Patch v12.81

As I've focused on the livestream and a new upcoming big update, it's been quite a while since I've released a patch of bugfixes. In the mean time, I have continued to process bug reports, though, and also made improvements to keep the livestream running. As the next batch of videos in September will undoubtedly bring a bunch of new (and returning) players, it's time this work gets released. Apart from some potential hotfixes for problems caused by this patch, this should be the last patch before the next big update!

Fixed a huge memory leak

• Removing old unused information related to alga spores, seeds, eggs, carrion, nests and fungi from memory
• No longer save old unused information about fungi to the save file, making save files for very long simulations up to 70% smaller

Optimization for situations with a lot of species

• Removed color from classifier, slightly decreasing the number of species generated
• Saving takes a smaller bite out of your memory usage
• Various smaller optimizations to handle large amounts of species better

Improved optimization

• Further optimized how existing animal in a crowded map are loaded in, avoiding unnessary model builds from scratch
• Fixed problem where some animals loaded in later not going invisible when the camera moves away, which caused very low FPS
• Made mechanism for removing large animals and fungi in the distance more strict, highly increasing FPS when there are lots of those

Tweaking the mutation mechanics

• Fixed egg types never changing (thanks Corbett Collins!)
• Stricter definition of land animals: should have land only eggs OR walk (instead of dragging)
• Made the evolution of land animals more likely

Fixed illegal animals causing the plant duplication

• Fixed the tully mouth and an extra mouth on top (thanks Patrick Pattinson!)
• Fixed problem when adding a blowhole (thanks Shemariguess!)
• Fixed problem with overlapping mouths (thanks Gruisman!)

Balancing

• Moved the YAML files where players can edit stats to `the_sapling_Data\StreamingAssets\BodyPartStats`, so it will actually work this time (thanks Gruisman!)
• Nerfed the temperature protection of shells
• Nerfed how much weight long bird legs can carry
• Nerfed underwater drag of long bird legs

Other

• Fixed exterminating plankton from the species list view (thanks SeedlessWatermelon!)
• Whenever a savefile gets corrupt, instead of hanging, the game now closes itself and creates a log file
• Fixed an error that occurred when an animal with sex B (or C, D etc) causes a new species
• Turned off hanging babies for now, as they were giving too much errors

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 [email protected].