Balancing mutation mechanics for more interesting simulations
Made it possible for fungi to disperse via water
Made it more likely for new land animals to lose unused fins
Made the emergence of sexual reproduction more likely
Made the emergence of other sexes more likely
Made the evolution of land plants more likely on a planet with seasons
Meteorites block a way larger percentage of sunlight
When the sunlight is blocked after a meteorite, no new plants can get born, so more plant species get extinct
Balancing body parts
Nerfed all eyes so increasing scale is unattractive during the day
Buffed the pinhole eye, so it's no longer inferior to the compound eye
Balancing statistics for the primitive leaves, fern and needles to prevent bottlenecks
Redoing the appearance of some ears and eyes
Redesigned two most primitive ears
Fixed ears on top flipping backwards during animations
Fixed the 'looking sideways' eye having white eyelids
Fixed 'obligate night vision' eye's brow being reflective
Small UI fixes
Fixed the species detail view button (the 'i') sometimes not working when focusing on an organism
Fixed organisms not appearing when loading from the second page of the archive
Decreased font sizes for leaf stats in the plant editor
Fixed various causes of the time stopping bug
The liquid storing abdomen when filled (thanks Not Original!)
When animals tried to climb trees that for optimization reasons only had a billboard
Meteorites removing plants that only had a billboard
Other
Fixed fungus caps being forgotten sometimes (thanks TaterTot!)
Fixed messing up versioning in the species archive functionality
I often forget to read comments below release notes, so if you have questions or bug reports, feel free to reach out via the Steam forums or thesaplinggame@gmail.com. [ 2025-03-22 06:47:43 CET ][ Original post ]
The Sapling is a short simulation game where you design your own plants and animals, and put them in a world together. Or you turn on random mutations, and see what evolution does to your ecosystem!
Features
Design plants and animals.
Fast-forward time to and watch the ecosystem work like a charm or slowly fall apart (probably the latter :) ).
A sandbox mode where you can skip time and turn on random mutation, allowing true evolution.
An instinct system where you can specify what an animal should do when it hears or sees something.
A procedural animation system so any animal can perform any animation.
Procedural music mixed on the fly.
Everything set up to be easily extended by players.
This looks just like Spore!
Wessel Stoop has wanted to play a simulation game where you can build your own plants and animals, put them in a world, and see what happens since 2002. You can imagine his excitement when Will Wright, the father of simulation games, demoed his latest game Spore to an enthusiastic crowd. When Spore turned out to be all game genres except simulation, Wessel decided he wanted to try to make the game by himself. The Sapling is the result of that attempt.
MINIMAL SETUP
OS: Ubuntu 16 or newer
Processor: A processor with SSE2 instruction set supportMemory: 4 GB RAM
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Graphics card with DX10 (shader model 4.0) capabilities.