05 Apr
Hello, everyone! We keep our large updates between semesters, but we have some great improvements ready and since most people are learning from home — and we have a LOT more people signing up right now — we wanted to go ahead and get these live!
So, welcome to our mid-semester Spring update! Here’s what’s included:
Large reductions to hard drive space required to install Tyto Online!
Chromebooks went from ~1 GB to ~600 MB to install. Macs went from ~7 GB to ~4 GB, and Windows went from ~5 GB to ~2 GB.
Improvements to the Ecology Sandbox
First, we wanted to give our create-your-own Ecosystem Sandbox some improvements. Overall, we’ve made large changes to improve the underlying simulation functioning and make it more feasible to create a mature, balanced ecosystem. Major changes to the simulation include:
- Pollinators have longer grace periods where they don’t need food, before they will die, to better reflect how they normally survive while plants are not blossoming;
- Carnivores are less bloodthirsty and will better focus on scavenging fresh meat before killing a new animal for their meal;
- Reproduction cycles have been made a bit faster, to help your smaller animals bounce back against predation more easily;
- Large carnivores now come in singles, so they won’t’ reproduce until you allow them to (by placing another carnivore territory nearby so that it overlaps);
- Deodar cedars and kapok trees are now edible!
- Animals mature a little bit faster;
- Leaf and Nectar regeneration improvements, which is good news for your hungry pollinators and herbivores!
We also made additional improvements to the Sandbox:
- Fixed some bugs and confusion points in the tutorial;
- Improved stability for user connectivity and crash fixes;
- Made the information panel larger when you click on a territory or plant, so it is easier to read on small screens;
- Improved appearance and functioning for territory markers for animals, so that it’s easier to see where they live and where you can place new territories;
- Improved appearance for seeing where you can place plants.
