Meta:Alpha and Beta

Sagan 4 has two timelines the Alpha Timeline and the Beta Timeline. Alpha is the original version of Sagan 4 which started in 2006, while Beta is a reboot-turned-alternate timeline which began in mid 2019. The story of how there came to be two Sagan 4's spans a period of time between 2017 and early 2020.

The Limbo
The Limbo is a period of time spanning from 2017 to early 2020 when Sagan 4's original forum and wiki were gone and all data was assumed permanently lost. It began partway through Generation 161, which is now split into two distinct sections which are pre- and post-limbo. When the limbo began, Sagan 4's community was moved to the Speculative Evolution forum. During the limbo, there were multiple failed attempts to recover data, and at one point it looked like Sagan 4 would be revived but be sent back to Week 23, as it seemed that this was the latest available backup. However, the backup wiki eventually went down and contact was lost with Mnidjm who was hosting it.

At this point, it seemed like it might be possible to restart Sagan 4 from much earlier--specifically, Generation 54. This is because this was the last generation to occur on Gamingsteve, the forum where Sagan 4 was originally hosted before it had its own website. However, it was immediately discovered that the vast majority of images were missing, as it had been over 10 years and various image hosts had shut down or deleted old images over time. Only images from the first 7 days of the project--Week 1--were found intact, via a YouTube video Hydromancerx had uploaded in 2006.

The Reboot
The reboot, which would later be known as the Beta Timeline, was proposed and spearheaded by Bufforpington. A map was created by raising the water levels in Week 1's map, and it was decided that the results of the first mass extinction event would be re-rolled. Unlike in Alpha, where the survivors were picked by the members at the time, in Beta the survivors were left entirely up to weighted RNG. Though this resulted in 15 surviving species rather than Alpha's 10, the results were skewed heavily in favor of microbes and binucleids, the latter of which were naturally more resistant to radiation. The ancestors of plents, anipedes, purple flora, and other iconic lineages went extinct, but amazingly Protosagania actually survived, as did lineages which were dead ends in Alpha such as the goliathpseudopodians. This resulted in a very different assemblage of starter organisms compared to Alpha.

Though intended to continue as Alpha had, Beta would soon take on a life of its own. Scientific plausibility became favored, and it even had a plague very soon after it started to remove a lineage of Earth clones. Though three new lineages of fauna evolved from cells during Beta Week 2 (Asterzoa, Lituslugs, and Charnlits), new fauna were also banned soon after. Extinction event information was kept secret, preventing designated survivors or other preparations from occurring. All of this actually led to Bufforpington leaving, as in his own words he could not adapt to the changes.

Alpha's Revival
In late 2019, Disgustedorite was googling saucebacks out of interest in the lineage and discovered that the backup wiki, with data up to Week 23, had gone back up. A failed attempt was made to contact Mnidjm about this, but nothing came of it and the website eventually went down. Hope for Alpha's revival died almost as soon as it had been revived.

It was then, however, that a much bigger discovery was made. Unsatisfied with what had just occurred, Disgustedorite continued digging and found two download links which had originally been posted by LadyM. The larger of the two was the Week 26 backup which had supposedly been too corrupted to recover data from. Disgustedorite did not have the tools or knowledge to open it, but Squidy, a non-member who created a species- and ecosystem-searching bot used in Beta, was able to open it. He provided proof of it containing data beyond the previous backup by posting an excerpt from the description of the Tamjack. Disgustedorite immediately made attempts to create a wiki to contain this data, but failed due to lacking knowledge.

In early 2020, Mnidjm returned. He was immediately informed of the week 26 backup existing and all species descriptions being fully intact in plain text. This kickstarted a successful attempt to revive Alpha, resulting in the creation of this wiki and the Sagan 4 Alpha forum. It was found that there was an open submission slot in Generation 160, so to make her membership in Alpha official, Disgustedorite filled it with the Opportunity Shrew--the first new submission of the revival. Members wanted to continue both Alpha and Beta, so despite fears that one would sap activity from the other both proceeded to continue.

Differences Between Alpha and Beta
The most immediately obvious difference between Alpha and Beta is that the results of the first mass extinction event were different, resulting in all species and lineages past Week 1 being completely different. In early Beta Week 2, a new lineage of fauna--the Asterzoa--evolved from cells with a simple radial body plan, resulting in Beta having simple basal organisms from the very start--something Alpha never had, as all new fauna jumped straight from the cells fully formed as complex organisms. The existence of Asterzoa is a large part of why Beta eventually banned new fauna evolving from cells, as there was simply no need for new fauna anymore.

Beta has a number of rules which Alpha does not have, though it also lacks a few of Alpha's rules that were deemed unnecessary such as the kingdom diet transition rule. Earth clones are specifically banned, with the rules having an entire section dedicated to what is and isn't considered acceptable convergent evolution. A number of features such as jaws, skeletons, and active respiration are heavily moderated to prevent identical features evolving in unrelated lineages; most notably, as endoskeletons cannot evolve the same shape twice and a vertebrate lineage already evolved, vertebrate-like organisms can never evolve again. This strongly contrasts with Alpha, where nearly every single major faunal lineage evolved a backbone at least once if not several times independently.

While Alpha's largest faunal lineage is the plents, they are extinct in Beta and the largest faunal lineage is instead the Asterzoa, a subgroup of Carpozoans which split off from Carpotesta Multi-Teneresca. While some members were wary of the Asterzoa early on, their simple starting body plan made them objectively superior to the Luceremundarians and Binucleid Worms in terms of diversity potential; even without Disgustedorite diversifying them, they would have inevitably produced more unique body plans. While some members continue to express dislike for the "Asterzoan dominance" and how it led to the ban of new fauna, this has faded over time as more members came to realize that Asterzoa is more comparable to an actual animal kingdom than to any of Alpha's faunal lineages, which are more comparable to phyla at best and usually only marginally more diverse than a class.

Beta's biome and genus systems are very different from Alpha's. Beta uses 4 temperature types instead of 3, adding subtropical between tropical and temperate. Beta also has a number of biomes which are absent in Alpha, such as subduction trenches. As for the genus system, Beta's version has a lower size limit of 10 cm for fauna, but a much larger size limit--a whopping half meter--for sessile flora. Genera are also sorted into what region they inhabit, rather than all being listed as global and requiring members to scour through the descriptions for information. It has yet to be seen if these changes, such as the superior genus region system, will be implemented in Alpha.

There are also notable differences between Alpha and Beta in terms of how much detail is expected and put into submissions. In general, descriptions in Beta tend to be much longer on average than descriptions in Alpha. While Alpha's Ylbershpelle Bubblehorn was uncontested for longest species description ever for over 10 years, in Beta 3 different members independently made species with descriptions which are longer, sometimes by a significant amount, without knowing it.

Convergent Evolution Between Alpha and Beta
Beta has a number of lineages which are convergent with Alpha lineages. Some of these, such as the Asterplents (which are very similar to Alpha's early plents), were evolved this way intentionally, while others, such as the Leafstars (which are similar to Alpha's Crastrums), evolved this way on accident.

After the revival, Alpha species that were intentionally convergent with Beta lineages also began to occur. For example, the Grabbyswarmers are a direct reference to Beta's Lagnodactyls.