Features

Will you add X?

I'm receiving lists of suggestions every single day, and I love it; feel free to reach out via thesaplinggame@gmail.com or the Steams forums. Do realize my response might be underwhelming, though; it's often along the lines of 'I like this idea, but no promises'. This is partly because my plans change rather drastically all the time (often after reading community feedback); if I start promising features right now, I'm bound to disappoint people later. On top of that, I'm of course trying to build excitement for this project, and I've discovered that witholding part of the information, and then dripfeeding it in a short time period, is much more effective than full transparency.

What are your plans for the future?

I'm always full of plans, but I'm being mysterious about it on purpose. This is partly because these plans change rather drastically all the time (often after reading community feedback); if I start promising features right now, I'm bound to disappoint people later. On top of that, I'm of course trying to build excitement for this project, and I've discovered that witholding part of the information, and then dripfeeding it in a short time period, is much more effective than full transparency.

You should add tools / intelligence / civilization / spaceships!

I wonder where you got this idea ;). Seriously, though, the main focus of this game will remain ecosystems and evolution in the form of a SIMULATION game. Still, to what extent intelligence and tool use have a place in an ecosystem simulation is an open question.

You should add plate techtonics!

This is requested surprisingly often, usually because players want their continents to split or merge. With the current terrain generation algorithms, this is quite hard to realize... but the same has been true for many other features that eventually made it into the game, so never say never. In any case, it's good to keep in mind that you can always higher and lower the ocean level for a somewhat similar effect.

Where can I find / rename / delete saved games?

Savegames are just files on your computer, you can find them in C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Wessel Stoop\The Sapling . There's also a button in the load menu that points to this location.

Platforms

Is this available on Mac?

Only on Windows or Linux at the moment. There are no short term plans to add the game to other platforms, but if I ever change my mind, Mac will be the first, as it's most requested by far.

Will you add this to mobile?

I get this question quite often! At the moment, unfortunately, I'm having trouble to get this to run smoothly on gaming PCs (this game is about simulating thousands of organisms simultaneously, after all), so if I ever decide to expand to other platforms, my first choice will be more powerful hardware.

Will you add this to consoles?

At the moment, I have no plans to expand to other platforms, but always good to know there are people interested in that!

Does this run on the Steam Deck?

It does, in windowed mode! Unfortunately, as this is designed for mouse and keyboard, the controls are not super convenient, and there are no short term plans to add controller support.

Price

Can you make this free / open source?

I love free games as much as you do, but it's important to realize that I invested thousands of hours into this project, in the hopes that I could one day support my family by making games. If I make this game free, I throw that dream away.

Will there ever be a sale?

Yes, but not before the game is in a much more polished state, which will not be anytime soon. This is because I fear a sale will cause the game's review score to drop drastically, possibly beyond repair. My current focus is to build, not to polish, and in my experience people buying the game now, at full price, are so enthousiastic that most of them are willing to tolerate glitches and low framerates to an extent. People who buy the game because of a Steam notification 'a game you wished for is on sale', on the other hand, might not feel so forgiving.

Bugs and other problems

This game is running with very low FPS, why is this not optimized?

Evolution simulations are, by nature, heavy on your hardware, as thousands of individual organisms need to be simulated simultaneously. As you can imagine, a lot of optimization was already needed to make anything but the smallest maps possible (see for example this blogpost about it ), and optimization continues to be a major focus point: more recent optimization projects related to alga animation and cursor hitbox detection have improved the game's performance with over 30 FPS in some situations.

Having said that, I'm aware there is still a long way to go. Major contributors to low FPS are (1) large sandbox maps, (2) a faster timespeed and (3) having random mutations turned on. Until the performance is fully fixed, you can use the organism caps in the ESC menu as workaround; the lower the cap, the higher your FPS.

My game doesn't start!

I heard from lots of players that having Citrix installed blocks the game from starting. This is related to he Unity engine and not something I can change. If this does not help you getting the game to work, don't forget Steam lets you refund within 14 days!

The game starts, but does not respond to my input!

I'm told the version of the Unity game engine I'm using might get confused about cursor position if:

You are playing the game via a remote desktop connection or inside a virtual machine.
Controllers are plugged in.

If this does not help you getting the game to work, don't forget Steam lets you refund within 14 days!

This game is using up all of my RAM!

If you run the game for longer periods of time without reloading, sooner or later there will be problems with low framerates and running out of RAM, in particular on a large map with the fast timespeed.

To give you a bit of insight: the problem is that the random mutations mechanic forces the game to continuously build new 3D models, which lowers the framerate. To remedy this, the game tries to store its work in memory so it can be reused later... but in some situation this will eat up all memory available. This also explains why the problem is smaller when you do time jumps, as time jumps only moves forward the simulation, without the visual part.

There are already a few automated cleanup actions in an attempt to fix this problem, the most of extreme of which forces the game to go into an editor and automatically leave it again, so you start with a clean slate... but clearly this does not work for everyone in all situations.

Where can I report bugs I encountered?

Either the Steam forums or thesaplinggame@gmail.com, thanks!

I had a glitch where the terrain turned turned all white!

Both 'white terrain' and 'plants duplicating onto each other' are symptoms of some other underlying problem. It's often an animal that the game does not know how to animate, but it could be anything. While any bug report is welcome, they are most helpful if they include some information of WHEN this happened. I might be able to see what is going on in a log file (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\The Sapling\the_sapling_Data) or crash report (C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Wessel Stoop\The Sapling). If you send those to thesaplinggame@gmail.com that would be really helpful.

I ran into a problem where plants duplicated onto each other endlessly!

My plants and animal look like their ancestors, I need to go into an editor to see what they actually look like

Reusing models of other species is one of the many ways the game tries to save CPU cycles. The algorithm that decides which species get their own model prioritizes (1) populous species and (2) player made ones. Roughly 9 out of 10 times players don't notice that they're looking at an organism that is (usually slightly) incorrect, but there are situations where the algorithm makes incorrect assumptions, and that that you are here reading this indicates that it might need improvement.

Gameplay

How do I get algae to evolve into land plants?

Plants should evolve automatically if the conditions are right, but the problem is that it's not always easy to see if they are. A useful strategy is to manually create the plants you would expect to evolve, and see if they would survive everywhere, in all seasons. In most cases, you will discover that the alga colors that are abundant under water do not work on land, or that there is a more extreme seasons that early plants won't be able to handle.

How do I get land animals to evolve on their own?

Land animals should evolve automatically if the conditions are right, but the problem is that it's not always easy to see if they are. A useful strategy is to manually create the animals you would expect to evolve, and see if they would survive everywhere, in all seasons. In most cases, you will discover that there is a more extreme seasons that early animals won't be able to handle.

How can I let the game run in the background while the window is out of focus?

Not officially supported, but you can open the cheat menu with Shift+C, and then type 'continuous'.

Community & helping out

Can I work for you?

Thanks for your application! Unfortunately, my business does not generate enough money to hire other employees. You're always free to send your CV in case my situation changes, though!

What can I do to help out this project?

Two ways:

Community management is a major timesink for me at the moment; the more enthousiastic players jump in when I'm late to reply, the more time I have to spend on the game itself.
I'm always interested in growing the community. It would be great if you could think of the places where you get your own gaming news, and spread the game there; could be anything from pointing larger streamers to the game, retweeting or posting on relevant subreddits.

Can I make mods for this game?

See this page for more information.

Is there a Discord for this game?

There is: https://discord.gg/Dg87jbWkPQ . I'm not a Discord user myself, and to prevent losing even more time to community management, this one is run by the community.