Behind the Horizon
Patch Notes V3.02
Game:
Unnoticed, Hugo has been regularly enriching himself from the player! This cannot be allowed to happen and Hugo's greed has been put a stop to!
Patch Notes V3.01
Game:
The prices for Wolf and Lion at the NPC Eleyne have been lowered, as they should be available early in the main game.
The prices for the simple magic crystals in Niall's shop have been lowered slightly.
Wolf and Lion are now fully healed after one day, provided they are not hungry, if they have been wounded.
Since Wolf and Lion also get wounded in battle, they are much more susceptible to starvation (with their life energy being lowered daily). Therefore, a corresponding message has been integrated into the game and it is prevented that the companion can die in the caves during the day change because he has no more food as he is also severely wounded. In this case, the player gets one day to heal or feed his companion. If he does not do so, the companion will die as usual.
Added info to the pet food which pets it is suitable for.
Bugs:
"The box of stones for Tom" could not be placed on the map. This made it impossible to finish the side quest. This bug has been fixed.
When setting lightning rods, the protected area was not displayed correctly. This has now been fixed.
DLC - The Sky Fortress - now available
Overview: DLC - The Sky Fortress
Game:
The DLC "The Sky Fortress" takes the Behind the Horizon story to an exciting climax and concludes the trilogy. Along the way, you will visit many new locations that are, as always, unique and handmade. In the Underworld, too, new caves are waiting for you to explore.
There are some new inhabitants to be found in the new areas as usual with their own daily routine and personal history.
Introduction of two new pets that can accompany you in battle. They can be summoned to your side using a special whistle. If they are severely wounded in battle, they become unconscious and must be healed using magic or healing potion. Only one battle companion can be active at a time. The two battle companions are already available in the main game if the DLC is installed.
The new companions can be bought from Eleyne, who, like Nira, appears in the early main game. Later, there is also a small quest series for Eleyne.
With the release of the DLC, the player gets the possibility to jump. It is possible to jump over small rivers, lava and fences. However, you should be careful where you land. There is also a small quest series that develops the skill of jumping. For this, there is a spell that can be discovered in all strengths and unlocks the corresponding level.
There is a new spell that turns farm animals and pets into alpha animals. Alpha animals produce more, are faster or stronger than normal animals.
Nira the stable mage has a quest line that allows you to buy even bigger stables from her.
Niall now deals with advanced battle magic, which can be bought from him during the DLC.
There are new plants for the farm with new recipes to try.
There are also blueprints for combined tools that only take up one space in the quick bar. These are, immediately when the DLC is installed, available in the main game as well.
Some new natural events have also been added.
Some new Achievments for the AddOn have been added, too.
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Remark:
It should be noted once again that the DLC The Sky Fortress requires the DLC The Desert to be available. To play the main story of the Sky Fortress, you must also have a save game in which the DLC The Desert has been completed!
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Patch Notes V3.0 - Main Game
These changes and optimisations are now included in the main game !
Game:
The possibility to jump has been added to the game. You can jump over fences, small rivers, lava streams or shallow ponds. If the jumping power is not sufficient, you will be moved back to the place where you started. You cannot jump from terrain fields such as swamps or lava.
By default, the space bar or the controller button X (standard assignment) is used for jumping. This changes the standard assignment of the keys and buttons and will be reset at the first start. Of course, everyone can then create their own configuration as usual.
Since the spell Connect Spirit was rarely used in its general function, I have made the possibility of displaying an overview of lack conditions of plants and trees more accessible. If you now press the CTRL/Control key to display the soil and animal names, symbols are displayed for everything you have planted yourself after releasing the key.
The shape of the symbol stands for the ground cover, farm plant and tree and the colour indicates the problem. You can get more information by using the skill Feel Plants.
It is important to know that the lack condition refers to the current values. However, light and heat add up to a daily average, which in the end determines whether a plant can grow or will die. So it may be that, for example, a tomato plant shows a lack of heat, but this is remedied after the rain shower is over and the sun shines again. I hope this overview will make it easier for many to understand the system of nature simulation and to use it accordingly.
The houses in the oasis now also have house signs that show who lives in them.
Injured trees that have been planted by the player now also have a life bar that shows the degree of their injury. Trees can be healed with the Heal spell, or slowly recover on their own.
When visiting magic shrines and other places in the game, a progress bar has been added so that on slow systems you don't get the impression that the game has crashed during the time jump.
At certain dangerous points in the game, the game now automatically saves. The quick save space is used for this purpose. This function is activated every time a new game is started.
The transparency of speech bubbles has been reduced to increase readability.
The hitbox of monsters was enlarged to the whole sprite. This makes it much easier to hit monsters, especially when using the controller.
A chest with a key has been added in the cave near the Wood Home teleporter, as many players had a hard time finding the key after the fight at the portal.
When building ground crystals, the colour of the area now tells you what is being increased on the fields.
Hugo now extends his forays into Wood Home by using the teleporter.
All the inhabitants of the world now move diagonally at mathematically correct speed. This is unusual at first, but it simply makes more sense this way !
All texts in the speech bubble of the plants are now more contrasty and easier to read.
The fruits of the cocoa tree are now easier to see.
Added a quest series to get the jump boost skill. Start of the quest series is at Jacques after learning level 1 (acquire the spell from the wizard Niall).
In the textures of the brown cave walls the exit has been made more visible.
Additions you asked for:
Trees, stumps and branches now have a damage bar that is displayed when the tree is injured and you have an axe selected as your tool.
Stone and ore veins now have a damage bar that is displayed when you have a pickaxe equipped as your tool.
The purpose is to see how long it will take to cut down the tree or mine the ore vein.
Dialogues and cutscenes
Many will be pleased to know that I have finally taken care of the spelling mistakes in the german dialogues and cutscenes. To do this, I had to write a programme that extracts the texts from the scripts and then inserts them again without producing any errors. This sounds simple at first, but due to the coding of texts (umlauts) it is quite complex and the strangest things happen. In any case, thanks to Open Office, these texts should now be almost error-free :-) ! The extracted texts can also be used well for translating into other languages. Unfortunately, neither my French nor my Spanish is good enough for that and I don't even want to start with Japanese or Chinese ;-) !
Bugs:
Fixed a bug that you couldn't complete Ben's death vine quest in the desert because the death vines grew over the mountains. The new starting map has been modified and the death vine spell now has a longer range, so this should not happen anymore.
It could happen that farm animals got stuck in each other. This has been fixed and the animals can now free themselves.
Fixed a bug where you could not talk to Liam in the dungeon in controller mode.
Fixed a bug where the rune in Liam's dungeon was not counted when picked up with the Telekinesis spell. This bug has also been corrected in save games.
Fixed some crates of stones from Tom had strayed onto the map and were removed.
Instructions:
All changes and new spells, items, etc... have been incorporated.
Survey: What else do you want..
Hello Community,
I have now largely completed the testing of the Sky Fortress (DLC) and there are still the preparations for the release at the beginning of September to work through.
Now I would like to know from you if there are any little things you would like to see in Behind the Horizon for the release of the DLC. Things like a missing comfort function or a certain item. If time allows, I would add that :-) !
Write to me in the community area! I look forward to your ideas and suggestions.
Jadawin
DLC - The Sky Fortress
The work on the DLC The Sky Fortress is now finished and I will use the rest of the time until the release at the beginning of September for extensive test play.
If you want to find out more, you can already take a look at the DLC shop page. There you will find a lot of details.
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After finishing the DLC, and also because the triology of the main story is now completed, I have compiled some data about my game project. I think I shouldn't keep this from you. I'm sure it will be interesting for some of you to find out what Behind the Horizon is all about:
Development time (at the moment): about 7 years
Lines of code (C++): > 156000 - yes, that's really a lot ;-)
NPCs (all with their own seasonal daily routine and personal history): 74
monsters: 82
BossMonsters: 26
Animals: 18
Farm animals: 9
Pets: 6
Dialogue texts of the NPCs: 663535 characters (no I didn't count that myself ;-) ) - that's about 375 book pages
Script cutscenes: 250
Texts for cutscenes: 190562 characters or about 120 book pages
Quests in total: 614 - I didn't count the characters for quest texts
Equipment items in the game: 137
Plants (all with growth cycles): 61
Ground cover: 14
Tree species: 24
Soil types: 41
Books: 183 - again, I didn't have the character set counted, but there are a lot!
Teleporters: 20
Recipes(Food): 65
Plans(Building): 146
Formulas(Spells): 65
Spells: 65
Graphics: 1288 128pxx128px tiles
2801 64pxx64px tiles
- which of course must all have their own definition structure in the game.
Overlay backgrounds 7
Steam achievements: 100
So that's it ;-) ! Maybe this gives some of you an overview of how big an extensive RPG is. If I had known beforehand how big the game would be, I probably wouldn't have started it. But this way, passion and joy about what I have achieved have driven me on and on.
Update V2.3 - Achievements and more..
General:
With this update Behind the Horizon finally gets achievements, stats and game cloud support. This means that your game saves are now automatically synchronised with the Steamcloud (if you have activated this in the Steam Client). I have also integrated the achievements and stats at the request of some players :-) !
Most of the achievements are updated when loading old game saves. This means that even players who have been playing for a long time will get most of their achievements unlocked. Unfortunately, there are also some achievements that cannot be unlocked afterwards because the game has simply not collected any data for them.
There are also some other exciting new features, which you can look up in the patch notes below.
Much of this is also aimed at porting Behind the Horizon to the Steam Deck. When this accomplished you will be able to play the game mobile on the Steam Deck.
In parallel, I'm continuing to work on the second add-on, which is now developing rapidly. Like its predecessor, it will be strongly story-based and tell the main story to the end. Of course, there are also a lot of new features for the game itself. I will publish the shop page for the DLC soon and then you can already get an idea of what the DLC will bring. If you want, you can also post your comments, ideas and wishes in the community area.
Remark:
The keymap has been reset to the default values for this update. In addition, one button in the standard assignment of the controller has been swapped with another. This is for a function that we will certainly all enjoy, which will be integrated into the game with the second add-on. In addition, the control pad and left stick have been swapped.
Game:
When saving a game, the old saved file is renamed (xxxx.bak), to have a backup copy just in case. This way, if something goes wrong, you don't lose your last savefile completely. However, the backup copy can only be renamed manually in the Steamapps folder of the game to be able to load it again in the game (just change the extension to .sav).
UI:
Alternative way to feed and tame animals, give gifts and place items on hayracks, food bowls and the like. The game now finds out what can be done with the active item (brown frame in the quick bar) in relation to the field under the mouse pointer (or in the direction of view when playing with a controller). the mouse pointer then changes so that the player knows that he can now use the item with the right mouse button (or the corresponding button on the controller). For example, if the animal is already tamed or the hayrack is full, the mouse pointer changes back to the hand or talk symbol.
Since many found the old method of taking items out of the inventory and placing them on the animal cumbersome, I hope you like this alternative. All those who already know the other system well can continue to use it.
The display of the number of items in the inventory and trade menu has been greatly improved and should now be clear even on smaller screens.
The window for displaying monster stats in combat has been redesigned to improve readability.
All injured monsters now get a life bar and no longer need to be clicked on. In addition, the bar is adapted to the width of the monster sprite.
The standard assignment for the XBox controller has been adapted so that you no longer run with the control pad, but with the left stick. So the two have simply been exchanged. The reason for this is that several players have told me that they prefer to use the directional pad for the menus and that this is the way it is intended in most games.
Graphics:
The size of the textures of the rain and snow displayed now depends on the resolution. As a result, the rain is no longer as obtrusive at low resolutions.
Instructions:
Added all changes related to the UI.
Patch notes V2.22
Remark:
The keymap has been reset to default values for this update.
UI:
The dead zone on the controller has been greatly increased when controlling the map. This should make the map easy to use even with worn out controller sticks.
When controlling the minimap, the Y-axis was reversed depending on whether the control pad or an analogue stick was used. This has been fixed.
BUG:
A bug in the adjustment of the mouse arrow speed that could lead to a division by zero has been fixed.
Patch Notes 2.21
Mini patch to fix a bug that could prevent you from getting into the controller settings menu.
Major Update V2.2
Highlights:
In this major update, Behind the Horizon finally supports game controllers. In addition, the key assignment and the buttons and axes of the controller can now be freely configured.
There are numerous changes and optimisations and a few new functions, such as the naming of farm animals, which was previously reserved for pets :-) !
I hope you like the update! If you have any comments or find something that doesn't work as it should, please write to me in the community section of the game :-) !
Patchnotes:
GUI:
Game Controller:
In the settings menu there is now a button to open the keyboard and controller settings.
The new settings menu for keyboard and controller: The buttons should all be self-explanatory. Some keys and buttons are grouped together and change together when one of them is changed.
For controller axes, the opposite direction changes automatically (e.g. for the mouse pointer). Some fields on the controller only allow axes to be entered.
I have made the default settings for an XBox One controller and I hope that many of you will like them. Otherwise, everything can be adjusted individually and will be saved. Also make sure that the right controller is selected in the setup menu. For example, I had a "virtual controller" from my mouse driver in the system, which confused me at first ;-) !
For the default setting, a graphic with the assignment of the controller buttons and asis was integrated into the settings menu. This should enable you to quickly configure other controllers in a meaningful way.
In the game, you can switch freely between controller and mouse/keyboard controls by pressing the mouse button or a button on the controller. A sound is played to confirm.
For the controller, I have completely reworked the entire interface and rewritten parts of it, so that you only very rarely have to move the mouse arrow using the analogue stick! Almost everything can be done comfortably with the control pad. Tools now always work in the direction of view and objects and NPCs can also be used or spoken to with a simple press of a button.
In the settings, there is also the option of always firing long-range weapons and spells such as the fireball in the line of sight instead of selecting the target with the mouse pointer, which is certainly stressful in heated combat. Unfortunately, a few spells cannot be used without selecting the target (such as Tornado or Fontaine). The mouse pointer is then displayed and you can use it to aim at the target.
In most menus, the mouse pointer can be moved from field to field with the control pad, which is very smooth and comfortable. In the "Sleep" menu, the clock can be moved using the scroll keys (previous/next tool).
All lists in the menus can be scrolled with these keys if you have selected a field in the list.
In spite of all the changes, the familiar operation with mouse and keyboard remains completely intact, and has also been improved in some places (see below).
A button for displaying the instructions has been added to the bottom right of the quick bar so that you do not need a button on the controller to do this. This can be activated with the mouse pointer.
In the Build, Magic and Cook menus, the "Build button" has been moved to make it easier to reach with the controller.
Other improvements in the menus:
"Continue play" in the main menu now automatically loads the last saved save game and starts the game.
In the "Load" and "Save" menus, the last saved save game is now also selected.
There is a new menu available for entering the name and for entering pet and farm animal names with mouse and controller support.
If you press the "ShiftL" key in addition to the "Control" key (standard assignment), the positions and names of all farm animals are displayed on the map in addition to the farm overview.
This can be useful to find animals hidden under trees or roofs.
A button has been added to the chest window that allows you to move all items from the backpack that are already in the chest (or in connected craft chests) at once. The quick bar remains unchanged. If the quantity no longer fits on an existing stack of the same type, a new stack is created in the same chest. Of course, this is only possible if there is still a free space in the chest.
When moving items from the inventory with the Shift key pressed, a new stack is now also opened in the same chest if the old stack is full.
In the options menu you can now fine-tune the volume of music and sound.
The maximum setting of the interface size is now calculated relative to the screen resolution. This means that you can no longer set the interface too large for the screen, which has irritated some players. At higher resolutions (e.g. 4K), the interface can still be enlarged as before.
In addition, the maximum magnification factor has been increased slightly so that the interface can now fill almost the entire screen, if this is desired.
The blue frame in the quick bar can no longer be moved if you hover over the bar with the mouse pointer while pressing "Q"! The frame now always remains in the last field of the quick bar and "Q" always triggers the item or spell in this field. Since the items can be changed quickly in the quick bar, this should be better than moving the frame, because I found that sometimes I couldn't use the item because the mouse arrow was hovering just above the bar. This can be messy in some situations.
The farm floor overview can now only be displayed when no menus are open and the player is not in a cave.
In the sleep menu, the clock can now also be rotated with the mouse wheel.
The Alt key (standard assignment) can now be used to switch the mode for hoe and bucket as well as to display the info window for animals and NPCs. Previously this was only possible if you stood far enough away and then pressed the right mouse button (when the question mark mouse pointer was displayed).
Gameplay:
Spell NameIt: There is a new spell with which you can finally give each farm animal a name. The spell is available for sale from Niall, Nira and Alfred and Magda. It can only be used on tamed animals and also works on pets, which can be renamed with it. However, animals that are locked in a cage again forget their name and must be renamed.
For all spells that can only be cast on the player (e.g. light or shield) it is no longer important where the mouse pointer is when activating the spell. The same applies to food and all potions. This should make playing with a controller more comfortable, as the mouse arrow remains hidden.
Some more recipes have been released for resale.
Some prices have been slightly increased or decreased to further improve the balance.
Fences are now shown before they are placed as they will look afterwards. Some players were confused by the fact that fences only connect to existing fences after they have been placed.
The music from the sleep menu is now also switched off when you leave the menu with ESC or by opening another menu.
The "hitbox" for levers was greatly enlarged because it was difficult to activate them.
The "hitbox" for picking up objects from the world has also been enlarged, which makes picking up eggs easier :-) !
Graphic:
The radius of the consciousness aura light has been reduced slightly and a small bug has been fixed that prevented the aura light from increasing evenly at over 500 consciousnesses.
Fixed a graphic bug with the shadow crystals in the desert.
Changed the start screen to match the new title screen.
Bugs:
In some places, the English name was not output for farm animals. This has been fixed.
In the Steam version, the new start screens for the add-on "The Desert" were missing. As a result, the normal start screen was loaded even after purchasing the add-on.
In Game Manual:
Added descriptions for the new functions and inserted all changes.
Dialogues and quests:
Fixed a bug with an English quest description, causing difficulty identifying the correct item.
Patch Notes V2.14
GUI:
On the minimap, all quests from the journal that have a location are now displayed directly as an icon (the active quest also in a different colour). The marker always points to the middle of the quest area! The arrow in the lower bar of the GUI also remains. When the quest has been completed, the marker on the map disappears. Please note that not all quests need or have location information!
After a long time of thinking about it, I decided to display symbols on the minimap for the NPCs of the game to show their current position. In my opinion, there are many things that speak against this. However, the accessibility for all types of players is greatly improved. So I decided to show the sprites of the NPCs on the minimap. If you scroll further into the map, name tags will also appear under the sprites. I hope that most people are happy about this comfort!
In the course of the story, however, there are also exceptional situations in which this function is partially or even completely deactivated.
In addition, NPCs are only shown where the player has already uncovered the map. So if an NPC is not visible it may well be that he is travelling in an unexplored area.
Game:
Added explanation about setting fences in the tutorial (quest text).
Tutorial:
Added explanation about setting fences in the tutorial.