The 2023 #sworcery Refresh Patch Notes

[buckets»]

We had a lot of changes in the latest Sworcery update! Most of them are focused on bringing the game up to date for the latest operating systems and devices. This should help the game stay stable in the years to come! The biggest fix by far is the game can run on Steam Deck! After that, it's having the game run on MacOS again. Followed by better support for Linux and finally, better High DPI resolution support for Windows. We also fixed a whole bunch of little gameplay bugs, some kind of serious, some just janky, but all of them we think were pretty rare. Here's a breakdown:

Upgraded:

SDL 1.2 -> SDL 2.26.0
FmodEx -> Fmod Studio 2.2.16
Steamworks SDK -> 1.57
Various Compilers -> Latest/near latest Compilers
New minimum of Windows 10
New minimum of Ubuntu 18.04
New minimum of MacOS

Added:

64bit support
Steam Deck Playable (We failed the Green checkmark due to showing some mouse icons)

Removed:

Twitter/X support (libcurl)
Windows XP/Vista/7/8 support, Steam itself is set to remove support soon https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-800A

Fixed:

Game running super slow on Steam Deck
Game runs on MacOS again
Fixed libcurl issues on Linux that prevented launching the game
Windows High DPI issues, game running at a resolution bigger than monitor, etc.
Plus soooo many little things, I honestly lost track!

One final note:

We setup a beta branch legacy for anyone having trouble running the latest update. We'll keep this branch pointed to the old build.

Minor Update: Unofficial Language Support

We've decided to allow players to override the language setting and choose any of the other languages we accidentally shipped in the Refresh update.

Full disclosure:

These are translations from the Switch port and as such they may refer to control schemes that don't apply to the PC port of the game. You might also notice strings overflowing out of their intended gui buttons. All of the dialog is otherwise correct.

Instructions:

Make sure the game isn't running.
Find the `config.txt` file. On Windows the default Steam location is here: `C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\<Steam_Id>\204060\local`
Add or edit the language line like so `language = French`
Valid languages are English Japanese French Italian German Spanish, English is the default and will be selected if the language isn't valid.
Launch the game, hopefully you'll see text in the selected language.

FAQ:

Q: Why isn't this officially supported?
A: It was never planned, it's a bit of a happy accident these translations made it in. They definitely have some text alignment issues and there's the possibility of missing something Switch specific.

[Leonard]

Pretty cool of you to updates this game after all these years. I still have fond memories of it ^^

[hexaae]

Why other languages (ITA, FRE, GER...) present in "locales\dialog.tsv" and "strings.tsv" are not available in game? Will you officially unlock them?

[Mudlark]

God this game was so cool. Glad to see it getting support after all these years.

[Biggie]

Game isn't launching on my Steamdeck, just updated to SteamOS 3.5.5

[talideon]

It's working on SteamOS 3.5.5 for me. Might be a good idea to make sure you're using the native Linux Scout runtime.

[buckets»]

Originally posted by hexaae:

Why other languages (ITA, FRE, GER...) present in "locales\dialog.tsv" and "strings.tsv" are not available in game? Will you officially unlock them?

I think those are the extra translations from the Switch port... they definitely aren't in a position to be officially supported.

[buckets»]

Originally posted by Biggie:

Game isn't launching on my Steamdeck, just updated to SteamOS 3.5.5
:tcry:

We're not seeing any issues here... double check that there's no forced compatibility option set, it should be auto choosing the Linux Scout Runtime on it's own now. Another thing to check is if you tried anything else before to try and get it working and reset those. I know there was some issues around libcurl and glibc, they should be fixed now.

[grownassben]

Originally posted by buckets»:

Originally posted by Biggie:

Game isn't launching on my Steamdeck, just updated to SteamOS 3.5.5

We're not seeing any issues here... double check that there's no forced compatibility option set, it should be auto choosing the Linux Scout Runtime on it's own now. Another thing to check is if you tried anything else before to try and get it working and reset those. I know there was some issues around libcurl and glibc, they should be fixed now.

Hey @buckets, it's not launching on SD for me either on a clean install using linux scout runtime.

[Carnzoid]

Will the update still run on Mac OS 10.13?

[buckets»]

Originally posted by Carnzoid:

Will the update still run on Mac OS 10.13?

Sorry, I believe you'll need at least MacOS 10.15. This is what we had to do to support newer hardware and MacOS.

If the old build ran fine for you, we've keep it in the Steam Beta branch called "legacy"

[buckets»]

For those having issues on Steam Deck, we're still trying to track this down.

It might seem counter intuitive, but you could try running the game with a Proton compatibility setting which should bypass any Linux lib linking issues.

[Carnzoid]

Originally posted by buckets»:

Originally posted by Carnzoid:

Will the update still run on Mac OS 10.13?

Sorry, I believe you'll need at least MacOS 10.15. This is what we had to do to support newer hardware and MacOS.

If the old build ran fine for you, we've keep it in the Steam Beta branch called "legacy"

Thank you for your response! The new version doesn't work on my system indeed, but I am glad the old version is still available to play. Excellent! <3

[hexaae]

Originally posted by buckets»:

Originally posted by hexaae:

Why other languages (ITA, FRE, GER...) present in "locales\dialog.tsv" and "strings.tsv" are not available in game? Will you officially unlock them?

I think those are the extra translations from the Switch port... they definitely aren't in a position to be officially supported.

So you finally enabled them... 👍🏻😉

[Cadence]

Thank you. I love you all!

[andrew_geers]

This is such great news - so pleased to see that the project lives on! Thank you to everybody involved, for all your hard work! And I'm only mildly disappointed that it didn't release a month later, on 20th December 2023, which would have been such an amazing fulfilment of this 10 year old mystery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOWNGS_YZw8 ("Pale Fire 7" has had "December 20, 2023" listed as its release date for a decade)