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.- The Sapling Linux [149.82 M]
Back in May, I asked a simple question: what happens if you place a few primitive organisms on a brand new planet, switch on random mutations, and let evolution run for an entire month?
To find out, I launched a 31-day Twitch livestream using The Sapling. Starting with just a basic alga and an aquatic animal, we watched as life on planet Wright-1b unfolded in real time. Every adaptation, every extinction, and every surprising twist played out live.
Over the course of those 31 days, we saw:
Algae abandoning the seafloor to drift freely across the waves.
[/*]Dordias rising as king of the seas, with sharper eyes, stronger fins, and teeth.
[/*]The first land animals evolving legs, followed by faster descendants with long limbs, bipedal forms, and eventually protective shells.
[/*]Seeds hitchhiking to new continents by clinging to the fur of aquatic animals.
[/*]A meteor impact plunging the planet into darkness, allowing fungi to take over and fungus-eating animals to thrive.
[/*]An ice age reshaping ecosystems, with plants adapting by going dormant and animals finding new survival strategies.
[/*]
To share this story beyond the livestream, I created daily shorts narrated by Leo Richards, known from Natural World Facts. Many people asked to bring everything together into one complete video, so I made an extended cut that combines the highlights with new narration and extra footage.
Watch the full 31-day recap on YouTube
This project wouldnt have been the same without the community. You named continents, suggested disasters, and even kept a living wiki running during the stream. Thanks for being part of this journey - heres to many more evolving worlds!
Wessel
Minimum 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.
- Storage: 150 MB available space
Recommended Setup
[ 6372 ]
[ 5878 ]
[ 1991 ]
[ 1943 ]
[ 986 ]
Time left:
356099 days, 13 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
356099 days, 13 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
3 days, 21 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
31 days, 21 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
34 days, 21 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
35 days, 21 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
9 days, 7 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
4 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
10 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
11 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
16 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
18 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
22 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes
Time left:
2 days, 5 hours, 13 minutes
Time left:
6 days, 21 hours, 59 minutes
Time left:
8 days, 20 hours, 59 minutes
Time left:
14 days, 4 hours, 9 minutes
