planet editor smoother (dip to black, crossfade)
* Made the visual and audio transition to and from the alga editor smoother (dip to black, crossfade)
* Made the visual and audio transition to and from the season editor smoother (dip to black, crossfade)
* Made sure the unlock hint is always on top of the rest of the UI
* Fixed the unlock hint not appearing in the second scenario
* Fixed editing (as opposed to mutating) being sufficient for the 'mighty mutations' milestone in the second scenario
* Fixed oxygen bubble visualization not fading in when looking at the animals up close
* Fixed 'white terrain' glitch caused by turning on seasons without defining them
* Camera movement is no longer blocked after getting out of the species or objective overview with the esc button
* Fixed 'hand' type limbs never unlocking
* Fixed non-responsive 'mutate' button for individual underwater animals when zoomed in

Hey everyone! Other than the title of this post may suggest, development of The Sapling is going incredibly well at the moment: I feel like I'm working faster than ever before, sometimes squashing up to 5 bugs a day. It's super motivating to see the game grow into something stable and trustworthy under my hands. This efficiency I largely owe to the many helpful bug reports I receive every day from players adventurous enough to try the experimental beta branch, so thanks!

Having said that, I feel the game will not be ready for the 'main' branch on September 13. This is partly because I would like to fix some more bugs, but most of all because I did not get to (1) optimization (= acceptable FPS) and (2) balancing (= interesting simulations) at all so far. While the overall response to the Sea & Sandbox update is super positive (again, thanks!) I'm seeing multiple beta players report that this lack of optimization and balancing really affects the current gameplay negatively, and I can totally see why.

This means the 'Sea & Sandbox' update is not yet ready for everyone, so I have decided to continue pushing my patches to the beta branch for a few more weeks: my current plan is to move over to the main branch on October 11. While I don't expect to have a 100% bug free, smooth and balanced game by then (this is still an Early Access game after all), things should be significantly better than they are today.

[h3]But I really wanted to play this Tuesday![/h3]

Well, you can; I will continue to release patches to the beta branch, which everyone who bought the game has access to. Every devlog of video of season 2 ends with a visual instruction on how to switch to this beta branch. The fact that I upload builds of the game on this branch instead of to everyone the only thing that is different from the original plan.

By the way, the version of the game that is available on the beta branch right now is already a lot more stable than the version that what I released on August 16, and will be even more so with the upcoming patch, which I aim to release in the coming week.

[h3]What about the price increase?[/h3]

I feel it would be fairest to only increase the price when the 'Sea & Sandbox' update is available for everyone, so the price increase is postponed as well; it will go live together with the update.

[h2]Large[/h2]
* Added an extra hint to show how the mutation mechanic works, shows up when hovering locked body parts
* Made underwater temperatures and seasonal effects less extreme
* Remodeled the 'early lobe' fins to be more sideways oriented, so they look better when the animals drag themselves on land
* Fixed mutation chances being (much) smaller than the UI claimed they were

[h2]Small[/h2]
* Made greenhouse level less hot, as even the toughest plants could no longer survive
* Egg types can now also mutate
* Implemented the 'mutate alga' button in the alga detail view (did nothing so far)
* Swimming animals now gradually slow down when they reach their target (instead of abrupt stop)
* Optimization: only show alga holdfasts when up close
* Optimization: stop alga animation when not visible
* Added explanation: land animal with aquatic eggs went extinct because it could not reach water in time to lay its eggs
* Added explanation: aquatic animal with land eggs went extinct because it could not reach land in time to lay its eggs
* Fixed inaccessible area in the east of each sandbox map
* Animals can no longer walk on steep terrain (but plants can grow there!)
* The seasons editor no longer glitches out after the deleting the last season
* Fixed confusing animal editor warning for nest builders that are too heavy for their legs
* Fixed hibernation slider availability when opening the animal editor
* Fixed crash when randomly mutating algae after loading a savegame
* Changed the starter level to have water until the edges
* Changed the default egg type in the sandbox to the intermediate stage (instead of the aquatic egg)
* Decreased chances of animals flying through mountains
* Completely removed former primitive limbs and mouths from the game (they could still show up because of random mutation)

[h2]Large[/h2]
* The disaster, flower and ice age scenarios are now accessible again
* Fixed an important (and hopefully the only) reason for plant and algae multiplication glitches
* The alga evolution tree now works
* Fixed the 'choose color of existing species' button when there were algae in the world

[h2]Small[/h2]
* Fixed incorrect season UI after (1) saving and loading, (2) coming back from an editor
* Fixed incorrect soil colors after (1) saving and loading, (2) coming back from an editor, (3) showing the same season a second time
* Fixed having a mouth on both sides of the body; the procedural animation incorrectly moved both mouths to the same side
* Putting a bodypart in an impossible place (like a land leg on the back) no longer creates an invisible but blocking bodypart there
* When zooming in on algae, they now show the correct age
* Organism age is now also stored in the save file
* Fixed scenario objectives not being checked after loading a savegame
* Fixed various error messages generated after clicking the 'choose color of existing species' button
* Using the eraser no longer shows white balls
* Fixed stats and accessibility for edge tiles in the beach level
* Esc menu now closes all other views
* Renamed Esc menu items to 'Quit to menu' and 'Quit to desktop'

Many thanks to the numerous players who submitted bug reports for the first beta build!

Over the last few weeks, a new devlog series was released on the The Sapling Youtube channel, showcasing the upcoming 'Sea & Sandbox' update. It will include, among many other things, a planet editor, a season editor, algae and underwater animals. The first video of the devlog series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3iQw2WYvwE

The last and most popular video of the devlog series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psqkZBXaitk

This new 'Sea & Sandbox' will be available for everybody on September 13. If you don't mind glitches and crashes, you will also be able to play experimental builds from August 16 onwards by opting into the beta in your Steam settings. The end of every devlog video shows you how to do that.

Furthermore, a heads-up: most players indicate the current price of the game is a bit on the cheap side, so September 13 will also see a $2 price increase... so if you already know you want to buy the game, you might want to do it now.

* Added arrow keys as an alternative for scrolling in the editors
* Fixed an impossible animal: animals with both primitive legs (the first two, without knees) and normal ones made the procedural walking animations glitch
* Prevented an impossible animal: with random mutations turned on, an animal could emerge that was longer than the procedural texture system could handle
* Fixed an impossible plant: the object smoothing algorithm can now handle really long thin branches
* Fixed a crash related to the number of species that sometimes showed up in the ice age scenario

Many thanks to Skully, Dessert, Tim, Kre and Pizmat, who all sent crash reports and save files to help discover the problems fixed above.

* Made the time jump dynamic: the player can now choose how many years to skip!
* Polished the walking system, which should drastically decrease the amount of animals floating or sinking in the floor
* Revised the memory overload prevention: automatic level reload every 2000 years (and time speed continues after reload)
* Fixed another group of 'impossible animals', related to eye positioning, that made the game glitch
* Fixed a bug where all animations suddenly stop after a few years of playing
* Fixed randomly appearing infrequent crash when animal animations were reset (as preparation for the next animation)
* Fixed randomly appearing infrequent crash when a new animal was created
* Fixed a lot of warnings that appeared in the log files, so that the errors become easier to spot

* Added option to skip the intro, shown once you beat the first level
* Fixed cleaning of the 3D model pool, so the RAM no longer fills up so quickly
* Added much more aggressive cleaning of the 3D model cache of earlier created models, to save even more RAM
* Refactored the code that specializes generic animations to individual models to be ~100x faster, increasing FPS in situations with a lot of animals and random mutations turned on
* Fixed an 'impossible animal', discovered by player GeneralLDS, that could be created by putting a mouth at the end and then making the body longer
* Moved the cache of earlier created models much further upwards, so it's no longer possible for players to accidentally see it
* Fixed incorrect 'will survive' message in the editor with large plants
* Fixed bug so you can no longer increase soil values above the maximum value
* Fixed crash in the species list view when accidentally clicking the invisible 'next' button on the last page
* Added better logs so the plant multiplication bug can hopefully be fixed in the future

* Implemented a smarter algorithm to decide which animal models will be precomputed during loading a level. It now shows more accurate animals models (instead of mostly early ancestors) AND speeds up loading.
* Closed a huge memory leak when editing ('painting') the soil statistics.
* Fixed the 'frigid greenhouse bug', where the greenhouse level went to -50 degrees if you saved and loaded again.
* No longer incorrectly show the progress.save file in the list of savegames

By popular request, I did another Twitch stream following the release of the Fight & Flight update; this is a summary of the most important things that happened.

[previewyoutube=Py7HlheUKuM;full][/previewyoutube]

* Optimized walking animations with terrain sampling, which should greatly increase the FPS when there a lot of animals
* Removed the growing animation from invisible fruits, which should greatly increase the FPS when there a lot of fruits
* Temporarily disabled all screen resolutions that are not 16:9 (because the UI never supported them anyway)
* Improved animal mutation chance distribution, so you get to see a wider variety of possible animals
* Made turning on the species list view way faster by removing an unnecessary check (really noticeable if you got 1000+ species)
* Fixed walking animation glitch when you leave the simulation running for some time
* Fixed problem with randomly evolving species staying artificially small
* Fixed joint dot positions after placing sturdy feet
* Added labels to soil edit buttons
* Improved help texts greenhouse scenario

For those interested, currently there's a new 7 day livestream going on over at Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/woseseltops

Some things that have been going on so far:

• 13 Oct 500h GMT At two places on the map forests start to form. It always take a long time for plants to evolve that are 'fit' for larger body sizes, but once they are there they often slowly take over the world.
  
• 12 Oct 1800h GMT The dominant animal family at the moment is characterized by sturdy feet, useful for carrying a lot of heavy body parts, like tusks.
  
• 12 Oct 600h GMT So far, there seem to be 2 major plant families: one with fern like leaves that just survive in a lot of places, and one with needles for cold areas.
  

* Added button to make feet touch the ground automatically
* Made later levels less frustrating by unlocking more body parts than just the primitive ones (indicated with a darker circle behind them)
* Make the evolution of wings more likely
* Recolored the eye body part icons, to better match the actual colors
* Made family relations between body parts clearer when hovering: non related bodyparts become translucent
* Fixed the low detail model for randomly generated plants, increasing FPS
* Optimized time jumps so they finish about 25% faster
* Fixed the body part tab availability when loading sandbox games
* Added a body size tooltip to the plant editor
* Made body part shape icons slightly smaller for a cleaner look
* Made hitbox for question mark tooltips larger in the animal editor

In this sixth and final devlog for the Fight & Flight update I explain how there is one piece of music in the Sapling that is reused everywhere.

[previewyoutube=X_ly4FQIMIo;full][/previewyoutube]

* Animation files are no longer case sensitive, because Steam did not pick this up (and thus made the game unplayable for existing customers updating the game as opposed to reinstalling).
* Added Youtube channel icon to the main menu

* Improved animal sitting positions on branches
* Animals no longer die when sitting in a tree that dies
* Fixed glitches resulting from animals growing up in a tree
* Fixed glitches resulting from animals getting out of a tree because of an instinct
* Prevented eating animations in trees
* Discovered and fixed a whole category of 'impossible creatures' (creatures that had two bodyparts of the same type, where one is single on top and the other double, like the primitive photoreceptor eye AND the compound eye)
* Changed how roots work for larger plants, so larger plants with a lot of branches are more likely to succeed
* Set a maximum temperature for the greenhouse scenario, so it's a bit easier to complete
* Cleaned up how energy bars visualize really small and really high numbers
* Polished icon positions in the attack and weight visualizations in the animal editor
* Fixed the white square bug in the 'new unlocked bodypart' alert in the animal editor
* Fixed mouth colors when a beak AND another mouth is used

* Added extra 'reintroduce' menu item for both plants and animals
* In the greenhouse level, there are extra help messages to nudge the player in the right direction
* Sound settings are now saved in between play sessions
* 75% speedup of the system that makes animals animatable, decreasing load times and increasing FPS
* The system that makes animals animatable now only needs 2% of the memory it used before
* 90% speedup of the system that specializes generic animations onto a specific animal, decreasing load times and increasing FPS
* Fixed flying animals sitting still in the air just before dying
* Prevented eat and idle animations in the air
* Fixed objective list view showing the 'not met' icon while actual number was even higher than the minimum required in the greenhouse and disaster level
* Fixed mouths facing the wrong way during the cry animation
* Fixed the proto beak facing the wrong way during all animations
* Fixed mutated animals sometimes having incorrect statistics and abilities
* Fixed animals climbing in growing trees and growing themselves along with the tree
* Fixed organisms being visualized at the wrong side of the river for the disaster level
* Lock camera rotation after clicking the 'roots' button in the plant editor, preventing weird camera glitches

* Made random mutations for animals less random and more realistic
* The game now detects high RAM usage and attempts to fix it
* Reintroduced idle animations for primitive animals (now fixed)
* Added extra idle animations: moving legs (primitive animals only), shaking head
* Polished/cleaned eating animation
* Added subtle screen shake when placing large organisms
* Added subtle alternative click sound when changing traits in the organism
* Fixed randomly mutated animals sometimes standing still when they should be walking
* Fixed randomly mutated animals not always showing their new mutations
* Fixed flying animals hovering in place for some time once they ascend from the ground
* Fixed animal sometimes floating face down in crowded areas
* Fixed glitchy camera controls in the disaster level

* Made leaf models with even fewer polygons, which should greatly increase the frames per second (= a smoother experience)
* Removed a lot of invisible polygons from the sandbox terrain, which should greatly increase the frames per second
* Changed the prebuilt organism library to somewhere which is always outside the camera frustrum, so it's not 'considered' for drawing and animating, which should greatly increase the frames per second
* The game now reuses procedural materials whenever possible, so the GPU has less work to do (more FPS) and the game needs less RAM
* Added various question mark tooltips to the editors
* Fixed the render distance for babies
* Fixed crash/glitches after loading savegames with instincts
* Fixed 'feel' instincts being saved incorrectly in a savegame file
* Fixed scenario redirection after loading and then winning a scenario
* Player edited soil and family relations are now also stored in a savegame file
* Stopped optimization technique that fakes models that are not ready yet from also being used in the desert level
* Toned down the sun shaft eye candy during some times in the day night cycle
* Recolored the 'eats meat' icon
* Small improvements to where plants can grow for the sandbox and flower level

* Choosing savegames!
* Autosaving
* Camera improvement: it's much harder to go underground
* Camera improvement: rotating around a moving animal no longer leads to glitches
* Added animal temperature panel during placement
* Flying and climbing animals can now eat at any height
* Fixed procedural walking glitches for bird feet
* Got rid of ugly white edges in habitat textures
* Small fix for temperature resistance calculations for plants in the editor
* Fixed hand edited sandbox soil textures; you can now also see them immediately after coming out of an editor
* Fixed lots of new unlocked body parts overflowing the alert box in the editors

* The fight & flight update is now out on Linux too!
* Animals with bird legs no longer get stuck in the floor
* Random rotations for animals after placing manually
* Random rotations for animals after visiting the editors
* Random rotations for animals after time jumps
* Notification: you unlocked the sandbox
* Improved description mountain level
* The species example organism is now always the last one you build, taking away a lot of confusion!

Today the Fight & Flight update is available for evolution simulation game The Sapling. This second big update extends the game with eggs, fur, feathers, family trees, an extended combat system, gliding and most importantly: wings.

[previewyoutube=bgwtYGZfaeY;full][/previewyoutube]

Over the past few weeks, all of these new features have been introduced one by one in a series of devlogs. An overview, as also shown in the trailer video:

• Bodysizes
  
• Edit soil
  
• Family trees
  
• Attacking instincts
  
• Defense
  
• Instinct and sense visualization
  
• Scales, feathers and fur
  
• Eggs
  
• Beaks
  
• Sitting in trees
  
• Gliding
  
• Wings
  

This fifth devlog introduces two new scenarios, to gradually teach the player about all new complexity and minimize frustration and boredom, and showcases the new family tree and soil editing features!

[previewyoutube=gCLBHn9fj90;full][/previewyoutube]

This fourth devlog introduces something that has been requested numerous times: flight. The community already knew this, because despite me painstakingly blurring all spoilers in previous devlogs, I missed 1 second of material showing a primitive wing, and of course somebody noticed <3 .

[previewyoutube=WVXtWqUWhMQ;full][/previewyoutube]

In this third devlog a lot of related new features are introduced, allowing for a lot more niches and richer ecosystems:

[previewyoutube=WpUqxxI-COE;full][/previewyoutube]

A lot of dev, not so much log this time :). I was so unhappy with the old simple walking system that I completely rebuilt it from the ground up. This new system responds to its environment and gives me a lot more control.

[previewyoutube=C3Mli9FxnVU;full][/previewyoutube]

The next big update to indie evolution sim The Sapling is planned for June 15. The new feature set will gradually be revealed in the form of 6 weekly devlogs, starting today.

This first week, temperature ranges for animals are introduced, meaning that animals can no longer live anywhere. Instead, they will need fur, scales or feathers, or special bodyparts to lose heat. Furthermore, we see how skin patterns like stripes and spots are added.

[previewyoutube=9KCOh7d5qbw;full][/previewyoutube]

During the development of the flower update, I had to learn a ton of new 3D modeling techniques in a short amount of time. Here's a showcase of what I learned:

[previewyoutube=nRessKsAyt0;full][/previewyoutube]

The first major update for The Sapling, the flower update, was released in September. It adds pollination, flowers (obviously), a new scenario, a complete overhaul of the sandbox level, bioluminescence and much more. This is the trailer:

[previewyoutube=_aglK-7GFCI;full][/previewyoutube]

Importantly, it addresses a major point of feedback that kept coming back: players wanted more space for their creations to grow and evolve. I couldn't easily make the levels larger, however, because the game already had performance problems in the smaller levels and with each new spot where organisms could live this would get worse exponentially. The hard part is that there are not one, but two computationally heavy things going on at the same time: simulating an ecosystem where hundreds of organisms are all doing their own things (moving, eating, reproducing, mutating) AND visualizing these hundreds of objects. With larger levels, this would be thousands, essentially bringing the game to a halt with 1 frame per 5 seconds (FPS) instead of the regular 60 per 1 second.

Besides my obvious desire to please the players, having larger levels was also crucial for my own ambitions with the game, because a number of the simulation mechanics didn't really work with the smaller maps; for example, why evolve an instinct to run away from a predator if you have nowhere to go? Or for plants, why evolve things like bark or high leaves if the biggest reason that your offspring is dying is because all seeds are landing on spots that are already taken? In nearly 100% of the cases, all plants evolved to do was getting as much offspring as possible, in the hopes that at least one of them by accident landed in a spot that was free.

In other words, if there was going to be one major feature in the first big update, it should be larger maps. To make this possible, I spent 3 months in the beginning of 2020 with that one focus: optimize, optimize, optimize the game's code, so I could get that FPS up and shave off more of the milliseconds it takes to render a scene. It was frustrating at times, but the main feeling I remember was actually excitement, as this really forced me to investigate the major bottlenecks (when I close my eyes, I can still see the Unity profiler), and come up with several new creative solutions for them. During this period I was reading a book about how John Carmack, the brilliant programmer behind the first Doom engine, was doing endless optimizations to make first person shooters a reality in the 90s, which was a great help in keeping me motivated.

While I implemented all kinds of larger and smaller ideas that made significant positive contributions to the performance of the game, there is one insight that had the biggest impact for the visualization part of the problem (how do you show thousands of unique organisms on screen?), which is to **fake it before you make it**. Let's go through my thought process step by step to see what I mean by that in this context. For every step, there is an interactive simulation you can run in your browser, so you can play with the idea yourself.

[h2]Step 1: the raw, unoptimized goal[/h2]

This is the basic idea, without any optimization: players can add their self created species somewhere in the world, and see whether it is strong enough to survive. In the interactive example below, you can add two species, 1 and 2, and then run the simulation.



The simulation and subsequent visualization should be instant in your browser, but this is of course a 2D table with precreated images. When we have to create fully animated 3D models in a 3D world instead, it quickly becomes too much.

The main problem is that **building/visualizing an organism in 3D is expensive**. While I have done major rewrites of the code that builds plants and animals, mostly focusing on not doing things twice and skipping parts of the procedure that are not 100% necessary (like building the roots of plants that are underground anyway), creating new organisms from scratch remained, and still is, expensive.

[h2]Step 2: object pooling[/h2]

The textbook solution when a lot of objects need to be created and removed in a game is to use object pooling. The idea is that when an object dies (in The Sapling, quite literally), the game object is not destroyed but reincarnates as the next object that is created, instantly moving to the position of the newborn organism and resetting any animations it was showing. That is, you think you are looking at a large amount of objects being created and destroyed again, but in reality you are looking at a smaller amount of objects that are just changing locations quickly.

In the interactive example below, I have added a pool to the right. When plants die, their models are either immediately reused or are stored in the pool until they are needed again, so a lot less 3D models need to be created. Comparing this simulation to the one above, the difference becomes clear when you skip 10 days a few times; in the first simulation, the model identifier (the part below each plant were it says 'model 10', for example) gets higher and higher, while here it stays low, reflecting the small number of 3D models that needed to be created.



Object pooling greatly improves the FPS in a stable ecosystem, as you can simply reuse what you already have and there is no need to create new objects on the fly. Unfortunately, in practice ecosystems in the game are very frequently unstable, most notably in the beginning of every new scenario when there is empty land to colonize. In other words, an object pool is not going to help if that pool is empty... so we'll also need a faster way to fill it.

[h2]Step 3: prebuilt organism library[/h2]

So far, when a plant was not available in the pool, we built it from scratch. If we are building a 3D model that we have built before, however, this is not necessary: why not store an example somewhere and just copy it? This is more expensive than taking an object from the pool, but way cheaper than building it from scratch. In the current example, there is a limited number of species (species 1 and species 2), so that would mean we only have to build a 3D model two times, and then be done with it.



At this point, we will get an acceptable FPS in an ecosystem with a small number of species, and no variation within a species... which is actually the case during the scenarios! In the sandbox mode, however, there is a *random mutations mode* that has a 30% chance of introducing a random change to a newborn plant or animal; that is, for 1 out of 3 newborn plants we won't have anything in the object pool AND the prebuilt organism library, so we're back to building from scratch.

[h2]Step 4: faking it and showing ancestors instead[/h2]

I came up with this final step when actually playing around with the (then still sluggish) random mutations mode in larger levels. The main insight is that in random mutations mode the player has no idea of what something is supposed to look like. For example, if a new plant is a little taller than its ancestors, but this is not shown to the player, will the player ever know? Almost certainly not, in particular if you take into account that the player is often looking at hundreds of plants and animals simultaneously. On the other hand, will the player notice performance problems? Yes, for sure... so a 100% smooth experience should get a higher priority than a 100% accurate visualization.

In practice, this means that if random mutation leads to a completely new organism, the game will not automatically build it from scratch, even though it is not in the pool or the library. Instead, it will look at what was shown for the parent and show this as a substitute. Later, when the game has time to breathe, the missing model might be added to the library. The game keeps track which organisms have a 'fake' appearance, and I can vary in how fast gaps in the library should be closed. Right now, I have settled on building a maximum of 1 organism per second.

In the simulation below, random mutations are turned on for the first time. This means that after some time you will not only see plants like the ones you added yourself (species 1 and species 2); instead, the number will go up each time a newborn plants changes a little bit from its parent, so after some time you will see species 3, species 4, species 5, etc. The accompanying model, however, will NOT change, meaning that the real plant and its 3D model go out of sync; the name will turn orange if this is the case. So you might see the model of a plant 1, while the text in orange tells you it is actually a plant 3. To catch up, you have to click the 'Add 1 model to library' button.



And this way, we have scaled back from building hundreds of 3D models per second to just one! Of course, there are a number of details, quirks and edge cases that I have left out of the explanation above to keep things simple. Two of them I want to mention to give you a more complete idea of the problem:

• In the simulation above, whenever you create a new 3D model, it's just the next one in line. In the real game, I'm trying to do this smarter by looking at which organisms are visually the most different from the 3D model they are using. That is, an animal that evolved an extra pair of feet is way more likely to get its model updated than a plant that evolved deeper underground roots.
  
• When you leave the simulation running for a longer period of time, hundreds of plant species emerge and go extinct again. This means the pool and library will endlessly grow... until you run out of RAM! To fix this, there is a mechanism that keeps track of which models are no longer used, and destroys them after some time to free up memory.
  

It seemed a rather innocent idea: a week before the release of the flower update, rent a cheap gaming setup in the cloud, let it stream The Sapling with random mutations on, and watch what happens. When testing this idea, however, it turned out that there is a lot of time for things to go wrong when streaming 24/7... so everything that can possibly go wrong will eventually: think of memory leaks that only show up after hours of play, or connection hiccups that make the streaming software stop (switched to StreamLabs last moment, which solved everything). It all resulted in many sleepless hours, but also in many fixed bugs.

To make sure that a crash of the game didn't result in multiple days of progress being reset, I implemented a mechanism that made regular backups of the save file. It wasn't needed in the end, but had the unintended side effect that I can now go back to various stages in the 1 week simulation and relive what happened. To share this experience with all of you, I made a video of it:

[previewyoutube=flmm-Y5KePo;full][/previewyoutube]

The next devlog will be an interactive dive into the details of the optimizations I have to make the flower update work; it will be published around a month from now. Follow The Sapling on Twitter or subscribe to the newsletter if you are interested!

The first big update for evolution simulation game The Sapling will release September 10th, and will extend the indie sim with major new functionality.

• Pollination & flowers, allowing the plants you designed to mix their genes. One way to spread pollen is by attracting animals with colorful flowers.
  
• A new sandbox level, completely redone and 100x larger! Besides random mutations and timejumps, it now also allows you to change the overall temperature and see what that means for evolution.
  
• A new scenario, teaching you how to set up an ecosystem with flowers.
  
• Extensions to the procedural music system. It now adds rhythm in if you speed up time, making it even more responsive to your actions.
  
• Bioluminescence. We all know that bioluminescence is cool (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BioluminescenceIsCool), so you can now add it to your plants and animals as well, to attract other creatures.
  

• August 17: more details on the pollination & flower mechanics
  
• August 20: more details on the new sandbox
  
• August 24: more details on how bioluminescence works
  
• August 27: more details on the UI overhaul that is also part of this update
  
• September 3-10: Twitch livestream where viewers can vote for the temperature to go up or down... will the ecosystem be able to adapt in time?
  

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesaplinggame
  
• Press kit: https://thesaplinggame.com/press/sheet.html
  
• Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thesaplinggame.com/newsletter
  
• Website: https://thesaplinggame.com/
  
• First look video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tFe4_-7cFA
  

Writing game code and creating game graphics are two fundamentally different beasts, and what is fun about them is very different. Programming has the clear advantage when I'm inspired by another game and want to see if I can replicate a particular idea. For example, if I encounter a game mechanic that I like, I can do a quick internet search and the result is most likely a tutorial on how to build this kind of technology. If I like the graphics in a game, on the other hand, there's not much I can do other than endlessly combining tricks I already know and hope this by chance achieves the graphical style I was trying to reproduce.

In this article I'd like to show you it doesn't have to be this way; I'll set a good example and explain in detail how to achieve the visual style of The Sapling. I will do this step by step, and (inspired by the large number of visitors for my previous interactive devlog) interactively with sliders, so you can compare the impact of the effect. At the end there's an interactive scene so you can turn on and off everything to your heart's desire.


Subdivision
The Catmull-Clark subdivision algorithm is like a machine where you can put in a simple 3D object, and a smooth more detailed object comes out. Fun fact: the Catmull in the name is actually Edwin Catmull, former president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Implementing it was my first experiment in Unity, and with it I showed myself that I was able to do 3D game programming. The algorithm allows the game to work with basic shapes for the models of plants and animals under the hood, while they appear more realistic to the player.



Depth of Field
Depth of field is a fancy term for making the background blurry. I really like depth of field in film and photography as it guides what the viewer focuses on in a very natural way. Unfortunately it often does not work well in gaming contexts: in most situations, the player should be able to focus wherever s/he wants. On top of this, depth of field makes objects feel relatively small; depth of field on anything larger than a human makes it look like some kind of miniature version - although recent city building sims use this to their advantage to create a 'toy city' kind of feel. In The Sapling, depth of field is used when the player clicks a plant or animal to focus on it. Look at the background in the image below to see the effect.



Vignette
A vignette can be many things, but I think its default meaning is to make the corners of an image darker. Unlike depth of field, I rarely like vignettes in film and photography but I almost always do in games. I guess it's because a really simple trick that most players won't actively notice, while it does give the game a more artistic look.



Water animation
A comment a lot of early playtesters gave was that the island looked empty and boring when you start. While I still haven't come up with a way to really fix this, I think that moving water makes the whole thing feel a little more alive. If you're into the technical terms, it's achieved by saving the effect of displacement modifier in Blender as shapekeys. You can turn the moving water on and off in the interactive scene below.

Gradient skyboxes
I came up with this idea quite late in the development of the game (before that, the sky in The Sapling was simply always blue), but the effect on the overal atmosphere was enormous. Interestingly, this can be achieved in the Unity game engine by using 3 pixel textures like these ones (enlarged versions):



This is the effect for a single point in the day night cycle with a slider for comparison. In the interactive scene below, you can actually move through the whole cycle.



Colored lights
Of course, beautiful skies only work when it matches the colors of the rest of the world. This is mostly achieved by simply changing the colors of the lights of the game along with the sky. Like with the skyboxes, you can see the effect for one point in the day night cycle here, and for the whole cycle in the interactive scene below the article.



Color correction
Color correction has the same goal as the colored lights (color the world to fit with the sky), but with a different approach. Whereas colored lights have much more effect, color corrections create a more unified and pretty look. This made them great together.



Interactive scene



Want more like this? I write articles like this roughly once per month; you can subscribe for email reminders here! If you want more fine-grained info on my game development work, there also is a Twitter account.

The arrow button above plays a short excerpt of what the music in The Sapling sounds like. I hesitated a long time before I settled on this musical style. Normally, I prefer memorable, hummable melodies over soundscapes, but for The Sapling I couldn't figure how this would work. This was mainly for two reasons: firstly, every melody I came up with didn't really seem to match with the rest of game's style. Many other simulation games feature either jazzy (like SimCity) or bright and jumpy (Equilinox, Planet Coaster) soundtracks, but both styles somehow seemed to clash with a more serious game about nature. Secondly, I was afraid that I simply would not be able to come up with enough material, meaning that the same melodies would be repeating over and over.

The solution came from an unexpected direction: during experimentation with ambient background music to get into a more productive programming mood (which by the way didn't work for me), I noticed that ambient music videos on Youtube often used a slideshow of pretty nature photos as 'background visuals'. Would it also work the other way around? If nature makes a good background visual for ambient music, is ambient music good background music for nature visuals?

Accepting this - and thus giving up hummable melodies in favor of long slow 'ambient' notes to evoke a relaxed feeling in the listener - was a slow process, but ultimately lead to a second discovery: a lot of ambient music rarely changes chords. Instead, all notes throughout the whole song are from the same musical scale. This is convenient, because a general (and oversimplified) rule of thumb is that two pieces of music that use notes from the same musical scale are likely to sound good together. Creating an ambient sounding soundtrack could simply be a matter of creating a large pool of musical fragments that only use notes from the same scale, and mixing them at random. How well this works is exemplified by the project In B Flat (which, as the name suggests, uses B Flat as this one scale).

This idea solved my two problems in one go: (1) the genre of ambient music fit the game's feel and (2) I could endlessly combine small musical fragments, giving you a fresh sounding soundtrack every time. The result is available for you to play with below. Feel free to click some play buttons at random, and decide for yourself if you think they sound good together.



My own conclusion, after playing with this for some time, was that although everything indeed sounded good together, some combinations were better for videogame background music than others. In the end, I identified five categories of fragments:

• The background, with long, sleepy tones. These are what gives the music its ambient feel. Strings are the most typical example.
  
• The foreground, played by a single instrument with short notes, grabbing the listener's attention. I most often use the piano or the celesta for this.
  
• The color, which is somewhere in between: they are played by a single instrument, but use long notes. These give a bit of flavour to a background that would otherwise always sound similar. This can for example be a clarinet or a trombone.
  
• The bass, often played by double bases or base clarinets.
  
• Victory sounds, that temporarily grab the player's attention and give them a satisfactory feeling.
  

As of today, The Sapling is available as an Early Access title on Steam (and soon on itch.io, GameJolt and Kartridge). Let's celebrate with a microtrailer:

[previewyoutube=4_SaPvPj80Y;leftthumb][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Out in the open[/h2]
It's quite a weird feeling to think that this game, which has been my side project for so many years, is now available to everybody. The game was of course already playtested by dozens of players (which turned out to be an absolute must, as it was way too complex and confusing in its early iterations), but the fact that there's now a Steam page where you can click 'Buy', videos that are watched by thousands of people, and comments everywhere talking about 'potential' - it's a feeling that's hard to describe. As a side advantage, these videos also show me some major mistakes that still need fixing; I'm creating a new build with some fixes as I write this.

The nicest responses have come, perhaps unsurprisingly, from Spore fans. For example, my absolute favorite video of the game is this one by KinglyValence. KinglyValence is a speedrunner that currently holds the world record for all individual Spore stages but the first, in all difficulties. He spent some time analyzing The Sapling and managed to complete all four scenarios in a whopping 10 minutes and 16 seconds!

[h2]The Sapling and Spore[/h2]
Speaking of Spore, most questions I received over the last few weeks were related to Spore in some way or the other. So what is this relation between The Sapling and Spore anyway? The Sapling was originally conceived during a bicycle ride to school in 2002; at the time I was so excited about it that I was planning to write to dozens of game developers to 'give away my idea for free' (at the time not realizing that having an idea is not that special in the game industry, realizing one is). Little did I know that at that time Will Wright, father of simulation games and an absolute hero to me, was already working on it. You can imagine my excitement when he revealed Spore at GDC in 2005; it became an absolute obsession of mine. Checking several Spore related news sites was the first I did when I opened up a web browser these days.

Since its release in 2008, though, I have only played through the game twice. Turns out what I liked so much about Wright's earlier work is that they were sim games; a detailed simulation of some real life phenomenon to toy around with. Spore was a collection of little games in multiple genres (2D arcade, action, strategy) that together formed a narrative. While a beautiful idea, it was not the game I had dreamed up in 2002. In the mean time, I had started to make games in my free time (starting with GameMaker, then with Pygame) and I started to feel more and more ready to build a small game around the idea myself in Unity 3D. It must have been around 2015 that I completed an implementation of the algorithm Catmull-Clark for Unity, essential for the editors in the game, that convinced me I could do it. I wish I'd had known back then it would all result in me writing this release blog post today.

As the release date of The Sapling is coming closer, it's time to give you some more insight in the game. Therefore, I am releasing six models created by playtesters of The Sapling, using the plant and animal builders. They can be looked at from all sides, or they can be downloaded to incorporate them in your own 3D creations.

One thing I noticed from the responses to the 'First look' video is that it was not clear to everybody how deep the simulation really is. Therefore, I have used Sketchfab's annotation functionality to highlight various bodyparts of the organisms displayed, and explain a bit how they impact the simulation.

The models can be viewed here:

• Plant 1
  
• Plant 2
  
• Plant 3
  
• Animal 1
  
• Animal 2
  
• Animal 3
  

The Sapling was built from the ground up with community interaction in mind. This interaction goes both ways: players can take stuff generated by or for the game, and use it in their own creations, or they can add their own creations to the game.

This article functions as an in-depth guide on how to do this, to be used as reference. It's a living document that will be updated continuously. If you find any things that are unclear or just incorrect, or have more ideas you want to share with other creators, drop me a line at thesaplinggame@gmail.com .

Overview of the information on that page:

• Repurposing material from the game
  
  
  
  • Music
    
  • Exporting lifeforms and animations generated by the game
    
  • Using gameplay statistics from the API
    
  
  
• Extending the game
  
  
  
  • Scenarios
    
  • Body parts
    
  • How to create asset bundles
    
  
  

Today, the main theme of The Sapling was officially released on SoundCloud. It's an attempt to mix an ambient music like sound with a recognizable melody - and if you listen carefully, you will indeed recognize this same melody throughout the game. Have a listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/wesselstoop/the-sapling-main-theme .

Because I would very much like to encourage covers and remixes of this material, I also release sheet music and the separate layers of music used in the main theme.

• Separate layers used in the main theme
  
• Sheet music for the main theme.