Sneaky Upgrade 1.1.9 released news

1.1.9 is out, this time with some often-requested additional configurability for the Minimalist Project. There's also a small new mod containing improved font textures for both the original game and Minimalist.

Important: Because the stack of mods has changed in this version it is highly recommended to replace all currently installed mods during installation!

Several people using dual- or multi-monitor setups have reported having mouse cursor issues - those should now hopefully be fixed. If you have such a setup, please test!

Other fixes and improvements:

• The game exe now has much more space for 'property storage' - safeguarding against a crash-on-save when playing the biggest maps in a much cleaner way than previous work-arounds
• Fix for a rare issue which could cause the objectives to disappear after some time
• The installer now has a page for selecting the game language. (English, German, French, Italian)
• There's a new tweak for changing the sound volume for cutscenes and other videos
• The game is now allowed to run on multiple cores by default

The single-core mode applied by previous versions seems to be unneeded on modern Windows. But if you do get the immediately looping trailer issue when you start the game, please report what Windows version you have (and then enable single-core mode on the tweaker's Troubleshooting page).

Another request: If you have savegames (original or with the SU 1.1.8 or earlier) which the game deems 'damaged' when you try to load them, please upload them somewhere and PM me a link. That's because the big maps made possible by the expanded property storage have revealed a latent bug, which can cause the 'damaged' message. Since it's fixable, I'd like to know if any existing maps can cause it too.

Minimalist improvements:

• Split into two parts, GUI/sounds and gameplay, which can be enabled separately
• Removing back buttons is now a general tweak - off (by default) in the main SU but on in the MP
• Third person can be enabled
• Playstyles can be disabled, which will restore the standard difficulty settings and objectives
• Loot glint activation distance can be set to three different values (and "off")
• Improved font textures (as part of the new fonts mod)
• Fixed a small incompatibility between the Cutpurse playstyle and the T3G Inn mission
• Small fix for the Cutpurse time limit countdown not working. (Now shows elapsed time instead)
• Savegames made with the MP gamesys are now kept separate

Here's a screenshot with only the GUI/sounds part enabled, showing the standard difficulty settings and back button:

There was at least one documented case of things breaking because an original save was used with the MP or vice-versa. So MP savegames are now kept separate and versioned. This means that saves can end up in four different folders depending on whether T3 Gold and/or MP was enabled - and the main menu version string is getting a bit ridiculous:

As the screenshots show, the updated main font texture does not always provide much visible improvement - it works best for loading screens, pop-up texts and subtitles. The other font, used in readables, is also not really visibly improved but the letters are slightly smaller so the text is a better match for how readables look without Minimalist:

In order to make third-person optional it was necessary to replace the shader-based flat frob feature with a texture-based solution, adapted from the feature in John P's texture pack. On small objects there's no real difference, but on big objects, such as doors, there's a visible difference. Here's a video showing some of the GUI and texts, and a comparison of the new and old flat frob hilight:

Here's an example of the fonts mod in use with the original game:

As in the case of Minimalist, it's mostly an improvement for bigger GUI text. The font used for button text doesn't really show improvement but it has accented characters in the proper font instead of some generic glyphs copied in from elsewhere.

Known issues: On Windows XP the patched game will run fine but the tweaker will refuse to start (missing a DLL) and FMSel will crash. Anybody out there who still cares about XP?