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:

2024-04-21 (Sunday)

• 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:
  [list]
• 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.
  

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:

[img w=10]https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/31158491/4528d9e9bf90fb251a166069b5dbd0a35de5d0d1.png[/img]

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.














https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICstxaIckcs[/previewyoutube]
(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 Muoz Velzquez, @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:

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:
  [list]
• 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.
  

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).
  [list]
• Before this many particle FX sprites rotated awkwardly and the drops appeared sideways and off center, now they look more natural.
  

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.
  [code]
  [Graphics]
  ShadowMapSize=999
  DynResScaleX=.1
  DynResScaleY=.5
  [/code]
  

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.
  [list]
• 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 .
  [list]
• 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 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.
  

2023-08-27 (Sunday)

• 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.
  

2023-08-24 (Thursday)

• 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.
  [list]
• 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.
  

2023-08-23 (Wednesday)

• 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. steammocking

We might as well start now, because we are still working on your [strike]favorite[/strike] 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:

2023-08-22 (Tuesday)

• 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.
  [list]
• 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.
  

2023-06-26 (Monday)

• 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.
  

2023-06-16 (Friday)

• 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.
  

2023-06-12 (Monday)

• Add a working 30 FPS mode.
  [list]
• 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.
  [code]
  [RenderMode]
  VideoFrameRate=30
  [/code]
• 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.
  

2023-06-10 (Saturday)

• 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.
  

2023-05-27 (Saturday)

• Add the original 'making of' and 'attract' movies as part of the game data.
  [list]
• 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.
  

2023-01-26 (Wednesday)

• 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.
  [list]
• 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.
  

2021-09-22 (Sunday)

• 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.
  

2020-12-26 (Saturday)

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

2020-10-07 (Wednesday)

• 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.
  

2020-10-05 (Monday)

• 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.
  [list]
• 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:
  [code]
  [RenderMode]
  MinFrameRate=30
  MaxFrameRate=120
  [/code]
  

2020-03-05 (Thursday)

• 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:
  [list]
• 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.
  

2019-08-28 (Wednesday)

• 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.[list]
• 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.

2019-07-15 (Monday)

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

2019-03-26 (Tuesday)

• Add Discord/Steamworks Rich Presence integration. It shows the current level, character and gameplay status (including Mummy abilities).
  [list]
• 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.
  

2019-02-20 (Wednesday)

• 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.
  

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.
  [list]
• 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.
  

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:
[olist]

Wait for the winners to be announced. That's it!
[/olist]
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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

2019-02-15 (Friday)

• 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.
  [list]
• 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.
  

2019-01-18 (Friday)

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

2019-01-17 (Thursday)

• 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.
  

2019-01-15 (Tuesday)

• 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.
  

2019-01-10 (Thursday)

• 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.
  

2019-01-09 (Wednesday)

• 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.
  

2019-01-04 (Friday)

• 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.
  [list]
• 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.
  

2018-09-05 (Thursday)

• 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.
  [list]
• When possible the new resources will override the original ones through a Sphinx.ini configuration option or the -mod command-line argument; in that order.
  
  Example mod folder path via configuration key:
  [code]
  [BootState]
  PCMod=H:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\workshop\content\606710\1450113507
  [/code]
  
• 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.
  

Yesterday we added the much requested mouse-controlled blowpipe controls, this is the first step towards having full-featured mouse and keyboard mapping support in EngineX.


Now that most of the groundwork is in place it should not take long. We still need to add extra sub-menus and configurable options; ensuring that everything runs as expected will probably take most of the remaining work.

In other news, we also added several high-quality textures for the Abydos Museum and brought back some original (really high resolution) character textures for Sphinx and the mummy that will be tweaked in future updates to better match their final look. We also improved the draw distance for various Abydos NPCs like the ones in the main plaza, as requested.


Today's update also brought many other fixes and improvements; we brought back the iconic thunder sound that sounds when you first enter the main menu, we made the back/cancel labels clickable, fixed a bunch of long-standing collision issues, skipping cutscenes now works even if the dialog is in wait state, brought back or implemented some beta/modding features needed by the beta map restoration project, and little tweaks everywhere.


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

2018-06-28 (Thursday)

• Made the fan-favorite intro logo thunderous again. The sound was broken on release due to a little hashcode header mismatch.
• Add initial support for the mouse-controlled camera that we have been teasing for a while, we still need to add a mouse sensitivity control. The player can shoot with the left mouse button and exit first-person mode via right-click. The groundwork for keyboard action mapping is laid out and it will probably come after this.
• Save the vertical sync changes to Sphinx.ini, fixes disabling v-sync in the in-game options.
• Prefix the screen name with a number in the graphics options, useful to distinguish them in case there are two or more screens with the same name.
• Add support for clicking the "(B) Back" labels in the pause and main menus, now the user can go back and cancel via mouse.
  
• Carefully hex-edit the level data to improve draw distances of NPCs and triggers in the Abydos Canals. Now characters like the the boat owner, the Mad Boy/Juggler and the giggling lady in the Main Plaza can be seen from afar.
• Add several much needed HQ textures for the Abydos Museum, refurbish some wall textures to add some lost detail. Make some signs and canopies partially transparent via alpha-testing/alpha-to-coverage.
• Remove the squarish/invisible roadblocks in the middle of the ramp in the Great Wall Entrance II Room, the collision meshes of the wooden pillars poked through the ramp they support. This is a long standing bug still present in all the original console versions.
• Fix the hanging flags collision in the sneak corridor of the Castle of Uruk during the second mummy visit. Now the mummy doesn't get stuck and can walk and sneak under them, hopefully without introducing some extra regressions.
  
• If we skipped a cutscene with the inventory key and the dialog/help window was in a pause point waiting for user input we would get stuck in the fade-to-black transition after skipping it, and we would also need to press 'accept' to return to normal gameplay. Fix that so that pressing the inventory/skip button suffices.
• Reimplement some beta features and mechanics asked by modders:
  [list]
• Add support for the PushFlag_AmunRa flag in the XTrigger_Pickupable and XTrigger_Pushable triggers; it was halfplemented. Set the needed strength to 2 if we have the Hands of Amun + Hands of Amun Ra or 1 of each. Previously it only counted the amount of HT_Item_Ability_HandsOfAmun, and there was no reference to HT_Item_Ability_HandsOfAmunRa.
• Whitelist HT_Item_Pickup_FireDart for pickup creation, which is also used while dropping items randomly in breakable containers. Also, add support for dropping fire darts on intelligent item generation.
  [list]
• Now when ContainerFlag_SpawnPickup is checked in EuroLand the FireDart flag can generate an item in either random or intelligent mode. The behavior in the final game shouldn't change because this item isn't flagged in any container, only in beta maps.
  

2018-05-28 (Monday)

• Add the initial version of the HQ Sphinx/Mummy character texture replacements, they were sourced from the highest pre-rendered 3ds Max models available and they don't exactly match their final counterparts, so it will require some texture tweaking and recoloring work, but this is good enough for now; the amount of extra detail is beautiful.
• Add several new HQ texture replacements covering mainly Heliopolis Dungeon, Uruk Intro, Uruk Islands and Anubis Wall.
• Uncomment the unpossession code so that we can still play the old Sakkara maps with the Dino Oafs and Shell Critters, it should also fix the contextual buttons not changing after possessing the same monster a second time. See ContextActions.xls for HT_Trig_Context_CancelPossession / HT_Trig_Context_DinoOaf / HT_Trig_Context_Frog.
• Get rid of the possession dart first-person fire action context when arriving at a Sakkara unpossession point by resetting the Sphinx action context to the default one, the HUD and buttons looked pretty buggy.
• Raise the large data heap again a bit (to 40 MiB, same as in Xbox) from the original 22 MiB in PC. Fixes OOM crash in the second part of the _sk_02.edb mod, right after the submap load due to big map sizes.
• Add an extra xxHash for the propPusheableBull texture (from _mu_eye), add a HQ texture for the triple mummy saw trap in that very same map, it was pretty low res.
• Fix the "/lib32/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.7' not found" error on older Linux distros. This is caused by the GLIBC update, which made Sphinx.elf use powf@@GLIBC_2.2.5. Replace it by the perfectly functional powf@GLIBC_2.0 and use manual Linux glibc versioning selection based on this: https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header
• Tell the Linux linker to use both hash styles ("sysv" a "gnu") for compatibility. Set the OpenGL library to LEGACY to keep using libgl instead of libglvnd.
  

During the past few months we have been recovering and tweaking more than ~130 environmental textures from original sources, and now we are transplanting them back into the game 15 years later. Many scenes and props now look crisp and more detailed than their sixth-generation, compressed counterparts.


The Eurocom and Anibyte artists originally painted their images at bigger sizes, but due to serious console and memory limitations at the time they had to be downsized and compressed to Heliopolis and back.

These upgrades mostly cover common gameplay elements; like buttons, statues and levers and, more specifically, Heliopolis Exterior, Anubis Wall, Abydos Canals and the Uruk Intro. We will probably keep adding more original assets in zones that still need some care, like the Lost Temple, some Mummy dungeons and Luxor.


Modern computers are much more capable than a PlayStation® 2 or GameCube™. Enjoy playing Sphinx as it was originally meant to be seen, it holds up pretty well.


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

2018-01-30 (Tuesday)

• German translation improvements by @MagicianMana.
• Make the health Gold Ankh UI indicators scalable by the TextHudObjScaling key in the [Graphics] section of Sphinx.ini, too. As requested by @DaxterSpeed.
• Add a texture override (hudRotatorSelect.png) for the golden highlight frame around the currently selected item in the pop-up rotator of the HUD. This one has higher resolution and it doesn't look half as stretched as the original one, specially after making that list wider a few weeks ago.
• Disable the EGXGL_ATTRIB_DIVISOR_INSTANCING / glVertexAttribDivisor hack, it didn't seem to help. It was disabled by default; let it autodetect, as intended: http://steamcommunity.com/app/606710/discussions/0/1621726179559230606/
• Disable glObjectLabel'ing again to improve performance.
• Update the Windows version of the SDL2 (to 2.0.7) and OpenAL Soft (to 1.18.2) libraries. Don't link/import the SDL2 library symbols by ordinal anymore; do it by name, because it breaks dragging and dropping new SDL2.dll versions that don't share export order.
• Let the user choose if she wants to bound/restrict/confine the mouse cursor within the window borders through a new InputGrabbed key in the [RenderMode] section of Sphinx.ini. It is set to 1/TRUE by default. Suggested by @DaxterSpeed.
  [code]
  [RenderMode]
  InputGrabbed=0
  [/code]
• Make the left analog stick WASD keyboard button support remappable for people that use AZERTY/QUERTZ. It can be done through new configuration keys in Sphinx.ini. For example, this is is the correct mapping for French AZERTY layouts, where WASD is ZQSD:
  [code]
  [PCKeyboardMap]
  SDL_CONTROLLER_LSTICK_LEFT=20 # Q
  SDL_CONTROLLER_LSTICK_RIGHT=7 # D
  SDL_CONTROLLER_LSTICK_UP=29 # Z
  SDL_CONTROLLER_LSTICK_DOWN=22 # S
  SDL_CONTROLLER_BUTTON_LEFTSTICK=26 # W
  SDL_CONTROLLER_BUTTON_RIGHTSTICK=6 # C
  SDL_CONTROLLER_BUTTON_LEFTSHOULDER=4 # A
  SDL_CONTROLLER_BUTTON_RIGHTSHOULDER=8 # E
  [/code]
  Suggested by @Alice Madieus: http://steamcommunity.com/app/606710/discussions/0/1693785669872263827/
• Some chests could be opened multiple times on cutscene skips. Don't let people exploit it: https://twitter.com/owashii/status/952217023567802369
• Skipping the Heliopolis boulder cutscene after burning the wooden platform soft-locked the controls. Make it unskippable.
  

2018-03-09 (Friday)

• Improve the safe zone for 4:3 screens, some of the text in menus and HUD spilled over at either side. See this Steam forum discussion: http://steamcommunity.com/app/606710/discussions/0/1700542332338620293/
• Update to the latest SDL2 version in both Windows and macOS. We now use 2.0.8, which comes with a bunch of fixes and improvements.
• Compile and update the macOS version of OpenAL Soft to 1.18.2, we were using 1.18.1 until now; bundle the HRTF coefficients in the .dylib.
• Conditionally enable the frame-stepping code when a
  [code][Debug]
  AllowGamePause=1[/code] key appears in Sphinx.ini. Replace the forwards/backwards mouse buttons by the Scroll Lock/Pause keys.
  
  Enable this mode by keeping pressed one of the buttons until you press the other once. The game will stop, gameplay-wise. You can then either press Scroll Lock to make it go really slow or just advance one frame each time you press Pause. To disable just do the same press-one-while-keeping-the-other-pressed trick again.
• For some reason the dynamic lights didn't use the alpha modulation term that was enabled for things like the fireflies (i.e. TR_SmallLight trigger) so they appear and go off suddenly in a pretty jarring fashion, fix those fade-ins and outs ~15 years later. Buttery smooth.
• Simplify the sound streaming code in the OpenAL back-end, this is used for music and ambient sounds.
• Enable a bunch of important debug traces in the retail build.
• Get rid of the jarring one-frame flicker in the light that appears while diving fast. This is more of a workaround than a real fix, but it's simple and will do the trick for now.
• Add support for the GL_NV_fill_rectangle extension, that should improve drawing 2D text and all the other screen-aligned rectangular sprites. It uses the polygon's bounding box during rasterization, simplifying the computations and making them faster, at least in theory.
• Enable the subnormal number flush-to-zero mode at start-up to make floating point operations faster on supported hardware by trading some precision.
• Also, workaround the crash on file selection in the EngineX Viewer (EXGeoViewer).
• Make the HUD toggle option in the development Watcher dialog actually work. This should have been implemented in 2003. Now the optional [code][WatcherItems]
  Display-Hud=0[/code] Sphinx.ini key can be used to take superior screenshots.
• Improve the SDL2 event loop handling for snappier response times.
• Improve the SDL2 gamepad back-end performance and its hot-plugging support. There are still some underlying issues in the SDL2/Xinput library that prevent the Steam Controller from hot-plugging while using it wirelessly on Windows, an easy workaround is to connect it via USB cable or plug a different wired controller after pairing so that both are detected.
• Also, stop the rumbling altogether when we switch to mouse/keyboard mode.
• Set the TextHudObjScaling variable to 1.3, unless overridden in Sphinx.ini. Making UI text slightly larger by default.
• Minor cleanups.
  

2018-03-28 (Wednesday)

• Implement a `-dev` mode, make it so that most of the debug/development EngineX windows, such as the level or cutscene selector or the right-click menu, can be enabled using `-dev` as command-line parameter in the retail build.
  [list]
• This also enables cheats and disables achievements.
• Additionally, players can enable no-clip (you can toggle it by clicking the right analog stick and going up/down with Y/A or Triangle/Cross) through a new Sphinx.ini key:
  [code]
  [Debug]
  ScanMode=1
  [/code]
  

2018-04-03 (Tuesday)

• Fix the user-after-free pointer dereference monster thaw crash for good. There was a tricky bug in all the previous Sphinx versions that caused a crash when trying to push the block of a big monster (frozen with ice darts) just when it starts to thaw out.
  [list]
• This only happened when freezing monsters like Skeletal Spiders or Wasp Spiders, instead of the smaller Fire Armadillos; which are carried around.
  

2018-04-08 (Sunday)

• Add a savestate-ish player position save/restore functionality useful for speedrunning practice. Save position with LT + RT + Left analog click / Page up, restore with Left analog click / Page Down. You need to use -dev mode and have [Debug] ScanMode=1 in Sphinx.ini for it to work. Dedicated to speedrunners like Remi and turothking.
• Optimize several HD texture replacements.
  

2018-04-12 (Thursday)

• Export a series of useful static global variables using a signature/marker that third-party software like LiveSplit can read across versions, this avoids having to hardcode addresses. Should open the door to third-party auto-splitters for speedruns.
• Expose the game status in the gExportedBlock so that third party tools can know if we are in a loading screen or waiting for an async submap (black screen with the spinning Ankh icon).
  

2018-04-26 (Thursday)

• Use GPU-persistent buffers for streamed vertex data (skinned meshes/cloth physics) when possible. This requires at least OpenGL 4.3 + ARB_buffer_storage.
• Extend the Game Over background screen to also cover the entire left side in widescreen and ultrawidescreen monitors.
• Completed the German and French translation of the remaining Steam achievements. Thanks to @LetsPlayNintendo , @Remidemmi (DE), and @SenseiTional (FR).
• Changed the localized versions of some achievement names to match with their original in-game names.
• Enable alpha blending in the alpha-tested textures of the Book of Sphinx. Fix the Book of Sphinx info box misalignment when the Artifacts tab is selected, the position is exactly the same when in the Monsters or Note pages, but it moves a little when switching to Artifacts.
• Also, add a non-pixelated Book of Sphinx background, the original looked pretty stretched.
• Change the gamepad button bindings in -dev mode to save player position with LT + Left analog click / Page up, and restore it with RT + Left analog click / Page down. No more clicking by mistake.
• First batch of HQ texture replacements.
  

2018-04-30 (Monday)

• Additional preventive checks against rare teleport-based softlocks.
• Fix the animated HQ water texture tiling issues. Repainted the seams of the 72 texture frames, now they aren't noticeable anymore.
• Improve the papyrus background image.
  

2018-05-23 (Wednesday)

• Add a massive amount of HQ texture replacements sourced from the original artwork, mixed with tweaked versions of the texture pack. Covering mainly Uruk Intro, Uruk Islands, Abydos Canals, Heliopolis, Dark Area, Uruk exteriors, Cursed Palace surroundings and the Anubis Wall itself.
• Flip the conditions in the ISSAID command to hopefully try to fix some rare softlocks when a gamescript is waiting for ISSAID after LOCKCONTROLS + PRINTMESSAGE and then some other trigger overlaps in time and also does LOCKCONTROLS 1 + PRINTMESSAGE while we are waiting, causing the first trigger to never return from ISSAID and unlock the controls with the tailing LOCKCONTROLS 0, leaving the player stuck. This can happen in the crawlspace of the Luxor throne room, if the crawl help text wasn't triggered by not moving the throne all the way and then we accidentally move it just when the old NPC called Sorkon talks to us when coming back.
• Don't let the user set negative display indexes in Sphinx.ini, clamp it to {0, max-screen-index} range. Fixes displaying the resolution when [RenderMode] Display=-1.
  

After working on it for three long months and beta-testing it in the Sphinx Discord servers for a few weeks, @jmarti856 has announced the first public mod for the PC version of Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy.


He is now trying to bring back to life the lost levels of Sakkara as best as he can, given that many cutscenes and mechanics are missing or unfinished.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/606710/discussions/1/1696045708662788270/

There are still many cozy secrets tucked away in the files that we released with the Authoring Tools DLC . As more modders start learning the EngineX tools and making their own mods we will feature them in announcements like this. Have fun!

Hello,

We just shipped the Authoring tools that were also used crafting the game. It also includes source assets.

You can find it here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/750430/Sphinx_and_the_Cursed_Mummy_Authoring_Tools/

Please be aware that you need to tell Steam to download it.

We prepared a guide here on how to set it up and first steps with it: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1306820082

Enjoy!

Hello,

We just shipped the Authoring tools that were also used crafting the game. It also includes source assets.

You can find it here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/750430/Sphinx_and_the_Cursed_Mummy_Authoring_Tools/

Please be aware that you need to tell Steam to download it.

We prepared a guide here on how to set it up and first steps with it: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1306820082

Enjoy!

Happy new year! Things haven't slowed down since our last Sphinx announcement, and we have been hard at work expanding the font support, with improved glyph sizes and tweaks for all the six languages.

Also, for those wanting even more flexibility, we have made the dialog text scaling entirely configurable (take a look at the TextHudObjScaling option in the changelog below), in case you want to play on your couch without eye strain.

This Monday we added support for points of dynamic omnidirectional light. Which subtly enhance the mood when you open a chest, get a new item or there are fireflies moving nearby.


A bit more subtle is the expanded item rotator, now 1.7 times wider. The golden frame has been centered and the list extended, lending more space for the bigger typography. Previously, the overflowing text only displayed partial item names, causing problems like selecting the correct Portal Amulet while playing in Romance languages.



Many of you probably noticed the two new achievements we added in the middle of December, rewarding exploration. They cover getting all the health Gold Ankh Pieces for Sphinx and all the Onyx Scarabs found across the six mummy visits. The latter will require a new game to work properly, sorry about that.

We have also fixed a few typos improving the flow of our Italian/Spanish/German translation of the game and achievements. Thanks to contributions by @LetsPlayNintendoITA and @MagicianMana .


You can now plug several gamepads at the same time and switch between them. Having things like joysticks, flight sticks or fight sticks connected while playing won't cause detection problems anymore. Also, Steam Controller users should be able to turn it off and on and still being able to play after idling.

The elephant in the room is contextual mouse/keyboard support. It is still being done, and it turned out to be slightly more complicated than all the other problems we have fixed so far. Hopefully, it will be out soon.

In other news, we are also working on releasing the original editor and tools that Eurocom used to make the game in 2003, so that people can make mods and custom levels. We will also try to include most—if not all—of the unpublished beta content, like the infamous worlds of Akaria and Sakkara, so that the community can fix and improve those incomplete levels, bringing them back to life, 15 years later.


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

2017-12-09 (Saturday)

2017-12-10 (Sunday)

2017-12-12 (Tuesday)

2017-12-16 (Saturday)

• Added two additional achievements to the game:
  [list]
• Golden: Get all the 12 Gold Ankhs and reach the maximum health.
• Onyx Completionist: Get the 480 Onyx Scarab collection from the Uruk Castle. I have just tested it by scavenging them across all the six mummy levels and it works. You can spend them normally, no need to keep them all in the inventory/Book of Sphinx. Due to the way skarabs are counted it will require a new game, or at least starting from the first mummy level.
  

2017-12-18 (Monday)

• Fix the «Practice Makes Perfect» achievement, unlock it only after improving a valid time.
• Correct the description of the «Acrobatic Ease» achievement, replace the 77 in «77 seconds or less» by 78 to make it match the game times.
• Use the LB/RB naming scheme in the HUD while using the Xbox controller button prompts, instead of L1/R1.
• Strip some superfluous trailing spaces in contextual strings of the French translation that caused text misalignment and artificial padding.
• Make the ability/item rotator 1.7 times wider and center the gold framing. The bigger font made it difficult to select the correct Portal God Amulet in some languages.
• Fix some additional overlapping/misalignment problems caused by the bigger font, specially in the SWAP strings used while in triple mummy mode.
• Improved the gamepad hot-plug mechanism on PC to change the active gamepad used by EngineX, now the player can simultaneously plug various gamepads and switch between them at any given time, the game will always use the one you pressed last. Allow an infinite number of un/plugging combinations instead of the original 8 slots.
• Fix a defect in the SDL2 gamepad back-end that caused it to stop looking for valid controllers after finding a connected joystick, wheel or flight stick.
• Minor cleanups.
  

2017-12-21 (Thursday)

• Improvements done to the German translation, courtesy of @MagicianMana.
  

2018-01-08 (Monday)

• Implement omnidirectional point lights in the OpenGL back-end. Happy new year!
• Let the player configure the text size for the font used in the dialog/cutscene/help window through a TextHudObjScaling key in the [Graphics] section of Sphinx.ini. Example:
  [code]
  [Graphics]
  TextHudObjScaling=1.4
  [/code]
• Use the texture-based fallback technique by default for particle instancing, let's see if this is more compatible with Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 users.
• More German translation fixes and stylistic improvements, courtesy of @MagicianMana.
• Make the hardcoded button prompts bigger by default.
• Disable RTTI to improve performance, minor cleanups.
  

Happy new year! Things haven't slowed down since our last Sphinx announcement, and we have been hard at work expanding the font support, with improved glyph sizes and tweaks for all the six languages.

Also, for those wanting even more flexibility, we have made the dialog text scaling entirely configurable (take a look at the TextHudObjScaling option in the changelog below), in case you want to play on your couch without eye strain.

This Monday we added support for points of dynamic omnidirectional light. Which subtly enhance the mood when you open a chest, get a new item or there are fireflies moving nearby.


A bit more subtle is the expanded item rotator, now 1.7 times wider. The golden frame has been centered and the list extended, lending more space for the bigger typography. Previously, the overflowing text only displayed partial item names, causing problems like selecting the correct Portal Amulet while playing in Romance languages.



Many of you probably noticed the two new achievements we added in the middle of December, rewarding exploration. They cover getting all the health Gold Ankh Pieces for Sphinx and all the Onyx Scarabs found across the six mummy visits. The latter will require a new game to work properly, sorry about that.

We have also fixed a few typos, improving the flow of our Italian/Spanish/German translation of the game and achievements. Thanks to contributions by @LetsPlayNintendoITA and @MagicianMana .


You can now plug several gamepads at the same time and switch between them. Having things like joysticks, flight sticks or fight sticks connected while playing won't cause detection problems anymore. Also, Steam Controller users should be able to turn it off and on and still being able to play after idling.

The elephant in the room is contextual mouse/keyboard support. It is still being done, and it turned out to be slightly more complicated than all the other problems we have fixed so far. Hopefully, it will be out soon.

In other news, we are also working on releasing the original editor and tools that Eurocom used to make the game in 2003, so that people can make mods and custom levels. We will also try to include mostif not allof the unpublished beta content, like the infamous worlds of Akaria and Sakkara, so that the community can fix and improve those incomplete levels, bringing them back to life, 15 years later.


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

2017-12-09 (Saturday)

2017-12-10 (Sunday)

2017-12-12 (Tuesday)

2017-12-16 (Saturday)

• Added two additional achievements to the game:
  [list]
• Golden: Get all the 12 Gold Ankhs and reach the maximum health.
• Onyx Completionist: Get the 480 Onyx Scarab collection from the Uruk Castle. I have just tested it by scavenging them across all the six mummy levels and it works. You can spend them normally, no need to keep them all in the inventory/Book of Sphinx. Due to the way skarabs are counted it will require a new game, or at least starting from the first mummy level.
  

2017-12-18 (Monday)

• Fix the Practice Makes Perfect achievement, unlock it only after improving a valid time.
• Correct the description of the Acrobatic Ease achievement, replace the 77 in 77 seconds or less by 78 to make it match the game times.
• Use the LB/RB naming scheme in the HUD while using the Xbox controller button prompts, instead of L1/R1.
• Strip some superfluous trailing spaces in contextual strings of the French translation that caused text misalignment and artificial padding.
• Make the ability/item rotator 1.7 times wider and center the gold framing. The bigger font made it difficult to select the correct Portal God Amulet in some languages.
• Fix some additional overlapping/misalignment problems caused by the bigger font, specially in the SWAP strings used while in triple mummy mode.
• Improved the gamepad hot-plug mechanism on PC to change the active gamepad used by EngineX, now the player can simultaneously plug various gamepads and switch between them at any given time, the game will always use the one you pressed last. Allow an infinite number of un/plugging combinations instead of the original 8 slots.
• Fix a defect in the SDL2 gamepad back-end that caused it to stop looking for valid controllers after finding a connected joystick, wheel or flight stick.
• Minor cleanups.
  

2017-12-21 (Thursday)

• Improvements done to the German translation, courtesy of @MagicianMana.
  

2018-01-08 (Monday)

• Implement omnidirectional point lights in the OpenGL back-end. Happy new year!
• Let the player configure the text size for the font used in the dialog/cutscene/help window through a TextHudObjScaling key in the [Graphics] section of Sphinx.ini. Example:
  [code]
  [Graphics]
  TextHudObjScaling=1.4
  [/code]
• Use the texture-based fallback technique by default for particle instancing, let's see if this is more compatible with Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 users.
• More German translation fixes and stylistic improvements, courtesy of @MagicianMana.
• Make the hardcoded button prompts bigger by default.
• Disable RTTI to improve performance, minor cleanups.
  

We have just pushed a tentative update that should make things easier on the eyes by improving the glyph sizes for things like the dialog-heavy cutscenes, inventory and HUD. Let us know what you think and provide screenshots in the likely case you find something wonky or misaligned.

If feedback is positive we will do the same thing for the other languages, if not we can roll it back.

Take a look:


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

2017-11-22 (Wednesday)

2017-11-23 (Thursday)

2017-11-24 (Friday)

2017-11-27 (Monday)

2017-12-04 (Monday)

2017-12-05 (Tuesday)

2017-12-08 (Friday)

We have just pushed a tentative update that should make things easier on the eyes by improving the glyph sizes for things like the dialog-heavy cutscenes, inventory and HUD. Let us know what you think and provide screenshots in the likely case you find something wonky or misaligned.

If feedback is positive we will do the same thing for the other languages, if not we can roll it back.

Take a look:


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

2017-11-22 (Wednesday)

2017-11-23 (Thursday)

2017-11-24 (Friday)

2017-11-27 (Monday)

2017-12-04 (Monday)

2017-12-05 (Tuesday)

2017-12-08 (Friday)

As many of you already know, we have been busy since launch day updating the game with several stability fixes and gameplay improvements as they were reported by the community.

Now that the game is in much better shape we will start implementing some of the most commonly requested things: scalable text during cutscenes and remappable keyboard controls.

We know that some of you don't read the discussions section, so here is the cumulative changelog to date:

2017-11-10 (Friday)

• Fixed an off-by-one bug in the resolution selector that skipped one entry while going to the left, never showing the biggest resolution unless pressing the right key again.
• Don't show a message-box showing GLSL compilation errors when the compilation was successful but the error string was not zero; this only happened under the Intel OpenGL driver.
• Mitigate the occasional sound-looping problem. A more comprehensive fix is in the works.
• Added a workaround for people reporting black screens and framebuffer issues: http://steamcommunity.com/app/606710/discussions/0/1483235412207725225/#c1483235412209019801
• Minor cleanups.
  

2017-11-11 (Saturday)

• Rename «Antialiasing» to «Anisotropic Filtering» to make it less confusing.
• Make the windowed mode bigger by default.
• Add five graphics options (FOV, particles, anisotropic filtering, multisampling, vertical sync) and one sound option (reverb toggle) in the English version of the pause menu. More languages coming up.
• Don't make the window resizable to avoid possible sprite misalignment issues. Disable Alt+Enter for the same reason.
• Lock the mouse within the window bounds while the game is in the foreground.
• Added a configuration key to let the player choose PlayStation-style button prompts: http://steamcommunity.com/app/606710/discussions/0/1483235412206736841/#c1483235412208681177
• Added a Sphinx.png icon file for the Linux version of the game, it will be used in the game window.
• Move the Sphinx.ini configuration file to the following folder, ensuring that settings are always writable:
  
  Windows: %appdata%SphinxSphinx.ini
  macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Sphinx/Sphinx.ini
  Linux: ~/.local/share/Sphinx/Sphinx.ini
  
  

2017-11-12 (Sunday)

• Fix the Crocodile Scales Steam achievement.
• Make it so that players can also unlock the Crocodile Scales achievement if they beat their best time in the Heliopolis swimming course. Avoiding having to start a new game just for this.
  

2017-11-13 (Monday)

• Second attempt at fixing the sound loop problem.
  

2017-11-14 (Tuesday)

• Fix the Harvest Moon achievement. Trigger it the last time the farmer gives you what they found while digging in the farm instead of when marking the last plot of land. All the achievements should now be obtainable.
• Fix the occasional sound loop problem once and for all. Tested in the Anubis wall entrance and verified various times. But one can never be completely sure.
• Always disable the original 'fake' widescreen option on load, as the option will be inaccessible very soon.
• Don't store the music/sound effect volume, gamepad rumble or camera axis inversion options in each savegame. Instead make them global across the game and persistent in the Sphinx.ini configuration file, just like the new graphics settings.
• Minor cleanups.
  

2017-11-15 (Wednesday)

2017-11-17 (Friday)

2017-11-18 (Saturday)

2017-11-20 (Monday)

As many of you already know, we have been busy since launch day updating the game with several stability fixes and gameplay improvements as they were reported by the community.

Now that the game is in much better shape we will start implementing some of the most commonly requested things: scalable text during cutscenes and remappable keyboard controls.

We know that some of you don't read the discussions section, so here is the cumulative changelog to date:

2017-11-10 (Friday)

• Fixed an off-by-one bug in the resolution selector that skipped one entry while going to the left, never showing the biggest resolution unless pressing the right key again.
• Don't show a message-box showing GLSL compilation errors when the compilation was successful but the error string was not zero; this only happened under the Intel OpenGL driver.
• Mitigate the occasional sound-looping problem. A more comprehensive fix is in the works.
• Added a workaround for people reporting black screens and framebuffer issues: http://steamcommunity.com/app/606710/discussions/0/1483235412207725225/#c1483235412209019801
• Minor cleanups.
  

2017-11-11 (Saturday)

• Rename Antialiasing to Anisotropic Filtering to make it less confusing.
• Make the windowed mode bigger by default.
• Add five graphics options (FOV, particles, anisotropic filtering, multisampling, vertical sync) and one sound option (reverb toggle) in the English version of the pause menu. More languages coming up.
• Don't make the window resizable to avoid possible sprite misalignment issues. Disable Alt+Enter for the same reason.
• Lock the mouse within the window bounds while the game is in the foreground.
• Added a configuration key to let the player choose PlayStation-style button prompts: http://steamcommunity.com/app/606710/discussions/0/1483235412206736841/#c1483235412208681177
• Added a Sphinx.png icon file for the Linux version of the game, it will be used in the game window.
• Move the Sphinx.ini configuration file to the following folder, ensuring that settings are always writable:
  
  Windows: %appdata%\Sphinx\Sphinx.ini
  macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Sphinx/Sphinx.ini
  Linux: ~/.local/share/Sphinx/Sphinx.ini
  
  

2017-11-12 (Sunday)

• Fix the Crocodile Scales Steam achievement.
• Make it so that players can also unlock the Crocodile Scales achievement if they beat their best time in the Heliopolis swimming course. Avoiding having to start a new game just for this.
  

2017-11-13 (Monday)

• Second attempt at fixing the sound loop problem.
  

2017-11-14 (Tuesday)

• Fix the Harvest Moon achievement. Trigger it the last time the farmer gives you what they found while digging in the farm instead of when marking the last plot of land. All the achievements should now be obtainable.
• Fix the occasional sound loop problem once and for all. Tested in the Anubis wall entrance and verified various times. But one can never be completely sure.
• Always disable the original 'fake' widescreen option on load, as the option will be inaccessible very soon.
• Don't store the music/sound effect volume, gamepad rumble or camera axis inversion options in each savegame. Instead make them global across the game and persistent in the Sphinx.ini configuration file, just like the new graphics settings.
• Minor cleanups.
  

2017-11-15 (Wednesday)

2017-11-17 (Friday)

2017-11-18 (Saturday)

2017-11-20 (Monday)