This update comes with lots of bugfixes and gameplay tweaks, improved levels (Cursed Palace, Mummy Sewer and Uruk Temple), and a few higher-quality textures.

People with NVIDIA laptops should not get black screens anymore. The fiddly part at the end of Uruk Temple with the moving metal platform has been streamlined. See the full changelog below:

• Tweak the Mummy Sewer level to fix the glitchy metal grate that flickered against the water plane, also fix the fast-moving water in the 64-bit version of the same level.
  
• Fix a bunch of player-reported crashes and bugs:
  
  • Fix a crash to desktop when picking up items without a parent trigger.
    
  • Fix a hairy issue related to «pickupable» frozen enemies who are almost dead.
    
  • Fix a NULL pointer dereference in the way EngineX draws in-game windows, which led to code execution redirection.
    
  • Fix a crash when the player tried to look at another nearby character's neck, but the neck bone did not exist. Yes, I know.
• The NVIDIA driver reports supporting up to MSAA x32 via costly supersampling when the hardware only generally handles up to x8.
  
  • Detect what is the actual limit to have more reliable performance.
    
  • NVIDIA laptops also seem to have trouble with the supersampling, causing black screens.
• Limit the valid MSAA values loaded from Sphinx.ini to x1 / x2 / x4 / x8 / x16 / x32 / +, round them down and avoid possible OpenGL driver issues when players try to run the game with something like MSAA x3 directly.
  
• Disable (texture) anisotropic filtering by default during the first startup if MSAA or «advanced» features are not decently supported. Better performance for potentially low-end graphics cards.
  
• Close the game properly, without crashing, while having a -dev mode sub-menu open while doing Alt + F4 or closing the window.
  
• Add HQ texture overrides for the flying stone platform in the Uruk Islands, the Heliopolis Exterior palace bird heads and the smashed obelisk floor. The low-res bird heads one was suggested by @lordquacksmith.
  
• Fix the wrong texture in the throne room wall of the Cursed Palace. Enlarge the spawn radius of torches, characters, breakable pots, and other triggers.
  
• Fix more funky texture UV coordinates in Cursed Palace; the triangular glitches in the side door frames, the flipped and misaligned wall design at either side of them. Expand the draw distance of pots, monsters, torches, portals and more. All in all, better.
  
• Update the boot-up copyright year to 2024, it was about time.
  
• Tweak the Uruk Temple level to fix the biggest collision issue in the game with the moving platform and the window blocker.
  
  • The released beetle would get stuck in the seam between the moving and static platform; if they detected collision against a "wall" during 15 consecutive frames they would explode, and this often happened in the seam unless the player moved it very fast to cross it before the count went up. Now the moving platform entity («platform_floor») has an invisible polygonal wedge that bridges the gap, as a geometry skirt or lip.
    
  • The other problem was that even after reaching the window blocker and touching the actual wall with the beetle, the stone cover wouldn't explode with it most of the time; it would only explode around a small, spherical area surrounding the trigger center.
    
    • To fix that we add two «anim datum» (one HT_AnimDatum_Collision + a bigger HT_AnimDatum_CollisionBound) to the «Platform01/platform1» entity of type lozenge (the shape is rectangular, box collisions don't seem to be supported, lozenge are the 2D boxy equivalent of a capsule), the entity and its datum end up being part of a script with a WaitHit event («Doors/windowblock»). If there are collision datum they will be used. Copied this from the dart targets, like «buttonright_green», which work similarly but with spherical collision and collision bound.
      
    • The WaitHit had the BeetleShockwave flag. The TR_Object trigger that uses this script (Windowblock in Maps/_ur_4pat_sun, inside Maps/Uruk_Sphinx/Urk_4pat.elf) has SolidCollision and HitZoneCollision set in User Flags.
• Raise the beetle-wall collision counter from 15 to 31-consecutive-frames. Making it harder to trigger via buggy ground geometry gaps like the movable platform in Uruk Temple.
  
  • Make it frame-rate invariant, so that it does not get more or less difficult depending on the monitor or hardware.
    
  • Fix a potential instant explosion that could theoretically happen randomly.

As always, if you are interested in knowing more about the game, staying up to date, or finding other fans, feel free to join here: https://discord.gg/sphinx

7305 days ago a game titled Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy was first released in North America.

After around three years of development and more than a few name changes, going from «Shadow of Set» at E3 to «Misfortunate Mummy» around summer, they finally settled on what we all know.

The project started as a 1996 CGI movie concept from a small team of artists from Valencia, Spain called Anibyte. The team had already worked with Eurocom doing the cutscenes for a previous game of theirs called 40 Winks.

In these small demos, which can now be watched here and here, thanks to Ana Amat, we can already see some familiar faces in a different fantasy setting.

Eventually, the team could not get their movie funded, and joined game developer Eurocom to mutate the concept into something even more familiar. Merging Egyptian mythology, a touch of Arabian Nights, the Luna project, and a vibrant and friendly animated look.

We already see a transforming Sphinx, Anubis, and some early monsters like the Goofy Lizard.




Once the game started pre-production we can see the landscapes and architecture solidifying into very different patterns and palettes.










We also start seeing the first efforts of getting these concepts into the custom game engine they built; fighting memory and resolution limitations to make it all fit in a console with barely 32 megabytes of RAM.

Shown below are extremely early versions of both Abydos and Akaria; the underwater realm, home of piranhas and plenty of other relocated monsters, like the evil skeletal dragon boss that we can find under Abydos in the final version:

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/31158491/4528d9e9bf90fb251a166069b5dbd0a35de5d0d1.png

With the titular character growing up and getting some new clothes, here we can see one of the very first concepts for Uruk, the «lava hell», and what seems like a prototype version of Abydos, with the bird design and slanted walls:



Here we can see a more advanced underwater Akaria Dome level, as well as a later version of the Abydos Canals, and early-to-mid versions of Sakkara; the jungle world where we would originally fight the Geb Queen:



The screenshots in the top part showcase the Sakkara temple, where we are introduced to the possession dart mechanic and we transform into nearby monsters, like a frog or a Dino oaf, like the one in certain boss battle. Below that, you can see the Heliopolis Wall, with a hint of the contextual HUD and an already working blowpipe. Plus Uruk Castle, with a slightly different appearance:



As most of you know by now, the game had to be downsized and started losing regions and mechanics due to the sheer scale of the sprawling levels and a lack of time to make it all fit and stay fun. Even parts of the Mummy storyline, with Bas-Ket being playable and guard capture/stealth sections, or the winged Sphinx and its flying sections in the end part, with the titular protagonist reaching the Uruk Castle.

So the Eurocom team focused on polishing the best parts of what they already had; transplanting and repurposing many of the monsters and NPCs to other areas to avoid discarding them altogether.

While missing a good chunk, and very noticeably stitched together in the last two hours of gameplay, what remains is solidly built.

Many of these unfinished and cut levels were eventually released in 2018 as part of the Authoring Tools DLC, and reworked versions by the community can be easily played today on PC via the unofficial Shadow of Set mod, created by @jmarti856.

















(Unfinished 30-second CG ad made by Blur Studio back in the day; contains some swearing!)


For quite a few reasons, and here we enter the realm of the subjective, ranging from badly targeted or misleading marketing, or releasing right next to other fantastic games, the title never achieved mainstream appeal despite decent-to-good reviews. So Eurocom retained full rights from the publisher and many years passed. There are hints that they explored some themes for the eventual sequel.

(2004 concepts by David Muñoz Velázquez, @DavidMV)


Ex-Eurocom people would also try to repurpose the franchise during the height of mobile gaming with an infinite runner starring our friend the Mummy itself! None of these internal demos would release, and the company eventually sold it to THQ Nordic in 2016, with this high-definition PC version appearing a year later and the Nintendo Switch version after that.

The game is still being actively patched and improved, still trying to give it the love and attention it sorely missed. Now ready to be experienced by old and new players alike, hopefully a bit stronger and wiser.

Happy 20th anniversary, Sphinx!

--

Credits: Thanks to jmarti856, lordquacksmith, SphinxLuvDuv and others in the community for contacting original team members and recovering/archiving these visual pieces.

As always, if you are interested in knowing more about the game, staying up to date, or finding other fans, feel free to join here: https://discord.gg/sphinx

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:

[expand type=details]

[/expand]

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:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.
  
  [Graphics] ShadowMapSize=999 DynResScaleX=.1 DynResScaleY=.5

• 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.

• 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.

• Add even more HD textures for characters, many enemies, pickup-able 3D items, Abydos Museum jewels, special effects and various environments; like the Abydos minigames, Uruk Castle, Uruk Trials, Heliopolis exterior and many others. A grand total of 304 new files.
  
  
  • Toggle the following buttons to see a few before/after example screenshots below:
    
    • Knives Cat:
      [expand type=details]
      [/expand]
      
    • Almost-a-Bull:
      [expand=details]
      [/expand]

• Add a very experimental «sixty-four-bits» Steam branch with heavily reworked 64-bit versions of the engine for Windows and Linux, instead of the current 32-bit builds.
  
  • Not recommended for normal players, this is mostly directed to Sphinx veterans who want to report issues.
    
  • macOS will be ready in a few days, right now the branch will not work.
    
  • Most of the existing mods will not be compatible with this experimental version.
    
  • Seems to work fine on Steam Deck as-is, with some limitations.

• Fix a crash when projected shadows (or NPC projected shadows) were disabled at startup in the latest version. Thanks to nas#7536 for the report.

Hi there, and happy 20th anniversary since the game's release!

We were told that we should probably make some kind of announcement whenever we release a patch, instead of just silently dropping it into the blackhole that is our Official updates thread. ːsteammockingː

We might as well start now, because we are still working on your favorite missing Sphinx features. See you again until the next patch notes. Hopefully in less than four years, if everything goes well.

--

Here is what many of you missed:

• Fix potentially not being able to unlock achievements on macOS under specific circumstances.
  
• Fix rich presence on Discord and Steam under macOS.
  
• Improve rich presence to publish updates faster.
  
• Fix macOS DPI scaling again, after more changes that broke it. Make mouse input work well with high DPI/Retina/UHD+ screens.
  
• Fix crashing on Linux with a «Value too large for defined data type»; start using 64-bit file offsets when reading files. This was a rare crash.
  
• The game should no longer crash for Windows users with AMD Radeon OpenGL drivers between v22.7.1 and v22.10.3.
  
  • Some laptops are stuck with these drivers from around July-November 2022 and their OEM/manufacturer blocks generic up-to-date web drivers from the AMD site. So add a game workaround. Thanks to @SR. Croft for the report, hope you can play now.
• Add support for communicating between the in-game viewer and the Euroland editor on macOS and Linux via a /tmp/XLink FIFO/named pipe, previously this functionality was Windows-only, and crashed in the other OSes.

• Fix glitchy particles due to the Intel Xe/ARC driver not knowing how to draw triangle fans; add a workaround. Thanks to @jmarti856 for the report.
  
• Updated the bundled/fallback OpenAL Soft library on Linux, to make it work great without Steam Runtime.
  
• Add missing hashcodes.h. Some errors weren't as descriptive as they should be.

• Fix the Steam Deck scaling problems, where misaligned text overflowed the screen.
  
• Make the UI 8% bigger than normal on portable/handheld PCs, like Steam Deck.
  
• Make the Book of Sphinx/inventory infobox wider to improve readability.
  
• Don't needlessly recreate the graphics when the menu option hasn't changed.
  
• Don't show a green rectangle during dialog mouse-clicking.
  
• Implement drawing debug menu borders.
  
• Update the bundled/fallback SDL2 library on Linux.

• Add a working 30 FPS mode.
  
  • In the future this will engage dynamically, as needed. Right now it can be set via configuration file. It should improve performance in weaker hardware.
    
    [RenderMode] VideoFrameRate=30
  • This can be used to override the display's refresh rate and make the game render at less than 60 Hz, like 30 Hz, 20 Hz, 15 Hz, or even less. So if you put a 30 there it will only render every other frame, improving performance by virtue of having half of the workload (and twice as much time allowance) to draw stuff, at the cost of looking slightly choppier.
• Fix sound not working under Linux after the last patch.
  
• Fix the game's full screen window trying to leave enough margin for the non-existing title bar on Linux. Making it look misaligned.

• Fixed uneven scaling and bad mouse position on macOS when using Retina/HiDPI screens. Thanks to @Price#8300 on Discord for the report.
  
• Fix and prevent random crashes/segmentation faults caused by enemy pathfinding-heavy levels. This at least happened on macOS, but it could potentially happen in any other version.

• Add the original 'making of' and 'attract' movies as part of the game data.
  
  • The original, but still low-resolution, .mkv files can be watched via external media player, not in-game. You can open the folder by right-clicking the Sphinx entry in your Steam library > Manage > Browse local files, and then double-clicking on the «Movies» folder.
    
  • They now also include subtitles.
• Fix the file permission problems when loading/saving save slots on macOS and Linux. Where sometimes you could save but not load, or vice versa.
  
• Fix the buggy windowed mode with decoration in borderless for those two platforms.
  
• Improve the way particles are created and sorted to avoid random stalls and improve performance, reducing memory usage when many are on-screen.
  
• Fix the out-of-bounds memory corruption and subsequent crash when making the Item Update window smaller.
  
• Attempt to fix black/corrupted screens under the NVIDIA driver, that always reports x32 MSAA as supported but it isn't true, in some cases only up to x8 works. So, try to get the actually-supported sample count of that specific format via a more modern extension.
  
• First stab at trying to improve the macOS version of the game. Attacking the DPI scaling issues, and updating the OpenAL Soft 3D sound library.
  
• Now the game can be configured at startup to use more than the tiny 80 MiB + 100 MiB of RAM it was hardcoded to use until now.
  
  See this wiki page to learn how to use the -sdataheap and -ldataheap command-line arguments. Potentially making bigger and modern mods and levels a possibility.
• Fix the rainbow-looking noise colors made out of garbage data at startup whenever loading the gamepad support took more than a second. This was mainly an issue on Linux, where SDL2 takes its sweet time in searching for plugged pads. Now the screen will remain black since it first appears.
  
• Avoid flickering, black blotches and screen corruption while flipping between graphics options. Delay changing them until we start drawing the next frame, not so fast.
  
• Add some extra borders to the fade-out overlays, to try to cover possible one-pixel-off issues in the bottom and left sides.
  
• Implement the first version of the dynamic resolution system to combat the particle system fillrate issues. Which also allows supersampling at great performance cost. This can only be changed via the -dev mode Watcher window, for the time being.
  
• Add some extra machinery to learn to diagnose and improve frame pacing issues.
  
• Expose the pixel scaling factor as tweakable live option in the -dev mode Watcher window.
  
• Make it possible to switch between both framerate schedulers (variable/frameskip) at runtime.
  
• Wait for the engine to fully shut down before trying to close the game. Avoiding some awkward crashes after clicking «Exit».
  
• Dynamicallly-load all the old OpenGL 1.1 functions that are directly exported by the OpenGL dynamic library. Now we don't link against libgl.so under Linux anymore, potentially improving Wayland support and future compatibility. Not depending on X11, only SDL2.
  
• Avoid outright crashing when the game files are missing; abort softly.
  
• Add the MFX_ and SFX_Defines.h under the Sonix folder. As the game loads them and turns the weird numbers into informative labels when error messages happen.

• Cumulative update with a whole host of features, the most important being HiDPI/4K support.
  
• Add higher-resolution textures for the Heliopolis exterior, Mummy Castle/Jail environmental textures, Menes assistants, footprints, first-person blowpipe, many more monsters, Abydos Jewels, minigames, Abydos Museum, Trials of the Eye, Imhotep cutscenes and their objects, the Uruk Intro and a few Luxor Pyramid environmental texture improvements as well as HD versions of almost every visual effect and particle.
  
• Prepare the game for the upcoming projected shadows functionality.
  
• Prepare the game for the upcoming 64-bit EngineX version.
  
• Improve the drawing order of translucent objects.
  
• Improve the way particles are drawn to screen.
  
• Prepare for the initial/preliminary version of three-point ambient lights. The last missing original effect from the Eurocom version.
  
• Hopefully improve frame-pacing.
  
• Fix the Skull Swordsman projectile attack misfiring in some levels, like the ones on Uruk Temple Trials. Fix a similar issue maybe happening to Smiling Burbles.
  
• Raise the tesselation level for the player's swoosh speed trail effects, for the sword and more. Make them rounder.
  
• Update the SDL2 binaries to 2.018; it should fix setting smaller resolutions not working as intended. See this Steam Community thread.
  
• Fix Sphinx dying when jumping on top of float-on-lava-marked pickup-able platforms. (What a mouthful)
  
• Fix some mistakes in the gamepad code causing memory corruption.
  
• Avoid unnecessarily crashing the game on recoverable issues. Fixes crashing when fighting a ton of monsters in the monster test map, due to too many animations being loaded at once.
  
• Protect the game against some not-so-frequent crashes automatically reported by players and make it more robust.
  
• Add support for projected-shadow-enabled NPCs during cutscenes.
  
• Limit the scan mode orbit camera when going downwards, too; avoid going past the 360 degree discontinuity.
  
• Improve the built-in gamescript debugger output; add proper hashcode ID string retrieval when possible, add further parameters for stubbed, or limited opcodes.
  
  • Make the variable printing wider and following the window size.
    
  • Add a way to automatically trigger the gamescript debugger when anything runs (Auto on Any).
    
  • Make the current trigger name and type visible.
    
  • Implement dozens of the previously-missing operations to show with all their parameters and variable/constant output.
    
  • Implement support for naming the first few special/hardcoded procedure variables for readability. Like MESSAGE, or CUTSEQ, or ARG0.
    
  • Implement initial support for gamescript debugger indentation, to mirror what is shown in the Euroland editor, as faithfully as possible.
    
  • Add constant value hashcode detection and auto-formatting.
    
  • Add the trigger coordinates at the top, don't color special variables when the current line is active and should have a yellow tint that we would otherwise interrupt.
    
  • Show the actual trigger identifier name (the actual human tag from Euroland) in there when possible and whenever Display > Triggers > Names option in the Watcher is toggled on.
    
  • Add support for viewing variables even when there is not debug information in the EDB, or tag names.
    
  • Add support for printing hashcodes when found in the variable display block, just like what I did in the disassembly block.
• Bring back the Akaria salt crystal container regeneration flags from the death.
  
• Implement HT_GameScript_Macro_AddAnimator and HT_GameScript_Macro_RemoveAnimator.
  
• Implement the initial version of HT_GameScript_Macro_GetAnimSkin and HT_GameScript_Macro_SetAnimSkin.
  
• Implement HT_GameScript_Macro_GetModValue, HT_GameScript_Macro_SetModValue, HT_GameScript_Macro_GetGlobalValue and HT_GameScript_Macro_SetGlobalValue.
  
• Implement HT_GameScript_Macro_GetSaveSlot, HT_GameScript_Macro_GetGameVersion and HT_GameScript_Macro_GetTimeDate.
  
  • See the Sphinx Wikia (Script Scripting Language page) for more information.
• Add a new HT_ScriptEvents_WaitHitOrMessage to the list of available script events in triggers.
  
  • Because the script state machine only processes the first event at each time point we can't do complex OR logic when waiting for more than one event type without implementing something like this.
    
  • This should combine the WaitHit and WaitForMessage functionalities.
• Enable rendering entity bounds, if toggled in the -dev mode Watcher window.
  
• Make so that the Watcher, Stats and other debug windows have priority over the pause menu, so that we don't need to Ctrl + Shift + Tab,
  
• Show the cursor whenever we right-click in the gameplay window to open a debug menu to see where we are aiming at.
  
• Improve the Sphinx.ini configuration file reader to be more forgiving, now it also understands hexadecimal numbers.
  
  • Fix a bug where we saved signed integer values to the Sphinx.ini but read them as unsigned; save all integers as signed, fixing the roundtrip issues.
    
  • Save some hashcode-based Sphinx.ini keys as hexadecimal for readability, now that we support that.
• Save and restore the ShowKey and BkColor values for debug window elements to make their launch hotkeys and background color customizable from Sphinx.ini.
  
• Add a new "Script Output" window; useful for normal users to track down gamescript problems (as a dumping ground for the DEBUG and DEBUGS commands) without DbgView.exe or C++ access.
  
• Switch the normal gamescript debug printing prefix from GI: to [GS]: to make it easier to search for text and grep.
  
• Improve the OpenAL Soft sound effect/reverb code.
  
• Improve the gamepad and rumbling code.
  
• Improve the savegame code, especially for mods.
  
• Make reading the Book of Sphinx/inventory its own separate thing in the rich presence status, as it isn't just another menu.

• Quick fix for not being able to save or load save games on Windows when the user name and save path used non-English characters, due to partial Unicode support.
  
• Update the bundled SDL2 library version, potentially improving gamepad support.

• Early 64-bit version, for closed technical testing. Incomplete.

• Fix several reported crashes, mainly mod-related.
  
• Fix a faulty GLSL compiler not supporting #if 0 blocks on certain NVIDIA macOS drivers, causing a bogus pop-up message at startup.
  
• Other minor improvements.

• Enhanced water shader. Now bodies of water show dynamic waves of various sizes instead of a tiling texture, all while still retaining the original look as much as possible.
  
• Improve the asynchronous I/O thread and temporarily unlock the framerate for even faster loading screens. Avoid load-screen flickering in some OpenGL drivers.
  
• Fix Unicode paths on Windows; use wide strings instead of UTF-8. There was a problem with paths containing international symbols on Windows. So if your username/user folder contained Greek, Chinese or Cyrillic glyphs the game couldn't even find or open the configuration file (Sphinx.ini) or apply the configuration/optimized defaults. Sometimes causing black screens.
  
• New HD textures for Smiling and Slim Burbles, clouds, bubbles and smoke, electric objects and almost every other particle effect. Improved textures for environmental Heliopolis props and zip lines.
  
• Remove the hack to hide the glitchy parts of the skinned Imhotep and Anubis ghost models now that the export-time problem has been found, and skinned/multi-layer meshes with morph targets work properly. Tangentially, tweak the Anubis nose mesh to minimize seams.
  
• Blinking particles fix/workaround.
  
• Try to recover the OpenAL audio context when the device disconnects.
  
• Force disabling soft particles when UseFramebuffer is set to zero or when MSAA is not supported by the graphics card.
  
• Reduce any possible flickering while changing v-sync options.
  
• Scale the zipline fall/inactivity counter by the framerate; not the perfect solution, but fixes Sphinx infinitely re-hooking after falling at the end of a line at 80+ FPS.
  
• Make the (optional) cutscene exit fadeouts last exactly one second (i.e. 60 ticks of nominal framerate)
  
• Override the framerate limits via configuration file.
  
  • 50-75 Hz is an acceptable range, 30 Hz is already pretty unstable and Sphinx can go through walls just by accelerating a bit, at 85 Hz the main problem was the zip line re-hooking while falling at the end of the line loops.
    
  • What's still broken? Swimming/diving speed, and released/moving Scarabs need a multiplier.
    
  • Here is a quick template, this function is experimental and unsupported:
    
    [RenderMode] MinFrameRate=30 MaxFrameRate=120
• Allow (again) resolutions that don't natively match the screen aspect ratio. As requested.
  
• Add some leeway to the maximum framerate to accomodate the current display; from 50 Hz to 85 Hz for now. Experimentally, it seems safe and avoids tearing.
  
• Use Adaptive Vsync by default to reduce slowdowns.
  
• Translation fixes for English, Spanish, Italian and French; fix some longstanding spelling and formatting issues. Kudos to @LetsPlayNintendoITA, @MaskDemasque and @lordquacksmith. Add Richard Foster to the credits roll, he was only credited in some languages.
  
• Heavily improved third-party localization support. Improved support for custom fonts and language-dependent assets. Rewrite a big part of the EngineX language code to make some hardcoded parts completely modular.
  
• Change a bunch of conditions that checked against hashcode masks 0xffff0000 to detect if the code was of type HT_File_HASHCODE_BASE. Now that we use EDB files that start from the other way around and decrement themselves, check for 0xff000000 instead. That's where the section/type "code" is actually stored in the number. Eurocom wasn't consistent with the kind of checks it did.
  
• Add an option to ignore controller input; some players asked for a way of disabling the gamepad support altogether. It can be done like this:
  
  [PCKeyboardMap] IgnoreGamepadInput=1
• Improve level changes to only force-unload what's needed instead of the first 999 sequential EDB files by hashcode. It was slow and it didn't cover everything, so now the game loads even faster and does things correctly.
  
• Restrict the no-particles option. It can still be accessed via INI file, but it confused many players and caused the current menu option highlight effect to disappear.
  
• Add support for 20-ish new game controllers. Button mapping fixes.
  
• Improved -mod mode:
  
  • Re-enable more useful -dev mode windows and options. Display collisions, sound effects, skeletons and more.
    
  • More information in the logs for mod and map developers. Re-enable the original Eurocom gamescript debugger and line-stepping.
    
  • Show memory blocks for all heaps in the Resource view.
• Add a time variable that can be used for more complex behaviors in shaders.
  
• Minor cleanups and other small improvements.
  
• Prepare the groundwork for 64-bit support.

• Make audio I/O and soundbank loading completely asynchronous, for smoother frame pacing.
  
• Add fade-in and out support to most game levers and pushable blocks, the worst offender being the centerpiece lever of the Mummy RotoHub puzzle. Fix missing fade-outs for containers.
  
• Update SDL2.dll to workaround choppy mouse movement on Windows caused by bug #4748.
  
• Add initial support for additional third-party languages and fan-translations:
  
  • Conditionally toggle them only if the FrontEnd/PickUps for that language are there.
    
  • Reserve hashcodes for additional language files; the game enables one of these languages if it detects that both its FrontEnd and PickUps exist in the Filelist. They aren't shipped with the game, though.
    
  • These hardcoded hashcodes are issued backwards, for mod compatibility reasons.
• Fix the trapped mouse toggling other options, when holding to change volume bars and accidentally releasing while hovering over the reverb button.
  
• New terrain and initial water shaders.
  
• New asynchronous asset loading for instantaneous level transitions, it should also reduce the frametime spikes and judder.
  
• Fix a crash while skipping the intro cutscene of the Mummy Uruk Castle exterior at startup.
  
• Avoid black screens and tiny visual glitches when switching graphics settings or MSAA levels too fast.
  
• Fix the problem of particles disappearing while switching between soft-particles/no multisampling without restarting first.
  
• Update the gamepad button mapping file, adding support for more gamepads.
  
• Log several prominent trigger errors and trigger message prints.
  
• Improve performance by inlining and removing some indirection.
  
• Properly tag the EngineX windows with their names.
  
• Other smaller changes and error-checking.

• Add a preliminary version of sRGB-aware linear color blending, for correctness. This means that now textures and colors should display more vividly, as the artists intended.
  • The final image should have more contrast and mix in the right proportions for a more pleasing result.
    
  • It is not yet perfect in the sense that water and some other transparent surfaces look fainter, and will require some tweaking via future updates that are being worked on.
• Add more high-resolution HQ texture overrides.
  • Mainly covering Uruk Temple Trials, Mummy RotoHub, Heliopolis Exterior, Uruk Canyon, Mummy Hang Train and several particle effects.
• Add more level portraits to the Discord Rich Presence integration.
  
• Fix an ugly stack overflow issue during enemy AI avoidance recursion.
  
• Particle orientation fixes, previously some particles faced the wrong direction.
  
• Fix gameplay logic defects for the wall sneak mechanics and ceiling collision checks. Fix other various original logic issues.
  
• Mouse cursor handling has been rewritten and optimized to be more responsive in preparation for remapping.
  
• Get rid of the Sword of Osiris blade gap; the light-blade ended a bit short of the handle, with nothing in between. Now both components are joined together.
  
• Reduce the Sword of Osiris guard/hand/finger clipping by making the sword grip more natural without changing its orientation; doing so would have affected gameplay, cutscenes and attacks.
  
• The Abydos/Heliopolis ferry boat nets now appear on both sides. Fixed other flipped geometry elements and correct the bad UV mapping at the top of most of the nets so that they appear solid black instead of like small transparent holes. It looks better now, this one took a few years to fix.
  
• Re-enable the wheel platform trigger (TR_WheelPlatform). While most of the physics code existed, the rest had to be partially guessed and reconstructed from existing documentation and hints left by Eurocom, so it may not exactly match the original functionality, but it seems to work fine. Please report any issues if you use this fun beta device in your custom levels.
  
• Add fade-in and out support to the wheel platform trigger, its spindle and various platforms.
  
• Add fade-in and out support to the boids of flock triggers, mainly for schools of fish and many other "flocking" creatures.
  
• Fix possible black screen buffers under very specific circumstances.
  
• Switch the gamepad subsystem to always use all the available gamepads and fuse all their analog and digital inputs together.
  • By doing this we can do multiple actions from various devices at the same time without any artificial switching.
    
  • This should improve the Steam Controller support, as well as third-party remappers that mix and match inputs.
• Cut off any remaining rumbling before switching to a new active gamepad. Only the controller that is actually in the player hands will actually vibrate.
  
• Add some hysteresis to the keyboard/mouse and gamepad switching modes.
  • Now it only marks a controller as active after after giving it some leeway to avoid spurious analog movement.
• Fix a logic bug in the CAMERATOPLAYER gamescript operation. This may change some angles and behavior that depended on it.
  
• Enable the Euroland, EDB FileInfo, OBJ FileInfo, Watcher, Resources, Stats and Draw Mode elements in the 'Viewer mode'.
  • Also enable the Collision Info data dumping section in the EDB Info window. These are all useful menus, some of them exist in normal mode.
    
  • Let the game open EuroLand files directly from Viewer mode via pipe messaging.
• Re-enable the Output Items, Output Solid, Output Contour, Output Usage, R2 ScreenDump and List Trig Files entries in the Watcher. These dump text reports via stdout every time they are ticked.
  
• Most EDB and soundbank loading errors should now be user-facing instead of failing silently.
  
• Fix the high-resolution timers in the Item Update window. Now the more costly items (the ones that take more game cycles to process) should be visible.
  
  
• Implement a [InitialLevel] PCReplaceFrontEnd=1 configuration key, so that PCLevel actually makes something.
  • Also implement a -level <hashcode> command-line parameter that overrides it and does the same thing.
    
  • If set to 1 it will load the PCLevel value, if not it will interpret it as a hash code. It only works in -dev mode.
    
  • See this wiki page for more information.
• Implement a [Debug] KeyboardOptions=1 Sphinx.ini configuration entry. That will enable a series of keyboard shortcuts while in -dev mode.
  • Ctrl + M: Reloads the current level.
    
  • Ctrl + N: Toggles trigger markers, same as in the Watcher.
    
  • Ctrl + D: Toggles viewing trigger radiuses, same as in the Watcher.
    
  • Ctrl + G: Toggles god mode, same as in the Watcher.
    
  • Ctrl + I: Toggles the 'Always has item' cheat, same as in the Watcher.
    
    
  • Ctrl + {1,5}: Quickly loads the level stored in [InitialLevel] QuickLevelJump1=hashcode.
    
  • Ctrl + Shift + {1,5}: Assigns the currently loaded level to that jump combo key.
  
  
• General performance improvements and optimizations.
  
• Minor cleanups.

• Several Italian translation improvements. Thanks to @LetsPlayNintendoITA for reporting the typos.
  
• Add two new environmental sound tracks to the Soundtrack DLC:
  
  • (56) Nomad Outpost: The iconic Bedouin Outpost tune.
    
  • (57) Trading Outpost: Diegetic music from the Heliopolis Point shops.
  Thanks to @AshhawkBurning for tabulating the tracks for the wiki and the reminder.

• Add Discord/Steamworks Rich Presence integration. It shows the current level, character and gameplay status (including Mummy abilities).
  
  • It also shows the current/maximum health (in Ankhs) and money (Bronze/Onyx) while hovering over the little Scarab coin.
    
  • Most zones have their own portrait.
• Fix the Practice Makes Perfect and Crocodile Scales achievements. Now they unlock as intended, again.
  
• Always keep the little arrow markers in the choice dialog prompts vertically aligned, to account for the bigger text size.
  
• Fix a text length limitation that prevented some original Eurocom credits from appearing. Found by @Freeman at MobyGames.
  
• Make the credits scroll comparatively faster, now that we have a lot of new staff entries.
  
• Fix the terribly glitchy scrolling in the Trigger debug dialog, improve the entry alignment and add nifty color support. Remember to enable Display > Triggers > Names in the Watcher (Ctrl + W) to make this window even more useful for map-making.
  
• Add a new Display > Item Update > Show them all Watcher option to individually show all the active map items, this should make the Item Update debug window actually useful.

• Fix monster possession-related crashes in the beta Sakkara 3 map. Add missing effects and other possession improvements, ignore AI gamescript instructions during player posession.
  
• Roll back SDL2.dll to 2.0.8 as some players reported random beeping and input problems with the 2.0.9 release. We will be using the previous version until these regressions are fixed.
  
• Remove some unnecessary drawing of debug borders and dynamic resolution size calculations that should improve performance.
  
• Minor cleanups.

P.S.: Don't forget that the game now has a pretty neat verified Discord to chit chat with SatCM fans like me and you: https://discord.gg/sphinx

Hi there! Time for a song refresh.

• Updated all the song files; now the songs are based on the recovered high-quality 1411 kbps / 44100 Hz master files instead of derived lossy versions.
  
  • Instead of ~500 MiB for the combined FLAC+MP3 package, now it weights around ~300 MiB for the MP3 version and ~930 MiB for the lossless FLAC version.
    
  • One can freely choose between either version by toggling the «Download high-quality audio files» checkbox at Steam's Settings > Music section.
• Renamed most of the tracks to more friendly names, instead of using the internal, or early development tags.
  
  • For example; the Book of Sphinx menu music is no longer called Nomads, the Heliopolis theme is no longer known as Sakkara Main, and the Luxor Palace theme is no longer attributed to Abydos.
• Added a Readme file with optional playback instructions through foobar2000 + vgmstream, for advanced fans wanting seamless loop point control of the tagged FLAC files. Please take a look at the guide via «Browse local files».
  
• Improved tagging, added BPM and other extended attributes where possible.
  
• Added an extra track; «Sun Shrine Island».

Have fun, let us know what you think. ːsteamthumbsupː

Note: Those with less disk space can still access the older, combined version of the soundtrack by right-clicking the «Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy: Soundtrack» entry in their Steam Library, selecting Properties, clicking on the Betas tab and selecting the «older» branch.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/733200/Sphinx_and_the_Cursed_Mummy_Soundtrack/

To celebrate the Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy -75% off sale ending March 1st, the Discord Community Staff (@lordquacksmith and @SphinxLuvDuvWuv) have organized to give away three copies of Sphinx on Steam! Today's winner is @Shrev64#0089.

Here's how to enter:

1. Join the official community Discord.
   
2. React to the latest announcement containing information about the giveaway with an emoji of your country's flag.
   
3. Wait for the winners to be announced. That's it!

All draws are at random, and not in control of the hosts. Now is your chance to potentially win a free copy of this classic gem! If you are a fan of Sphinx and would like to see more events like this, let us know.

So far we have featured plenty of original artwork in our previous creative contests. Maybe we'll post some modding updates in the future. There are a lot of interesting things underway.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/606710/Sphinx_and_the_Cursed_Mummy/

A lot of things happened in the Sphinx community since our last announcement; the Sphinx Discord server got verified, meaning that it is now officially the place to hang out to talk about the game, and is now jointly managed by THQ Nordic and the previous community staff.

Also, the Sphinx wiki got a big overhaul, jmarti856's huge beta restoration mod is chugging along after we released even more beta content last summer and retrofitted more deleted gameplay mechanics into the engine... and, you guessed it, we had another nifty contest organized by our resident duck lordquacksmith, of course helped by the rest of the moderation team. This is what they have to say.

--

Calling all goblins and ghouls! Another contest is upon us, this time it's a... Design your own Monster contest! What better time to hold this event other than Spooktober?

This contest required the participants to design a monster that would fit in the world of Sphinx, using any sort of visual medium to do this: drawing it, painting it, making a 3D model, using Photoshop, making a sculpture, making it out of cheddar.

The lucky winner wins a currently released THQ Nordic game of their choice!

--

We had some excellent entries this time around, very imaginative designs and styles and in a wide array of mediums, with the Hippo lady taking the crown. Take a look.

[Nickname] super cutie/Amnit: Hippo lady (7 votes)

Anubis told me to bully sphinx, so that's what I'm gonna do!

SphinxLuvDuvWuv: Seahorse (5 votes)

I was making a sculpture for my entry, today I was adding the finishing touches and had just finished making his teeth, eyes and hooves (made out of polymer clay so they looked more like actual teeth) when he fell off of the table. Sadly he cannot be salvaged as he's shattered into multiple pieces.

HeavensBullet: Krow (4 votes)

Alright, here's my finished product straight from my mind, I'm pretty proud of it. So his name is Krow, and he's a woodland creature that protects the woods. He is known as nature knight, he used to be human but when he died he was mummified and reincarnated into a wood-like creature.

Basket/braxwheeler: Ancient mummified goose (4 votes)

Here's my submission. It's an ancient mummified Goose! It's used for annoying/ distracting your enemies. Very rare. Its honking was praised for its ability to wake even the deepest sleeping evils.

BQoverlord: Golden cobra (3 votes)




Egyptian-Enthusiast: Full brute (3 votes)

LuvDuv recommended I submit the joke I made in one of my more recent Sphinx Videos -- the full brute! As described by LuvDuv in the video, it's like a human centipede made of two brutes.

If you want to stay up to date with the latest contests and community news, you can join our official Sphinx Discord server. Which one is your favorite?

For those that didn't know, the good folks at the Sphinx Discord server have been running a community-led art contest to gauge interest. The results are pretty good.

Nefertiti, by veteran Sphinx artist Norvadier. Here is the speedpaint in video form.


Bye Hater, by DaxDraggon.


The Grand Battle, by SphinxLuvDuvWuv.


--

Kudos to lordquacksmith for organizing the event, and also props to the rest of the moderation staff and our resident meme expert, Ven7roX, for the… art.

Right now the community seems to be organizing to revamp the unofficial wiki, check it out and contribute if you find it interesting. Every little bit helps.

See you next time, hopefully with more game updates.



P.S. Which one is your favorite?

While we generally don't post Steam announcements for every single patch, and we usually update the forum thread instead, we have been improving the PC version while developing the Nintendo Switch port that was released three weeks ago.

The community is growing lately, mainly around the Discord server. We have pretty interesting fan art and we have been beta-testing the upcoming Steam Workshop support.



Patch by patch, the game is slowly being restored graphically using mainly the original artwork from Eurocom and Anibyte, with small tweaks. This is a respectful restoration, not a makeover.



Four of the most problematic defects have been fixed. Some of them were introduced during the PC port, others are still present in the original 2003 console release. A savegame corruption, suddenly vanishing NPCs, uninitialized memory as well as a few others that are less severe.



We are still planning to add most of the remaining features that had to be temporarily delayed due to the Nintendo Switch port: Things like projected shadows, better lighting and some shader improvements will appear in both platforms. Remappable controls will probably stay PC-only for the foreseeable future. We read your reviews and comments, and while we can't get some things done as fast as we would like, we will persist.



This last update should be equivalent to the Nintendo Switch v1.1 patch that we also released yesterday.

Also, here is the complete cumulative changelog since our last announcement:

• Remove the limit of 128 characters that caused truncation for long-ish paths. Properly NULL-terminate savegame paths.
  
• Fix spurious quotes in the Filelist.bin loader when given a mod path via arguments, it caused an occasional crash when ending a mod path in /" and sometimes the last path separator doubled as escape code.
  
• Don't enable the 50 Hz PAL mode in the PC version, as it works in EUR60 mode; this should change the rate at which some physics calculations are carried and doesn't affect framebuffer sizes.
  
• Properly zero-initialize some fields in the Enemy Mobility Path component that caused an ugly bug where if the leftover memory was 0xFFFFFFFF the value gets interpreted as -nan and first corrupts the rotation and that invalidates and corrupts the item matrix, the NPC visually disappears and collisions stop working so they fall to their death.
  
  • To find this I instrumented the mobility code at strategic points and tested things in a modified mum_temp map for Sphinx full of container-cobras and Abydos NPCs provided by @jmarti856 that improved the chances.
    
  • Keep in mind that denormals may have also caused some other subtle problems. This is a defect in the original code and was fixed 15 years later, should fix most of the sudden NPC despawns.
• Protect some parts of the game against a NaN contagion to mitigate some other remaining memory-initialization problems.
  
• Heavily improve the softlock detection during conversation mode, now it should also work after respawnable NPCs die.
  
• Never round toward zero in the FPU.
  
• Mitigate the occasional quick sound panning issues when moving the camera, as reported by many players.
  
• Add a better HQ Abydos arch spike texture.
  
• Add a good bunch of HQ textures, mainly for the remaining prominent characters: the Portal God, the archeologist, Cursed Pharaoh + Wife, Farmer + Brother, Seti, Plain Sarcophagi, Spider boss, the Geb Queen and the watcher eyes.
  
• Add HQ textures for the Abydos Mayor and Physician, the final boss, the flying Akarian bird boss and the fat ruler that gives Sphinx the Abydos stair key, as well as environmental textures for the Cursed Palace and the final battle.
  
• Add some extra HQ textures the Abydos Sewer Amulets and several particle effects.
  
• Update the SDL2 Windows library to 2.0.9.
  
• Add more Abydos Sewer and Cursed Palace HQ textures.
  
• Fix some UV texture clamping issues that when combined with mipmapping caused minor visual glitches in the Abydos Mayor and the watcher eyes.
  
• Attempt to fix a rare objective corruption that may happen at the end of every Mummy visit, where the Mummy state doesn't get correctly set due to a reallocation defect in the Onyx money-counting achievement code that caused a stale pointer on return. Also known as the 'Super King Castle' glitch, kudos to @superking1077/bellboy_64 for the helpful report.
  
• Change the HT_Objective_Aby_ElectricWater mod override, so that if we set it to 2 we enable the effect everywhere, 3 will disable it even in Abydos (previously was 0). Thanks to @Remidemmi. for the old save game.
  
• Add HQ textures for the burn boxes, levers, monkey statue and the planetarium door and a few other details.
  
• Add better textures for the Cursed Palace and the Uruk Castle, improve the hue of some retouched textures to make them more faithful to the original ones.
  
• Compress most of the textures as .DDS with BC7 block compression. Should generally reduce VRAM pressure across the board and mitigate those VRAM depletion issues.
  
• Simplify the resolution selector. Make it so that we can only select resolutions with the same aspect ratio as the desktop resolution, fix a defect that caused the selection to show different resolutions when going to the right.
  
• Fix ghost clicking of some Back button prompt labels.

• Optimize all the new HQ textures and reduce its size on disk.
  
• Minor cleanups.

• New HQ textures for BasKet, the Sarcophagi King, most of the Mummy levels and the final battle. Better floor textures for the Lost Temple of Heliopolis.
  
• Fix a few mishaps.

• New HQ textures for Sphinx, Horus, Imhotep, Akhenaten, Menes, Set and Nefertiti. Update some rocky, wall and FX-related textures to reduce pixelation and blocky S3TC artifacts.
  
• Properly move actors to their correct positions while skipping cutscenes.
  
• Remove the initial Tut wake up scene from the blacklist of unskippable cutscenes now that it works properly. With this implemented practically all the important cutscenes should be optional by just pressing the Book of Sphinx/Inventory button.
  
• Fix a regression in floating point rounding mode that caused collision issues, mainly Sphinx receiving unwarranted damage when stepping over the lowered spiked gates in the Uruk intro and also spurring the Abydos piranhas to swim in the air. Round to nearest instead of chopping decimals toward zero.
  
• Add an entity flag (0x8000, previously reserved but wrongly tagged as 'Ignore Auto Collision Macro' in EuroLand) to conditionally re-enable LODs for new 3D models from modders, if requested. That way mods can still optimize bigger levels while still disabling LODs for the original (now-low-poly) meshes.
  
• Update the game controller mapping database. Add support for USB GameCube adapter mapping, too. Thanks to @Remidemmi.
  
• More vertex collision struct refactoring that should improve the undefined behavior situation.
  
• Minor cleanups.

• Refactor the vertex collision structs to plain old data and avoid undefined behavior. This should hopefully mitigate the occasional NPC despawning/clipping-through-floor and improve portability in general. Please retest and report your findings.
  
• Minor cleanups.

• New batch of HQ texture updates sourced from original artwork; covering flares, most of the Abydos Monster Shop, a few parts of the Mummy Planetarium, Luxor Pyramid and Palace, a few Wall sections and some other places, metallic fences, the sun, shoot targets, a few statues, platforms, walls and floors. Add a better version of the dirt and tiling terrain textures.
  
• Minor cleanups.

• Fix possible framerate judder/frame skip issues by ensuring that we only use monitor resolutions and frame-rates compatible with the fixed in-game display/update rate.
  
  • Should fix issues where the monitor exposes 59 Hz or 70/75 Hz refresh rates and we pick that by mistake.
    
  • Now it should only use 60 Hz, 120 Hz (or 180 Hz+) physical swap rates. To ensure it can be properly v-sync'ed.
• Implement soft distance fade-ins and outs for lamps, the tilting boat platforms in the small Abydos canal, and few other triggers. Now they don't appear suddenly anymore.
  
• Completely fix the inside-out or pure black graphics issue caused by overlays or third-party hooking programs. Thanks to @Anderson and @Nish the Fish for testing.
  
• Make the deadly electric water configurable for mods via objective so that it can be enabled or disabled globally. Previously it was hardcoded to work only on HT_File_Map_ab_cana.
  
  • Now HT_Objective_Aby_ElectricWater can be set like this: if the objective is 2 enable the effect everywhere, 0 will disable it even in Abydos. 1 is the default behavior.
    
  • Setting this objective dynamically or when entering/unloading specific maps will lead to advanced mechanics with a lot of flexibility. Only works for Sphinx.
    
  • There's an exception; the deadly water has always been blacklisted/disabled in spitting toad mode.
• Add support for beta Sphinx attacks in mods through HT_GameScript_Control_SlamEffectType, HT_GameScript_Control_WaveAttack to dynamically control the "Slam Effect" and "Wave Attack" options that appear in the debug Watcher under Cheats.
  
  • They change the default ground slam behavior and can be useful for additional mechanics. e.g: use them like SETITEMFLAG HT_GameScript_Control_SlamEffectType 1/0 and GETITEMFLAG HT_GameScript_Control_WaveAttack and vice versa.
• Enable printing to stdout with the DEBUGS gamescript operation in the PC builds.
  
  • On Windows you will need a Microsoft program called DebugView to read the game's output, on Linux and macOS just launch it from terminal.
• Fix some incorrect use of the OpenGL framebuffer discard functions.
  
• Add further build-time optimizations.

• New Luxor Palace and Heliopolis Exterior textures.
  
• Avoid rare softlocks in the middle of a conversation if the NPC/monster dies for any reason. Go back to normal game mode and unfreeze the controls.
  
  
• Proper mod folder support, by letting third-parties/modders provide their own BuildData/Filelist.bin while using the original one as fallback.
  
  • When possible the new resources will override the original ones through a Sphinx.ini configuration option or the -mod <folder> command-line argument; in that order.
    
    Example mod folder path via configuration key:
    
    [BootState] PCMod=H:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\workshop\content\606710\1450113507
    
    
  • Use a custom savegame namespace/folder for each mod. Now mods and the main game won't share the same set of save slots. Hopefully each mod will have its own suffixed version.
    
  • While in -dev mode, fill the list of levels by looking for maps in multiple Filelists and not just the first one, and merging the results. This makes it possible to select all the available levels from the right-click menu list.
  
  
• New color-tinted Xbox button glyphs.
  
• Workaround to prevent the lack of depth-testing when RivaTuner RTSS and other badly-programmed/misbehaving overlays disable it by mistake.
  
• Add a Sphinx.ini configuration option to disable tutorial prompts and tips:
  
  [Control] TutorialPrompts=0
• Fix the rare cutout glitches in translucent surfaces when soft particles are enabled.
  
• Limit the FOV to 20-110 degrees.
  
• Invert the 3rd person camera in both axes by default. Shouldn't affect existing configurations.
  
• Reduce the spawn radius distance of the Bird guarding the Abydos Museum entrance to 460 from 700 meters (it didn't let you enter the Museum after getting the Stairs key unless it despawned).
  
• Remove the buggy beta levels bundled with the game (not needed anymore when there's a mod for it and the Authoring Tools).
  
• Add a proper message box error when we are loading an .EDB file and run out of memory, also add another one when the .EDB path can't be found/opened.
  
• Add proper glBufferStorage synchronization, fixing the occasional graphics glitches that made characters look like they were ripped apart.

Thanks for reading!