This new cladogram view is my new favorite feature (evolution sim devlog 3-5)

I'm working on evolution simulation game The Sapling, my solo indie game project. It's a game where you can basically do two types of things: on the one hand, there are a number of scenarios tasking you to design an ecosystem that meets specific requirements, on the other there is a sandbox where you can build your own plants and animals, turn on 'random mutations', and see how they evolve.
In this video I explain how various new views with extra information work
Questions: thesaplinggame.com/faq
Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/99...
Itch: woseseltops.itch.io/thesapling
X: / thesaplinggame
Fan initiatives:
* Discord / discord
* Reddit / thesapling
0:00 intro
2:27 detail view
3:52 epoch view
6:27 cladogram view
8:59 outro

[@Karl_Marx]

We need another evolution simulated with this update!

[@kiki-drawer2669]

Agreed!

[@Yui_idk_why]

Almost sure he is gonna post

[@dantheman1355]

Literally one of the only things I still wanted for the game. This is the perfect update and also congrats on the success of your game and channel!

[@Monkeyface678]

This new tree system looks like it's going to be so much better than the old one

[@philderkomischetyp4481]

Quite the observation

[@TheSapling]

For completeness, the old family tree, zoomed in and focused on 1 species, is still there as part of the new species detail view.

[@Patata17]

How is it possible that every single update is a 10/10, if this continues in 5 updates this will be GOTY

[@darkturtle9996]

well its a very niche game so probably not GOTY but I can easily see this continuing to be the one of the best ecosystem games out there

[@GuyllianVanRixtel]

Eh, the game still has many problems with lag and the camera.

[@darkturtle9996]

@@GuyllianVanRixtel it does but those are slowly getting patched out with every update so after 5 or so updates I can definitely see most of the issues being gone

[@Inno4138]

Exactly what always confused me in the previous content; figuring out where stuff was evolving from 😅

[@Blowtorchturtle27]

I can’t wait to see the log after school! One idea that would be really neat would be a food pyramid. If an animal ate the majority of a certain food type, like a purple spider like species eating the majority of a certain grass species, it would be placed higher on the food pyramid than the grass. Edit: I saw the log and it was just as cool as I hoped

[@vaultdude4871]

A trophic flowchart kinda thing. That'd be neat

[@TheSapling]

Without making promises, that would indeed be cool!

[@habarvaz3142]

Every new update showcase amazes me again. Can't wait for this game to get the attention it deserves.

[@gabealotgb]

It was only until I saw this, that I realised that the game really needed another way to view clades, it is currently a bit of a slog to find any new species that are successful. Got me more and more hyped each dev dairy ngl.

[@puntalic]

Well... you got me. Im supporting your game, just bought and installed.

[@bustavonnutz]

You are my favorite indie game dev, these updates are great & you're actually listening to the base. Great job bro, Sapling is 100% going to blow up.

[@christosdoesthings]

i love the cladogram, one of my biggest pet pieves was how confusing which species is related to which was

[@Brosquini]

Could you add stones, moss and roots to your game world? This would dramatically improve its appearance, and allow for features like sunbaking on rocks or small root eating creatures! This would be so awesome and completely overhaul your games graphics.

[@nicefloweytheoverseer7632]

Roots are already a thing in the game?

[@Brosquini]

@@nicefloweytheoverseer7632 I mean roots that are visible in game, that travel over the ground, similar to fig trees

[@arianelcole]

mooshrooms as well

[@arianelcole]

Parasite plants @@Brosquini

[@Brosquini]

Of course@@arianelcole

[@matterhorn731]

Very excited about this! Getting a good handle on the history of life on our simulated worlds will be so much more convenient!

[@coryman125]

Every time you post an update, my reaction is ranging from "oh nice, glad that was accepted!" and "that's a really cool new idea!". Extremely happy with the direction this project is going in :)

[@blacklight683]

5:05 6:bonjour It should be atleast like 50 so it won't count a random group dying from old age as mass extension

[@TheSapling]

To my surprise, with the current settings you already get more false negatives than false positives: very often I delete as many things as I can with the bulldozer circle, and it still doesn't count as a mass extinction. However, if you later turn out to be right after all, it's an easy fix of course :)

[@liamflanagin7134]

@@TheSapling Theres a bull dozer?

[@artydino4914]

Perfect for your evolution series!

[@marcobrunacci6221]

So hyped for this feature! And the epoch system also looks sick as hell

[@rosiea9719]

This looks great. I'm so excited for the update!

[@vonnegutfrey8714]

This update is great. Before we could make the story of our created planet's biology but we could never easily tell what that story was. Now we can and I can see playing this game being a lot more interesting.

[@gsquared8730]

I still think the top-down version is better, even though it supposedly takes up more space. Why not just have a cladogram that can be moved around by the mouse, or at the very least a “this species is less successful so we’ll ignore it” approach? Also I think most people would be more comfortable with that version, as it’s probably the most common.

[@cosmosyn2514]

maybe theres something im missing but this style of cladogram also seems to not give any indication of time, or at least isnt very clear about it. at least with a traditional cladogram you can determine how old species are relative to eachother easily

[@TheSapling]

Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated!

[@TheSapling]

There indeed is no clear indication of time with the approach I chose; hence the separate timeline

[@HappyGingerWolf]

This system seems really helpful, definitely a great addition Although I did notice, basing success mostly around the number of offspring does heavily favour R selected species, not sure how that could be resolved

[@viridison]

this has got me the most excited not that the others havent but this seems very very very interesting

[@kaisalmon1646]

Incredible work!! Would it be possible to use biomass rather than organism count? In the "age of the dinosaurs" I'm sure there animal with the most instances would be some ant species or something that swarms, but the most impressive clade were... Well the dinosaurs! Biomass solves that problem nicely

[@fatheragnostus]

I was looking for a comment like this! The bigger an animal the fewer of it the environment can support so the current way is biased against them. Here's hoping more people will bring this to his attention...

[@TheSapling]

Didn't think of this at all, but you're probably right. If it indeed turns out the current algorithm gives too much attention to small organisms, I could simply multiply the count with the body size, so the fix is probably easy.

[@erlinacobrado7947]

Not necessarily a perfect compromise. Today will be "the age of whales" if it was based on biomass alone, considering the quaternary also witnessed the growth of cetacean sizes, and that the baleen whales grew to be the largest species.

[@fatheragnostus]

@@erlinacobrado7947 The correct way of doing it would be somewhere in between e.g. the value of each individual is logarithmically derived from their biomass. Otherwise it would just be planet of the insects all the time.

[@jiraffe9600]

@@erlinacobrado7947 Im pretty sure today would be the age of cows, actually.

[@3lloGuvner]

My only criticism is that irl cladograms are usually formatted so that you can see the order in which new species emerged within the clade, it'd be nice to have that as an option as well as ordering them based on number of individuals

[@TheSapling]

Thanks, this is useful feedback :)

[@Skyypixelgamer]

This is so sick! I never knew I needed this but I really did.

[@Epicfrog-qv5ud]

Cool, you'll be able to see the evolutionary tree

[@Monkeyface678]

You already could, just not very easily

[@tenma8797]

This looks like a brilliant addition! Well done 👏 👏

[@drewpy.]

i was literally going to suggest this for the game today, and I am SO GLAD you’ve added the cladograms. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

[@benjyfour]

Keep up the good work man

[@SlipNperiodSlide]

i hope this project gets enough funding and attention to become super polished

[@thezuma391]

This is EXACTLY what I wanted, good work!!

[@broomwielder]

YESS! This is SO MUCH of what I've wanted from this game! I love seeing the history of how things have changed in species so this is perfect. Ever since I've played Niche and Spore I've always been hungry for a system just like that in an evolution based game. Very excited!

[@demolisherman1763]

This update is shaping out to be fantastic! Super excited to play

[@flechedesneiges5114]

This is awesome !!! Thank you so much for all this hard work !!

[@megasupreme9985]

Looking good! I love seeing the progress you make on this wonderful project. I have a few recommendations to consider It may be nice to have a button that can toggle whether extinct species are included in the cladogram. It would also be helpful if there was some more integration of the epoch timeline with the cladogram. Mainly, giving different lines different lengths to visually place the trunk of a clade at the corresponding location on the timeline, to give a good idea to the player when it first evolved and split off from the rest of the tree. I think this could also be toggleable.

[@TheSapling]

Without making promises, I love these ideas!

[@Ericshadowblade]

Oh boy new devlog dropping. I love these and im going to be sad when they finish

[@gamingcat6034]

I can finally find species faster, nice work. also some more ideas 9.more cold hardy leaves. 10.a longer daynight cycle with stars and a sun (and maybe moons?)

[@TheSapling]

Without making promises, all ideas I like!

[@eziowayne]

Loving this series!

[@JackAllpikeMusic]

I'm really enjoying these videos, you don't waste time and your visualisations are very clear to read and easy to understand. The cuts to in-person footage also helps to break up the video. Good work dude, I look forward to the next video.

[@GodfatherGoomba]

Great addition. Only problem I’m mainly having with the sandbox simulation so far is I tried to start a world mostly on a blank slate. Making one animal, one plant, and one algae. The plants and algae diversified like crazy and spread across the map no problem. Took a decent while for other colors of plants to appear but algae colors varied almost instantly which is great. The animal species however while it did diversify a little bit, only ever has like less than 5 species at a time and all are almost identical to the starter species despite some of the branches growing limbs more suited for walking than the previous limbs. They are always confined the water never leaving it or evolving to live in deeper water and most of the oceans are inaccessible to them for this reason. I’ve auto jumped several times thinking maybe changes that drastic must take an extremely long time or are extremely rare but even after turning the mutation chance up to max it still doesn’t make a difference. It makes sense that the ones that were successful are the ones that are surviving obviously but one would think that since they did evolve limbs better for walking then they could take advantage of the plants and thus do better or if they evolved to live in deeper water then they would have more food and space. I did make a fairly simple creature specifically for it to be a blank slate default sort of creature that evolution can add or mutate existing body pieces into whatever path was best but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Are creatures able to evolve new body parts or do they have to mutate from existing parts? Because for them to evolve to live in the deeper water they need to have more fins but if they can’t evolve new parts then that can’t happen. I don’t believe I’ve seen any of my creatures evolve new parts. They only seem to evolve already existing parts into more advanced parts based on the path in the menu.

[@Mineman95-ts3cl]

This is why we need disasters as it could force animals to move an adapt

[@GodfatherGoomba]

@@Mineman95-ts3cl honestly even without disasters you’d think that if an animal evolved walking limbs from the basic swimming limbs then they would do better as they can take advantage of both land and sea and that would lead to evolutions of air breathing mouths but apparently not or at the very least evolve to live in deeper waters for there to be more access to food which would lead to loads of herbivores which could lead to carnivores evolving to prey on said herbivores.

[@TheSapling]

Wow weird! In my experience (and also from what I read from other players), the evolution of land animals can sometimes take a long time (many max time jumps), in particular when there are more hostile conditions (or seasons)... but I don't understand why they didn't at least conquer the deeper ocean. Perhaps the initial habitat was small, which resulted in only small numbers of animals, resulting in a small number of 'guesses'?

[@TheRandomWolf]

@@TheSaplingI see what he means tho, I’m playing right now and creatures just won’t evolve another pair of limbs, they’ve just been bipedal for 10 Millenia, I want them to evolve another set of legs or arms

[@GodfatherGoomba]

@@TheSapling perhaps that’s true idk. I’ll keep messing around with it. I also thought there was a bug with the game not showing me the parts on plants as all of them are just the stems but then I remembered they can evolve to shed their parts during certain weather and I realized that most if not all plant species almost always never have any of their parts. Even in the less colder regions. It’s just all stems.

[@EightLittleBears]

Mate you are crushing these videos. So many so consistently! Props!

[@Snakeyess]

Hey why are here! lol

[@EightLittleBears]

@@Snakeyess can’t help it!

[@Whydoiexisthere-]

Suggestion: How about a random stat for creatures that determine their “quality?” One of the main troubles I’ve had with this game is the animals being too fertile and just straight up devouring my fps with the INSANE amount of eggs they lay. To fix this, the quality stat would determine wether or not creatures should mate and lay eggs depending on how high their quality is. You could also make this so that higher quality creatures have the best of their stats (speed, weight, etc) encouraging something like survival of the fittest!

[@bustavonnutz]

This would also pave the way for a sexual selection feature that could take advantage of traits. For example, males might instinctually go towards females that glow, hence incentivizing females to glow brighter or for longer periods of time.

[@Whydoiexisthere-]

@@bustavonnutz ooo also a good idea! There could also be an option that lets you choose between asexual and sexual breeding, allowing for some more variation. Something similar could be applied to plants, maybe? Like plants with flowers and reproductive organs need to be at a good amount of health to proliferate? Idk, sound like a lot of stuff to program, but it’s nice to think about.

[@TheSapling]

Simulation wise, I really like these ideas (without making promises as always). Not sure if they will fix the low FPS problem though; wouldn't organims just evolve to maximum quality?

[@Whydoiexisthere-]

@@TheSapling it would be randomized. Like of course if two parents are max quality, the children will have a higher likeliness to have good quality, but for the most part, random. Or random mutations could reset the quality to like, half because it IS a mutation, yk?

[@oppo2]

I'm so hyped ! Can't wait for this update !

[@kenxdeath]

Love your videos and the updates!

[@sniperkingofthesnipers5101]

Perfecrly timed for me to relax at home and watch it

[@blessedowo1958]

Oh yeah baby. LET'S GO!!!!!!

[@Gerz970]

The complexity of this project simply amazes me. This is definitely one of the most interesting devlog series I have seen.

[@_Radiator_]

Yes!!! This update is one of the best out of all of them, if not the best. Good work, i would love to see these updates in your game.

[@aaahhhhhh3510]

I bought this game yesterday and I'm loving it! I've always been really interested in speculative biology and worldbuilding, but always fell flat when it came to creature design/ecosystem design. It's a great source of inspiration for me and other worldbuilders alike!! Keep up the great work :D

[@Writer-Two]

Huh I never thought of adding that, but i'm happy that you did!

[@BrandtCain-ee5up]

Your making the greatest strides ever in evolutionary simulation this it needs to be used as a teaching tool your genius

[@kiki-drawer2669]

You just keep giving! Hype for this vid!

[@evandierker2272]

This game is actually ground breaking. Im so excited to see all this done. My wife and i love playing together and she hasn't seen any of these videos yet. Im so ready for the update to blow her away. You rock dude!

[@RedexTwo]

I need to buy this game! Excited to see this game get more development!

[@DDAstronomy]

How does this channel not have 1M subscribers. This content is beautiful!

[@JackAllpikeMusic]

The informational UI showing traits/family/stats/behavior looks great!

[@tyson7509]

Everytime you release a video the game imoroves so drastically. It was already super impressive when i started playing at the beginning of thr year lol

[@nadri3335]

loved this video :D

[@jam_toast1]

Yaaa these are some of my favorited videos, I think I’m going there watch the one of the other ones while I wait

[@kylergorder8303]

Hell yea man, been playing this game for a bit and love seeing the process.

[@akanlian]

I bought the game last year. Thankfully KZbin decided to show me this video. I had no idea you had a channel. I appreciate the effort you put into your videos. It reminds me a lot of the old Creatures series.

[@TheSapling]

Thanks! I've played a lot of Creatures 3 as well

[@rojnx9]

An interesting little minigame you could play with this new addition, is to pause the game after a long simulation; then, by going around and collecting the information on the stats and adaptations of each species, try and recreate the evolutionary tree of all the creatures in your world to estimate what evolved from what, and then compare that back to the actual autogenerated cladogram. I'm sure there is some palaeontologist or evolutionary biologist that would find this the most enjoyable thing in the world.

[@TheSapling]

Hahaha yeah I think so too :D

[@grimsyTF]

This game is awesome even though I can’t play I love watching these

[@bloo4456]

Dont ever give up on this beautiful game man please 🙏 Its everything ive ever wanted

[@tuckertechnolord6126]

This is so amazing! Can’t wait until the update releases, I feel like I’m actually going to play semi regularly now with all the UI/UX changes and QOL improvements

[@TheSapling]

Thanks! Keep in mind it will be super unstable initially though.

[@paremyoutube]

I cannot express how much I adore this game holy hell

[@KillySmurf1]

Excited!

[@Thelwyd]

Amazing game i absolutely love it cant wait for this update

[@masonhunter2748]

please add breathing parts if there’s no breathing parts, then it will breathe through its skin it will also introduce the mechanic of stacking parts as you can put nostrils on a mouth it will also introduce a possible new tab in the parts category and in the traits category you can choose what kind of skin it has if it has skin it will also include the blowhole, and New axolotl gills and the more oxygen they can obtain The larger they can get this will also include fish gills and hole gills

[@TheSapling]

Hey, I actually considered a system like this for a long time, but to keep things simple (and also because I couldn't find a lot of variety in gliss) I opted to 'merge' the breathing system with mouths in the end

[@ListenbourgBall]

Cannot wait man !

[@nightman706]

This is EXACTLY what i wanted

[@bencake28]

Big Challenge. 😮 But you nailed it. 🤓👍 Breathtaking! 🥳 Can't wait to start the beta. 😍

[@littletitanicmaster-2622]

I’ve always loved this series so much! I haven’t actually watched till the end yet, (it might already be there) but I really wanted it so you could grow more type of plants in one biome, some could be really tall and have all the leaves at the top to make it look like a sort of umbrella, that could be cool!

[@TheSapling]

Definitely possible yes!

[@Guys_its_me_Chris]

I cannot wait for this update

[@papayyzii3195]

I think it's time for another simulation video with all these new features! I would definitely watch the heck out of that.

[@TheSapling]

Haha good to know, I indeed plan to make one

[@papayyzii3195]

@@TheSapling you sir, are an inspiration and a testament to the human species. Not joking. People like you give me hope for humanity, which is hard to do for a young doomer like me. You really do inspire me man. Thank you for taking the risk of putting your creative vision out there for the world to see and I can't wait to see how you continue to progress this project. It's all just spectacular and I wish you all the success in the world.

[@VisscaGem]

I AGREE ITS SO DAMN PRETTY

[@Fish-mc2gs]

I’ll wait till it’s a bit more developed but the Claude things got me hooked. I’m going to keep an eye on this.

[@Gob998]

This game is two words greatness and greatness i love this game also nice piano songs

[@PangolinPictures]

Can’t wait for the update to come out this is going to be huge.

[@ajcumberbatch8836]

I'm so hyped

[@Dragoonmaster999]

Can't wait to the beta!

[@crispybacon9917]

I think it would also be good to not measure success of a species or clade by number of living organisms but by total biomass. For example this current epoch now may have more ants than humans, but humans are the most successful species, and this can be seen because the total biomass of humans is larger than that of ants.

[@TheSapling]

Not sure if ants would agree ;). But it's a good suggestion indeed, keeping this one in mind for if the results of the current algorithm disappoint.

[@Ledinosour673]

Honesly, being able to see a phylogenetic tree of the creatures in an evolution game is a no brainer

[@TheSapling]

Guess I had no brain for years then ;)

[@liahansen6896]

so sick :)

[@weijunliang4785]

Thanks for this!!

[@JustaFloatingEye]

Same! I always wanted a clade diagram!

[@literallyagalaxy7789]

this is so cool

[@user-cy4qu6ti8w]

Yay more updates:D

[@No_micGUy]

yooo this is what i wanted!

[@dowie4969]

cool vid! It would be really cool if you posted a tutorial about the sandbox mode, balancing ecosystems, etc

[@YLLPal]

YES to all of this!

[@fierceinsectandsarah]

Oh man I love evolution

[@UniversalPigeon]

Very cool

[@markymark303]

something I'd like is being able to favorite saves, and they'd show up in a separate bar to the right, and if a save is favorited when you manually save while playing the favorited save then it will automatically overwrite the save. also renaming saves as a feature in the game instead of having to go into the files. also natural disasters would be good for performance because lots of death=less models=better performance. in the planet editor we should be able to manually change the height of an area. also legs that can be on steeper environments (I don't know if that's already in the game). I haven't watched the video yet so I don't know if any of these are actually going to be added in the next update. forgot to add this but I think branches should use less energy. also natural disasters should have a menu like random mutations. also increasing mouse sensitivity when holding right click would be nice. I keep editing this comment ahh. in the animal editor there is a bug where when you rotate the camera the animals "body segments" or "spine" dot things stay in the same position on the screen (it fixes itself when you zoom in or out) it happens when you use wasd to rotate. current too strong and can't breath should be instincts if they're not in the update yet. I remembered another one, gills, they would just invert how long it can spend on land and water.

[@SuperMarioLiam10]

This is the feature that pushed me over the edge into buying this game

[@pietropietro1230]

Please, another evolution simulated!

[@jayAAlves]

I just wanted to say, I love your game, and I'm loving the new updates! You spoil us lol. But may I ask for one thing: you could add more levels in the future, I finish the game too fast, then I have to repeat or to go to the sand box, the levels so far are cool!

[@TheSapling]

Thanks for this input, I thought nearly all people only played the sandbox!

[@OrangeIsAGenuinelyCoolCo-fw9tq]

Can’t wait

[@MrT_Rex]

This is very nice !! And based on Kurzgesagt's model I hope you will also correct the bug/crash problems😉

[@Whydoiexisthere-]

I’m more confused on how he pronounced kurzgesagt correctly?!???!??? My guy isn’t just studying evolution, he’s studying sorcery.

[@TheSapling]

Definitely, I'm constantly fixing all kinds of bugs... expect many patches once this update is released. About Kurzgesagt, my native language is Dutch (if you couldn't tell by the accent), which is relatively close to German

[@daniel_wiersma]

At 3:49 a small correction: an invasive species always requires the help of humans to be introduced in a new part of the world. If a species spreads into a new region by natural dispersion, it is just selection of a more "competent" species :)

[@TheSapling]

Thanks Daniel! I assumed the term meant 'organism new to an ecosystem'