Update archive
Latest The Sapling updates
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Patch v13.57
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 plant…
Patch v13.52
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 ve…
Patch v13.49
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 pro…
Patch v13.46
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…
Patch v13.45
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 ke…
Patch v13.44
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 n…
Patch v13.41
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…
Patch v13.40
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…
Patch v13.39 (beta only)
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 Prev…
Patch v13.33 (beta only)
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…
Patch v13.31 (beta only)
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…
Patch v13.30 (beta only)
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 anim…
Patch v13.27 (beta only)
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…
Patch v13.26
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 onward…
Patch v13.23 (beta only)
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 steepn…
Patch v13.22 (beta only)
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 azul1…
Patch v13.21 (beta only)
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 fe…
First movement update build is live
For the brave, not scared of bugs and crashes, I just uploaded the first unstable build of the Movement update to the beta branch! New features A new terrain editor which works both in the planet editor but also during…
Patch v18.82 (meteorite fix)
Apologies for the inconvenience everyone! I was stupid enough to release a patch that introduces a major bug right before the devlog period. As editing the devlog videos eats all of my time, and they have a deadline, I…
The Sapling devlog returns with season 5
It all starts with new legs, like ones inspired by the kangaroo and insects, but the old walking system just couldn’t handle them. So I rebuilt the system from the ground up, with shorter iteration times and way more po…
