Developer posts and news about this game.
As you might know, at the moment I'm running a long livestream, simulating evolution 24/7. It's all epxplained in this video: We've been able to follow the planet Wright-2b for almost a week now, and the moving continent (named 'Rupert' by the community) is about halfway its jour
Streaming evolution simulation indie game The Sapling, 24/7 for 2 weeks: View game page We started on planet Wright-2b with a simple alga and underwater animal, turned on random mutations, and now we watch what evolves. Introduction to the project: Introduction to the world:
Balancing and fixes for animals Various legs besides the body now have special requirements for the animal to have more than 1 set of limbs, to make them look more natural (already in the previous patch logs, but now it's working) Sessile animals with moving juveniles now actuall
Balancing and fixes for plants Major rebalancing of leaf statistics, so you will more variety in the leaves evolving Bioluminescent flowers and fruits now cost slightly more energy (thanks, Warlord-vir!) Prevented plants slowly taking over areas where they shouldn't be able to su
Working on land animal evolution Made the evolution of land animals more likely Animals with aquatic eggs that can only walk very slowly are now considered land animals if they also swim very slowly If there are only very few land species, subspecies branch off into their own spe
More work on the project to make the game easier to understand Added a habitat map for the plant and animal editors, so you can quickly see where in your world this planet will survive Moved the 'this organism has a problem' message out of the editor side bar for editors, so it h
A completely new cladogram view I've replaced the old cladogram view, because playtesting quite consistently showed that nobody was using it. The game is now using a completely new chronogram approach as can be seen in both Species ALRE and The Bibites. It should give a much bett
Major simulation change If an animal is in a location that contains food, it will no longer leave that location until all food is gone (except plankton, which requires swimming through). This makes it a lot easier to keep various animals alive, addressing a recurring complaint...
Overhauled optimization mechanism that decides which 3D models to show Building procedural 3D models on the fly is expensive; on most modern hardware, showing an accurate model for each plant and animal in realtime is not feasbile. Therefore, as an optimization mechanic, until no
Completely overhauled how species are detected So far, species classification was based on the features of an organism. Simply put, if a plant evolved a new type of leaf, or an animal evolved a new type of fin, the game decided this was a new species, without giving it further th
This is the first time the new movement update is available to everyone, regardless of whether you chose the beta. A quick overview of all new features: This is what has changed since the movement update patch last week. Fixes for juveniles and the red torso length handle in the
Improved upright bipeds Added arm swing animation for animals with arms Upright bipeds no longer have their feet clip through the ground when placed Upright bipeds no longer slowly sink into the ground when walking Prevented walking animation problems for creatures with limbs tha
Resurrected the scenarios Tested and rebalanced all scenarios to work with the new features of the movement update Redesigned the soil statistic button to have a planet icon Added new terrain overlay steepness stats and climate zones to all scenarios For all scenarios, added new
Reintroduced the 'randomize all' button The new version of the button generates small and large landmasses at random, using the new continent system. They can be moved and changed by the player. Most of the other random changes (like temperature, moisture, rings, etc) could be re
More work on animation Added sleeping animations: animals squatting, moving head down and to the side Added egg laying animation (best visible in animals with a tail, because they move it up) Optimized specializing animations to player designed animals, and made it possible for a
Introducing save file format 13 Includes steepness of the terrain Remembers manual mode in the soil statistics view Updated the loading view explanation (which formats are supported) Working on flight with insect wings Animals with insect wings no longer stop moving when flying a
Working on body part loading Discovered that some limbs and accessories were saved incorrectly. This was hidden so far because the loading was ALSO incorrect, but will give problems in the future. From this patch onwards, some creatures saved with earlier versions of the game mig
Simulation fixes I think I finally figured out how to prevent sessile feet on the side. This bug caused numerous problems, like plants multiplying, corrupt saves and missing models in the species list view. Added steepness of the terrain and how limbs differ in what steepness the
Simulation fixes Prevented another way the sessile feet could evolve to be on the side. This bug causes numerous problems, like plants multiplying, corrupt saves and missing models in the species list view (thanks azul1462, TaterTot, MisterLiteralRandomGuy!) EDIT: hmm I just enco
Simulation fixes Fixed aquatic animal babies being stuck in the ground (thanks Hexadexx, Enzo Ramos Henrique, Ultraneongodpet, Kingdragon2026, Col. Caboose, bashclark1004, azul1462!) Fixed limbs mutating into sessile feet on the side, which the game cannot display (thanks AnniJPG