The Food & Fire update is out! (patch 11.18)

The Sapling

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!

[h3]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.[/h3] [list] [*] [url=https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EI_X5H9Wp4k][b]For a 1 minute summary of the update, see this Youtube short.[/b][/url] [*] For a 'normal' patch log, explaining all changes since last week, see below. [/list] [h3]Old save files[/h3] 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. [h3]New since the previous small patch[/h3] 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.