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!
Improvements to the species detail view:
* For animals, it now shows what they are eating, but also what they are eaten by.
* For both 'eaten' and 'eaten by', it now shows the food type (meat? eggs? blood?). This is not saved yet, so you will lose this information if you save/load.
* The stats tab is now always the first one.
Balancing evolving ecosystems:
* Before, after turning on random mutations, most aquatic ecosystems lost all biodversity because 1 strong omnivore predator ate all young of the others, and relied on algae for the rest of its calories. The size restrictions (how much smaller does a young animal need to be before you can eat it) are now much stricter so eating young is less OP.
* Decreased the energy carnivore mouths could get from eating eggs.
* Mothers that are ready to give birth, but cannot find a good place (in crowded environments), will now continue to move instead of standing still, waiting for a place to free up.
* Plants evolving from the grass shape to the 'single plant' shape now have the matching seed (as opposed to always the primitive seed).
UI fixes:
* Fixed the question mark tooltip for light reaching the soil
* When pressing 'm' in the editors, to work with user generated body parts, a rudimentary mod panel now appears
Misc:
* Fixed an error, caused by the animal species name generator, that often appeared with high animal mutation rates
* Fixed a problem where the game could get into creature placement mode after reloading for memory reasons
Overviewed of tweaked body parts:
* https://the-sapling-encyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Jawless_Mouth
* https://the-sapling-encyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Facultative_Aquatic_Carnivore_Mouth
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.