Hi everyone! Multiplayer is off to a great start in Sapiens, it’s amazing seeing the impressive builds and screenshots being posted around the community, and I really appreciate all of the feedback, reviews and kind words of support.

This update focuses on improvements for when you are working together, with a new “Share Storage” setting which allows you to share the same settings and send/receive orders. It also makes it easier to see when you have restrictions on your storage areas and sleds, and fixes the issue causing many mods to fail to work.

From here, I’ll be releasing on the unstable branch for a while, as I’m working on larger features including new content like canoes and fishing. I’ve also been working on a feature packed new roadmap, so that will be out soon!

-Dave

New in 0.5.0.78:

• Better support for storage/resource sharing in multiplayer, making it easier to work together. The tribe relationship settings
  "Take Items" and "Store Items" have been replaced with a single "Share Storage" setting. When two player tribes both have this set,
  all their storage area restrictions, special orders, and send/receive orders will be shared between both tribes.
  
• Storage area pegs are now colored yellow for "remove all" orders, and white sides and/or top to represent take/store permissions.
  
• Sleds now have rails which also display this information, and tool racks and shelves display it too.
  
• Fixes bug where the enabled mods list was not saved correctly, resulting in modded worlds failing to load
  
• The light effect for other players in multiplayer now moves smoothly
  
• Adds "logChat" config.lua option to log all chat messages server-side

In multiplayer, you each control a tribe, and can work cooperatively, sharing and connecting your villages to create trading hubs, shared accommodation, and large scale building projects. Play in persistent dedicated servers, host a LAN game, or invite a Steam friend to join. Set up and play Sapiens privately with your friends, or join public servers and explore villages built by hundreds of other players.


Now all of those thousands of tribes that you can choose from when you start the game have come to life! If you choose somewhere with a lot of nearby tribes, they will now exist as complex AI controlled villages, with their own industries, trade requests and items to sell. Tribes will also establish themselves around you over time, and can offer unique types of items and resources that can be difficult or impossible to find elsewhere.

Once you have greeted a member of the tribe, you can complete quests, and supply goods that they require to purchase goods in return. These goods can be moved around with sleds, including a covered variant to keep things fresh. Just don't start taking things without asking, or they may get upset!

• Dedicated server for Windows and Linux with cross platform play on macOS and Windows. Steam friend invites and LAN hosting.
  
• Adds non-player simulated tribes to trade with, and a new quest and favor system, with trade offers and requests.
  
• Villages are generated with huts, crafting areas, fires, kilns and large quarries. Everything they need to keep them going so they can supply your goods.
  
• There are 4 types of village, each focusing on a particular industry - rock tools, bread, pottery, and bronze.
  
• Sleds and covered sleds - It's a moveable storage area! Instruct your sapiens to drag them around where you like, or create send and receive orders to automatically transport goods between other tribes or within your own village.
  
• Tool racks and shelves - New specialty storage furniture, to help store and display your tools and resources.
  
• Multiple storage area sizes, with a 1x1 and 4x4 variant added.
  
• Improved and simplified logistics routes, by replacing them with send and receive orders.
  
• Improved initial map selection, with better controls, more map detail, and better tribe distribution.

• Limitless movement - You can now move as far away from your tribe as you like, exploring freely.
  
• Higher population cap, with optimizations and AI improvements.
  
• Multiple tribes - You can create and play as multiple different tribes in the same world in both single player and multiplayer.
  
• Auto assign for roles - To reduce the micromanagement requirement, there is a checkbox to allow your sapiens to automatically be assigned to roles if they are idle and there is no one else.
  
• Craft maintain orders - To further reduce micromanagement, you can now easily maintain a set quantity of crafted items.
  
• Research with multiple sapiens at once - You can speed up research and get bonus skills by using multiple sapiens to research the same type of item. However later game research tasks now take longer to balance this.
  
• Major improvements to the sapien AI. As a result, tribes are now more efficient, and get more done in a day.
  
• Sapiens now automatically gather food from nearby trees if they are very hungry.
  
• Campfires now repel all mobs within a 100m radius.
  
• New events panel, with a list of previous notifications.
  
• Click and drag or hold 'E' to plant lots of plants quickly.
  
• Many minor improvements to the UI, including the ability to type to search for most menus, better text entry support, the ability to select all plant types, a button to zoom to the closest storage area in the resources panel, and much more.
  
• Further improved graphics, shadows and lighting in a number of areas.

Hi everyone!

This is just a quick announcement to let you know that the Sapiens 0.5 update is now open to everyone for testing on the unstable branch. I am aiming for the 18th of July for the full release.

Multiplayer is of course the biggest new feature in 0.5, and though there is a lot of tidying up left to do, it’s already working really well. We have a handful of persistent dedicated servers being run by the community already, with more coming online all the time, so if multiplayer Sapiens interests you, and you’re willing to help test it before it’s stable, then now’s a great time to jump in!

Switching to the unstable branch means you can play 0.5 now, and will get frequent (every day or two) live updates as I fix issues and implement new features. As a result, it can be unstable, some updates will create new bugs, cause crashes, even potentially corrupt your worlds, so you should backup your single player worlds first before installing. If this all sounds a bit too risky, that’s no problem, the full stable release isn’t too far away.

To switch to the unstable branch, right click on Sapiens in your Steam library, select Properties->Betas. Then you can select ‘public-beta-unstable’ from the little pop-up button menu, and Steam will then download the latest beta.

Please do join us in the discord[discord.gg] to report any bugs in the unstable branch, and to keep an eye on announcements for patch notes and things too - that’s where it’s all happening.

Hope to see you in one of the multiplayer worlds soon!

-Dave

Hi everyone!

I’ve been making great progress on the next big update, and have some news to share, Sapiens 0.5 will come with full multiplayer support!

Sapiens 0.5 will be available to everyone in 2-3 weeks time, on the unstable branch, with the full stable release coming in July.

We’ve been running a private test with members of the community playing together on a persistent dedicated server for the past few weeks. Initially things were a little rough, with a number of bugs and performance issues to iron out. But despite this, it was clear early on that multiplayer was amazing.

I still enjoy just sitting down and playing Sapiens from time to time, but these multiplayer sessions have been by far the most enjoyable for me. Watching other tribes grow, checking up on their progress, stealing their ginger roots when they were offline, just general good fun.

Multiplayer adds a whole new dimension to the experience, and so I felt it was worth spending a little longer to get in and fix those bugs and optimize it now, and ditch the “experimental” disclaimer.

The main result of that extra time is that we’re now able to support more sapiens, and more players. These optimizations benefit single player too, so I have now doubled the sapien population soft-limit in single player, and I’ve removed the camera restrictions too, so you can freely move and explore as far away from your tribe as you like.

This work is just about complete, and so I’m moving back to finishing off other 0.5 features, fixing a few bugs in the new sleds and AI tribe trading mechanics, things like that. Overall it’s really coming together, and I can’t wait for you all to be able to play, even more so now that I’ll be able to join some of your worlds and see what you’re creating. Not long now!

-Dave

Thanks everyone for all of your support throughout 2023!

The 0.5 update is progressing nicely, and over these past couple of weeks I’ve made a lot of progress on multiplayer and AI tribes. But with the update just about to enter the first testing phase, it’s still going to be another few weeks before it’s ready. So while you’re waiting, and with over 70 mods available, now is a great time to try out a few!

If you haven’t installed any mods before, Sir Lich’s new Christmas 2023 mod is a great place to start, to add a purely visual festive vibe.

Vanilla Tweaks makes it easy to configure a wide range of new options to change the gameplay and interface, and set things up just the way you like.

Chop and Replant is a handy mod by Witchy that adds a new button to the radial menu, allowing you to automatically replant trees that have been chopped down.

Some role assignment automation is coming to the vanilla game in 0.5, but AutomatedRoles (also made by Witchy) gives you the ability to automatically mange your tribe’s roles already, with a bunch of control too.

Bone Crafting adds a bunch of bone related content, with furniture, bone broth, a giant axe and even wind chimes

And Time Control Plus adds some handy information to the clock.

Some of these mods require Hammerstone, which is a base mod you’ll need to install first. If you need any help installing mods, there is a great tutorial on the Sapiens wiki[wiki.playsapiens.com].

And if you’re interested in making your own Sapiens mods, this community created mod development wiki[http//%26quot%3Bhttps] is a fantastic place to start, and the discord linked there is great if you want to get more involved or have questions too.

I hope you have a great holiday season, and we’ll see you again in the new year!

-Dave

Hi Sapiens fans! I've been working hard on the big 0.5 update, and it is getting closer to being ready for testing. There are still a few more weeks of development left to go, but it's definitely time to share some details about what's coming.

So what's new? Firstly, AI Tribes! Now in 0.5, when you are picking a tribe to lead, the other tribes around will actually be there in the game. They'll have their own villages, and you can send some of your sapiens over to meet them.

Once you have met an AI tribe, you can then trade with them, or complete a variety of optional quests. Trading uses a "favor" currency, where you gain favor by providing resources that they need, or for completing quests. You can use this favor to ask them to deliver resources in return, and the more favor you have with a given tribe, the better they will treat you.

Given that AI tribes will sometimes be some distance away, 0.5 also introduces sleds, which are a movable storage area. You can set them up like any other storage area, and use them to deliver larger quantities of items directly, or as part of a transfer route.

As well as AI tribes, there are a large number of other features and improvements. Here's a few of the bigger ones:
- We have a new notification list, so you can go back and look at what happened if you missed something
- There is now an option to auto-assign roles. If no sapien is available to complete a task, it can automatically reassign someone else
- New tool racks, shelves, and smaller and larger storage areas
- Much improved tribe selection and less restrictive map zooming, so it's a lot easier to find the right tribe and location to start.

And there is still more to come! One great thing about working on interactions with AI tribes is that most of that work was also required for multiplayer. So in 0.5, I'll be shipping experimental multiplayer support, and it's shaping up really nicely. You will have simple options for managing whether you share resources with other players, so you will be able to work together to build a large village and pool resources, or build up separate villages and trade (and later, fight) with each other, or some combination of both.

The 0.5 update won't have any conflict yet, but it's planned for 0.6, along with the full release of multiplayer. I am expecting to release 0.5 early next year.

Keep in mind that the features I've mentioned here and these screenshots are a work in progress, there will still be changes before the update is released. If you would like to keep up to date with progress, you can join the discord[discord.com], and I'm now posting frequent progress updates here on the Steam discussion forums too.

It's been longer than I would like to get this update out, but we're on the final stretch now, and I'm really excited to get it into your hands as soon as I can!

- Dave

With this update your tribes will now function much more efficiently, and if they still don't quite do what you want, you now have a lot more control by prioritizing orders.

New in 0.4.2:
AI and fixes:
- You can now prioritize any order at any time. Sapiens will tend to choose prioritized orders to complete first.
- You can then deprioritize orders again to restore them to the default prioritization level
- Different plan types are now prioritized differently by default, so idle sapiens are much more likely to choose a recruit or hunt order than a store order.
- The outputs of prioritized orders retain the prioritization, so if you prioritize a gather order on an apple tree, then the store orders for the apples will also be prioritized
- If you manually assign sapiens to an order, they will drop everything and are much more likely to continue to work on that order.
- Sapiens are now a lot more likely to continue a single task to completion. Hunting in particular is much improved.
- Taking a required tool to an order site now requires the order's role, instead of the general labor role. This improves efficiency as that sapien can then complete the order, and it stops tools getting stuck lying around waiting for the right sapien.
- Telling a sapien to stop, or manually assigning a sapien to an order now causes them to drop what they were carrying
- More Fixes, optimizations, and UI improvements

Balancing:
- More visitor tribes in the early stages of the game
- Visiting sapiens tend to stay longer
- Crucibles now degrade when used
- Reduced quantity of manure produced, as it was excessive and degraded performance
- Reduced quantity of sapien vocals when time is fast forwarded

0.4.1 is a minor bug fix update, mostly fixing issues relating to AI around compost bins, but with some important other fixes too.

- Fixes issues with sapiens getting stuck delivering to compost bins
- Fixes issues when restricting the use of rotten resources in the resources panel to disable composting
- Sapiens will now carry and deliver multiple items in one load to compost bins
- Compost now degrades after a year, as it was building up indefinitely and causing problems
- Improvements to AI prioritization
- Fixes issues when running on Linux under Proton
- The hammer now degrades when blacksmithing
- Sapiens no longer get hungrier while sleeping, which helps avoid having sick or injured sapiens starve and leave

Though this update does contain some AI improvements, I'm working on another update with some more major improvements to the priority system and AI too, so you can expect 0.4.2 soon.

This second major update to Sapiens introduces new challenges and game mechanics, tools, weapons and building materials, and your tribe can now enter the bronze age!

Every couple of years or so, you can now expect to experience a windstorm severe weather event. These windstorms can damage buildings, blow things away, extinguish fires, and sapiens can get injured by flying debris. Windstorms are a fun new challenge to plan for and overcome.

Soil quality will now degrade slowly if you harvest many times from the same area. To enrich the soil again, you can now mulch using manure or compost. Manure can be found where animals have been, and compost can now be produced from rotting organic matter in compost bins.

A number of new rock types have been added to the game, including granite, marble, sandstone (in a variety of colors) and lapis lazuli. Your sapiens can now chisel stone blocks directly from rock, and use these blocks to build walls, or chisel them into tiles for roofs and floors. Soft rocks like sandstone and limestone can be carved using chisels made out of hard rock, but to craft blocks out of the harder rock types, your sapiens are going to need bronze chisels.

Tin and copper ore veins are now scattered around the world. Once you've mined some and crafted a kiln and a crucible, you'll be able to research blacksmithing. With bronze your sapiens can smith chisels to carve hard rock, but they can also now craft a range of more durable and powerful tools and weapons.

0.4 Adds a number of new roof pieces to help your sapiens build better houses and villages. With new corner pieces, smaller slopes, and triangular floor pieces too, you'll have a lot more design options than before.

- New option in the radial menu to "Rebuild" using different materials
- You can now limit the quantity of items stored in each storage area
- Improvements to building snapping
- Your sapiens can now dig and mine on steeper slopes
- The camera maximum height limit now rises as you build higher, so you can build as high as you like
- Adds options to change the cursor reticle size and shape
- New autopause feature after you don't interact with the game for a configurable period
- Mud brick structures can now get damaged in the rain if they are left uncovered
- New sound effects and animations
- Much improved controller support
- New keyboard options for camera zooming
- AI fixes and performance improvements
- Many other minor features and bug fixes