2023-10-09 changelog

Hi there! Those wanting to test the first version of the much-requested projected shadows on Windows and Linux + SteamOS can do so now by opting into the «sixty-four-bits» Steam beta branch.

At the moment, they look more or less like this, but we are aware that they are way too dark in some places, so some tweaks are to be expected. Toggle the following button to preview them, and we always appreciate any feedback by posting below or by opening a discussion thread:

Other than that, textures now look even better, some levels have been hopefully improved with extended view distances, and we even get two new monkey statues at tricky spots. Phew.

Full changelog below:

2023-10-09 (Monday)

• Add two brand-new save statue spots in critical places where players usually struggled or died frequently, causing frustration and backtracking:
  • One at the Uruk Intro, just before the caged Spike Spider fight.
  • Another at the Heliopolis Wall Section II entrance, for players that did not save after coming back from the second Mummy visit. Spot suggested by @SphinxLuvDuvWuv.

• Fix music not playing right after launching the game with the -slot 0/1/2 command-line argument (that directly loads a save slot and skips the main menu), until the player respawns.

2023-10-06 (Friday)

• Add 12 new HQ textures for the Luxor Pyramid, covering environmental surfaces and interactive objects.
• Add a bunch of extra HQ textures on Luxor Palace, covering the Luxor guards, stained glass windows, some plaster walls and more.
• Add more miscellaneous textures covering Abydos walls and building windows, Heliopolis exterior shooting target base and bull head on top of the Wall's forcefield, eagle water faucet's cork, beetle breeding jar. Plus breakable vases in Abydos, environmental improvements to the Corridor of Champions and the crocodile owner.
• Edit and re-export the Abydos Canals/Heliopolis Exterior/Luxor Palace/Luxor Pyramid levels on both 32 and 64-bit to enlarge the spawn distance of fires, items, NPCs, portals (avoiding ugly fade-outs to 2D stand-in cards closer to the player). Fix some railings (like the ones protecting the Shield of Osiris) and other translucent surfaces drawing in the wrong order.
• Re-export the Mummy Uruk Castle exterior map and cutscene to fix the texture clash that made some castle surfaces look metallic. Reported by @jmarti856 and @lordquacksmith.
• Vertical particles like falling water droplets and magic lightstreaks now actually face the right direction (Y-axial locking).
  • Before this many particle FX sprites rotated awkwardly and the drops appeared sideways and off center, now they look more natural.

• Mark the crow textures as 1-bit alpha (alpha-testing instead of alpha-blending) so that their wings and body are drawn in the right order.
  • Seems like the wingspan and crow head are rigged very rigidly and one can't completely avoid the clipping even after setting the texture as 1-bit/alpha-tested. But at least it doesn't shown up contorted from the inside out and flickering.
  • This has been a long-running visual issue. Reported by @SphinxLuvDuv and @lordquacksmith.

• Improvements for the experimental 64-bit branch:
  • Fix the glitchy translucent Imhotep/Anubis ghosts; their faces and hands rhythmically moved like a Winamp visualization. Reported by @lordquacksmith.
    • The mesh used the wrong index for interpolating morph vertex-animation poses.

  • Re-exported the Abydos canals without the random platform next to Kemmet.
  • Added missing version of the improved shooting minigame, already part of the 32-bit files, with textures marked as 1-bit/alpha-test to avoid z-sorting issues and flicker. A few meshes were also moved a bit to avoid z-fighting.
• Updated the SDL2 gamepad config file to support new input devices.
• Updated the OpenAL Soft 3D sound library to v1.23.1.
  • Add ASLR support to the 32-bit .DLL.

2023-09-30 (Saturday)

• Make the shadow mapping and dynamic resolution configurable from Sphinx.ini. Results can also now be viewed live by tweaking the values in the Watcher. No more hardcoded values.
  

  ShadowMapSize=999
  DynResScaleX=.1
  DynResScaleY=.5
  

2023-09-12 (Tuesday)

• The experimental 64-bit Steam branch that one can manually opt-into should now come with the experimental/early/incomplete projected shadows and three-point lighting.
  • Performance will be significantly worse and graphical glitches may appear.
  • Keep in mind that it won't work under certain terrain surfaces, just because it's easier for me to test it in a single variant, so it's only a temporary measure during development.
  • Let me know what you guys think, here or on Discord.
    • e.g. If they look too dark, or if you'd thing they should be different. Happy to read your thoughts.

2023-08-30 (Wednesday)

• Add a new -lang <two-letter-language-code> launch argument, see the wiki for more information, but mainly it will be useful for fan translations. Now you can also use these ISO 639-1 language codes in the INI file instead of the weird Eurocom numbers.
• Fix the humongous and misaligned letters in the French version of the experimental 64-bit branch and include support for Steamworks (unlocking achievements, Steam language selection) and Discord rich presence in this early version. Windows and Linux seem to work decently, macOS still doesn't work.
• Re-enable the Scan Frog cheat in -dev mode, now Sphinx can jump around in frog shape!
• Show the active sound effect names at runtime in -dev mode, when possible, instead of just "SFX" for everything.