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.
For a 'normal' patch log, explaining all changes since last week, see below.
Old save files
The Food & Fire update uses a new save file format. Although I have tried to also support the previous save file format, several users indicate that this was not 100% successful, and they cannot load save files created with the previous update. In case you really want to continue with your old world, you can still access older versions of the game by using the 'previousupdate' branch here on Steam.
New since the previous small patch
Added 2 new aquatic seed types that sink to the bottom and germinate there; there's an extra explanation text to explain the difference to floating seeds. This fixes two problems: * Aquatic plants so far usually did not survive, because normal seeds die when touching water * ALL grass species just continues growing under water (now they need special seeds)
Fixes for disasters: * Fixed the strange, mostly black, colors seen temporarily when increasing or decreasing the ocean level * Tweaked the bloom effect: during the night, made the bioluminescence brighter but fire less bright * Wild fires no longer spread to plants submerged in water * Changes to the soil made by meteorites are undone after some time * Grass now also dies from the fog caused by meteorites * Removed the confusing global temperature drop during the fog caused by meteorites * Made the y position (height) of the volcano model the same everywhere, independent of terrain, so it no longer sticks out sometimes * Fixed global temperature changes causing temperatures above the maximum temperature (which caused perpetually dormant plants)
Fixes for the planet editor: * Added sound effects when placing volcanoes * Made the animation to switch from the spherical to the flat planet faster * The toggle button to switch between the flat and spherical planet is now locked during the animation * The terrain overlay button now have a sound effect * The terrain overlay buttons now pulsate 2 times when touching a slider selects them automatically * Fixed various smaller reasons that could cause the volcano position on the spherical planet to glitch out
Fixes for the plant editor: * During the mountain level, don't show the root handle below the fibrous root (because you can't use it anyway) * Realized (and fixed) that I never configured the 'provides energy' stat for many seeds * Made the rotation with mouse movement faster
Misc fixes: * The list of common death causes in the species detail view now also mentions 'old age' * Fixed the missing texture for the blue iris eye (black in the previous build) * Fixed a glitch with floating plants caused by their ancestors having stilt roots
Refactor (changes under the hood): * Gave body parts persistent identifiers, so when new body parts were added and you load an old save file, they are not all mixed up.
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 Food & Fire update is out! (patch 10.18)
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.
For a 'normal' patch log, explaining all changes since last week, see below.
Old save files
The Food & Fire update uses a new save file format. Although I have tried to also support the previous save file format, several users indicate that this was not 100% successful, and they cannot load save files created with the previous update. In case you really want to continue with your old world, you can still access older versions of the game by using the 'previousupdate' branch here on Steam.
New since the previous small patch
Added 2 new aquatic seed types that sink to the bottom and germinate there; there's an extra explanation text to explain the difference to floating seeds. This fixes two problems: * Aquatic plants so far usually did not survive, because normal seeds die when touching water * ALL grass species just continues growing under water (now they need special seeds)
Fixes for disasters: * Fixed the strange, mostly black, colors seen temporarily when increasing or decreasing the ocean level * Tweaked the bloom effect: during the night, made the bioluminescence brighter but fire less bright * Wild fires no longer spread to plants submerged in water * Changes to the soil made by meteorites are undone after some time * Grass now also dies from the fog caused by meteorites * Removed the confusing global temperature drop during the fog caused by meteorites * Made the y position (height) of the volcano model the same everywhere, independent of terrain, so it no longer sticks out sometimes * Fixed global temperature changes causing temperatures above the maximum temperature (which caused perpetually dormant plants)
Fixes for the planet editor: * Added sound effects when placing volcanoes * Made the animation to switch from the spherical to the flat planet faster * The toggle button to switch between the flat and spherical planet is now locked during the animation * The terrain overlay button now have a sound effect * The terrain overlay buttons now pulsate 2 times when touching a slider selects them automatically * Fixed various smaller reasons that could cause the volcano position on the spherical planet to glitch out
Fixes for the plant editor: * During the mountain level, don't show the root handle below the fibrous root (because you can't use it anyway) * Realized (and fixed) that I never configured the 'provides energy' stat for many seeds * Made the rotation with mouse movement faster
Misc fixes: * The list of common death causes in the species detail view now also mentions 'old age' * Fixed the missing texture for the blue iris eye (black in the previous build) * Fixed a glitch with floating plants caused by their ancestors having stilt roots
Refactor (changes under the hood): * Gave body parts persistent identifiers, so when new body parts were added and you load an old save file, they are not all mixed up.
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.
Patch v11.17
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.
Patch v11.16
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.
Patch v11.14
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 deatch 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
Patch v11.12
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
Patch v11.10
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 devlog series for the next update has started!
The content of the next big update will be revealed step by step in a series of 6 weekly devlogs, starting with this one:
Patch v10.30 (hotfix for smaller map sizes)
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.
Patch v10.29
Achievement fixes
* Fixed the completionist achievement never firing * Moved the completionist check to the main menu
Visualization fixes
* 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
Simulation fixes
* 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
UI fixes
* 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
Camera fixes
* 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
Ice age fixes
* Saving and reloading no longer makes the ice disappear * Going into an editor no longer makes the ice disappear
