The Sapling · build 21768695 · published
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 not feasbile. Therefore, as an optimization mechanic, until now only populous species got their own models, which was an acceptable approximation for some time. However, ever since I made a change to how speciation works a few years back, causing many more species, a lot of players noticed this optimization mechanism partly ruined the gameplay experience for them. The revised speciation patch two weeks ago, which significantly decreases the number of species, was already a first phase to fix this problem. This week, I take it a step further and introduce a revision to the mechanism itself.
In this new approach, the game will still prebuild the most populous species; the main difference is what happens if the species model is NOT available. Before, it would default to the most used species. Now, instead, it will use a so-called 'library profile', which is a summary of the most important bodyparts. For animals, this entails which eyes, mouth and limb the animal has. If an animal with a similar profile is available, it will be used. Otherwise, the game will quickly create it from scratch and store it for later.