Need Help New Horizons Game Manual

[Cassadar]

For a while now I'm working on a (somewhat) complete game manual, because it makes life much more easy for everyone here. Three years ago I already wrote one, but that thing is outdated by now - still on version 2.3 - and I also don't like my old texts anymore, so all this stuff gets completely rewritten.

Of course I don't know absolutely everything about the game, simply because I don't have the spare time to explore really everything it offers, so it would be really nice if you could help me a bit by giving suggestions or correct me if something is wrong or missing.

Downside: the "manual" is currently written in German, because my English is not fluent enough to explain all of this stuff well, so unfortunately you have to rely on Google Translator. @Pieter Boelen also suggested to translate all of this to English sometime in the future, so if anyone here on the forums is interested in doing that, feel free to chime in.

Google Translator actually does a decent job on most parts, except for some really weird quirks where - for example - it translates "Leertaste" to "empty space" instead of "space bar" like it should be; or is this another word for that thing I'm not aware about?

Here are the pages, that are working for now:
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Currently working on the ability/perks page.

Of course all of this is meant for your wiki later and the only reason why it's currently on another host, is that I need to build all the CSS classes first to structure and format all of that stuff properly, so it's easy to read for everyone.

For all the German people (like @Pillat): if you find it much more easy to give me your suggestions in German, then please do so by sending me a conversation.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

While I haven't been able to give this the attention it deserves, both my first AND second impression is that you are doing AWESOME WORK!

Hopefully @Grey Roger and/or @Talisman could give some further support.

 

[Robert Nutter]

This is brilliant! I look forward to watching this progress even further...sadly I don't speak a word of German so can't help you there, but from what I've been able to read so far it definitely deserves a translation. It's laid out perfectly and is accessible and friendly. Good job

 

[Cassadar]

This is brilliant! I look forward to watching this progress even further...sadly I don't speak a word of German so can't help you there, but from what I've been able to read so far it definitely deserves a translation. It's laid out perfectly and is accessible and friendly. Good job

Thank you.
It also works on mobile devices (at least it should). Try it by lowering the width of your browser a lot to see what happens (especially on the 'controls' page). Of course not everything is perfect yet, but I'm working on it.

 

[KillPhil]

A minor thing that catched my eye: The F3 Key is not only for looting, but for any quick action which shows up top left. You can actually open a door with drawn blade by pressing F3 next to the door.

EDIT: The word "Partymitglieder" .. sounds like you party all day on your ship I'd advise to change this to "Aktive Begleiter" oder "Gruppenmitglieder"

EDIT2: "Allerdings ist es deinen Leuten nicht möglich, fehlende Masten oder gleich den ganzen Bugspriet (der ganz vordere Teil) zu ersetzen, daher ". While this is theoretically true, the game will always add the missing masts again after a reload. So I would just say that they cant repair the complete damage

EDIT3: Last chapter of "Dein Schiff": I would mention that it is also possible to instantly go to port/shore with the command menu by pressing Enter and choosing the second option.

EDIT4: "Wenn du allerdings das manuelle Zielen bevorzugst, dann solltest du stattdessen in die Egoperspektive (TAB-Taste) wechseln. Befindet sich das feindliche Schiff in Reichweite, erscheint ein gelbes Fadenkreuz, das du mit der Maus bewegen kannst. Sobald dieses sich rot verfärbt, hast du die passende Flugbahn erwischt und kannst deine Wahl über die Leertaste bestätigen." Wrong! If you are on shipdeck, you have to press V for manual aim via the crosshair. Else the crew will aim for themselves if you simply press space bar, like in 3rd person

That are the 5 points I have seen, everything else reads quite nice and is very beginner friendly Good Work!

 

[Cassadar]

A minor thing that catched my eye: The F3 Key is not only for looting, but for any quick action which shows up top left. You can actually open a door with drawn blade by pressing F3 next to the door.

EDIT4: "Wenn du allerdings das manuelle Zielen bevorzugst, dann solltest du stattdessen in die Egoperspektive (TAB-Taste) wechseln. Befindet sich das feindliche Schiff in Reichweite, erscheint ein gelbes Fadenkreuz, das du mit der Maus bewegen kannst. Sobald dieses sich rot verfärbt, hast du die passende Flugbahn erwischt und kannst deine Wahl über die Leertaste bestätigen." Wrong! If you are on shipdeck, you have to press V for manual aim via the crosshair. Else the crew will aim for themselves if you simply press space bar, like in 3rd person

You are absolutely right. Sometimes you get confused after a while when you write a lot of text and then something gets messed up during that process.
This is the exact reason why proofreading is important.

EDIT: The word "Partymitglieder" .. sounds like you party all day on your ship I'd advise to change this to "Aktive Begleiter" oder "Gruppenmitglieder"

It's actually possible to use Party instead of Gruppe, but as far as I'm aware it only works for games. I probably use it that much because it was a pretty common term in the roleplaying communities I used to visit during the last 20 years. A lot of videogame magazines also used it in their reviews during the 90s, but I'm not sure if they still do this. Don't read those anymore.

Anyway, thanks a bunch, Pillat, I changed everything. Feel free to rip everything apart on future pages if you see wrong stuff or something you don't like.

 

[Robert Nutter]

Thank you.
It also works on mobile devices (at least it should). Try it by lowering the width of your browser a lot to see what happens (especially on the 'controls' page). Of course not everything is perfect yet, but I'm working on it.

Sadly I am in possession of no mobile devices, though I can report that lowering the width works on all my computers

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I can confirm it works on my phone.

 

[Cassadar]

Oh boy, those were a lot of abilities/perks/whatever.

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This is the complete list for all the perks of the September 23rd WIP, including Levis's Fixes 7-10b. In the English wiki the perks Effective Potions and Poison Resistance belong to the personal category, but I moved them to the group category instead, since the surgeon is clearly able to contribute those two; at least in my game.
Here's hoping I didn't mess some of the infos up.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Levis: Please see the above note on perks.

 

[Levis]

Looking good .

 

[Cassadar]

'First Steps' will be the next page. I'm already structuring that thing and so far it will contain this:

The main menu
- the profile system of the save/load screen
- What the buttons in the options screen are for
I will probably not explain every single entry of the game preferences though; would be too overkill, except you want me to do that.

Character creation
- choosing storylines
- how to customise your character and starting ship
- the background professions
- purpose of the time periods

Explaining the F2 menus
Self-explanatory; character screen, inventory, colonies and so on, won't do any harm. Though I'm not sure how I should handle the Ship and Passengers one, since those are already covered on the ship and sailing page. Thematically they fit pretty good there and are also needed to explain all the ship stuff better. On the other hand that page is basically part 2 of the First Steps section anyway, so I don't think it would be too bad not covering them on "part 1", at least not fully.
Not sure yet. I only know that I like it more compact. Keeping those informations on a single page and linking to them instead of spreading the infos on too many seperate pages is far more easy to maintain later if something gets changed. I may be wrong here though.

The interface while controlling your character
- What the console is and what it does for you
- Mini portraits/health icons
- Direct Travel
- Action Icons and doing stuff with them

Stuff you can do on land
- Towns
- Fighting
- Jungle and Dungeons

The structure may change while I'm working on all that text and I will probably add some new stuff to the sailing page while I'm at it to make it more complete.

Huh. Did I forget something?

I also have a question: if I remember correctly there was a thing with pirates not liking you in older versions if your reputation was "too good". Is that still a thing or am I just crazy and this was never in the mod at all?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Grey Roger and/or @Talisman: Have you had a look at this already? Any feedback?

I wonder if anyone might be willing to translate that into English at some point.

I will probably not explain every single entry of the game preferences though; would be too overkill, except you want me to do that.

I reckon you can skip that for the time being. If people have questions about them, they can always come here and ask.

Though I'm not sure how I should handle the Ship and Passengers one, since those are already covered on the ship and sailing page.

Having it only in one spot and using only a link everywhere else sounds like the best option to me.

What the console is and what it does for you

What do you consider the "console" here?

I also have a question: if I remember correctly there was a thing with pirates not liking you in older versions if your reputation was "too good". Is that still a thing or am I just crazy and this was never in the mod at all?

That indeed used to be in the mod, but we replaced it with a different condition now.

 

[Cassadar]

What do you consider the "console" here?

...
My broken brain gave me the wrong term. I mean that thing:

Of course I can leave that one out if you want, but I actually met someone in the past who argued all the time that the game is completely dumb and broken, because the "debug console" is active all the time.
Please don't ask for details.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

My broken brain gave me the wrong term. I mean that thing

Ah, right! Gotcha.

If you need a name for that, I suppose "on-screen logs" would be the least potentially confusing.

I actually met someone in the past who argued all the time that the game is completely dumb and broken, because the "debug console" is active all the time.
Please don't ask for details.

While indeed those messages CAN be used for debug purposes, the ones that are normally enabled are there on purpose.
Might be relevant to mention then that the [L]-key on the keyboard can be used to choose different "log levels".
With that, you can reduce the amount of on-screen clutter if you prefer.

If there are then still logs left that you don't want to see, it is easy enough to get rid of them by editing the PROGRAM folder code itself.
So if anyone has any requests for that, they can post here and we can probably find the relevant line to delete quite easily.
In fact, with trick #3 from Tutorial - Modding Tips & Tricks | PiratesAhoy!, they could probably track down the offending code themselves.

 

[lapuvida]

Two things i came acroos while having a look into the manual:

1. under "Dein Schiff"-->"Moral"-->"Spende Teile deines eigenen Reichtums an die Crew, denn sobald du zu viel Gold angehäuft hast, werden die Jungs neidisch, was ihre Moral rapide absinken lässt."
As far as i experienced it while playing, the crew gets unhappy when the "Crew Money" is to high, so spending personal money to crew money should not help here.

2. under "Spielmodi": "Rush", "Immediate Reload" und "Instant Boarding" are listed as blocked in iron man mode, but i think they are also blocked in realism mode or?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As far as i experienced it while playing, the crew gets unhappy when the "Crew Money" is to high, so spending personal money to crew money should not help here.

Indeed donating money to the crew if they're getting unhappy from there being too much money would not help.
What DOES help is using the "Raise Morale" button that you have to pay for. That instantly increases morale, but only temporarily.

"Rush", "Immediate Reload" und "Instant Boarding" are listed as blocked in iron man mode, but i think they are also blocked in realism mode or?

Indeed the two realistic modes disable various abilities. It used to be only those three for Realistic and several more for Iron Man.
For current details, see this page @Talisman made: New Horizons Abilities | PiratesAhoy!

 

[Cassadar]

Thanks @lapuvida; another thing I messed up. Did you see anything else that was wrong? For the game mode page, I had actually planned to update it while writing the other stuff, since that list is almost three years old; and then I probably forgot it, like always.

On the ability page everything should (hopefully) be correct, with some little differences to the english wiki. Apparently the needed points for the last two Damage Control abilities (new versions of Ship Defence) were changed; Professional Ship Defence for example costs 4 points in the July version, Professional Damage Control on the other hand costs 3 points with the latest fixes from Levis. I suppose this was done because Ship Defence was split into several other perks; or it's just a mistake.
Also, Improved Damage Control is available in Iron Man mode, while Advanced Ship Defence (the old version) was not.

Someone should proofread the ability list though. I don't trust myself, especially when it comes to numbers.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'd suggest having only one Ability List.
Since it's on the Wiki, perhaps like to that?
And then edit the Wiki itself to be up to date?
That saves you the trouble of having any discrepancies between two lists.

 

[Cassadar]

@Pieter Boelen
There's a pretty good chance I misunderstand you, since I have to keep an appointment in the next 40 minutes and don't have much time at the moment. If I do, then please forget the following paragraphs.

Do you mean one single/global ability list written in English for both the German and later English manual?

Huh. That would indeed save some work and trouble, but I don't know for sure if that would be a good idea; the descriptions etc. on my list are all written in German. Doesn't look very good if you try to put all of those different descriptions in one single list. Of course you could say "They should just use the English list and go with it", but that wouldn't be very user friendly either if you have a manual fully written in German and then link to a page that's entirely written in English. That's not very good for the reading flow. Accessibility == horrible.

Some people don't care about that, but there are also people who would care a lot, all of them with their own reasons why they wouldn't like that - i.e. they don't understand English well enough but can play as long is everything is explained to them in German, or they don't like languages being mixed up (as nitpicky as that may be), or else. I'm disabled and I know pretty well how awkward it feels not being able to use something everyone else can use just fine; especially when other people aren't interested with the problems you have and just tell you to pull yourself together, because... well, they don't have any problems. That's why I'm so careful with this stuff; maybe a bit too careful though.
It would also raise the question why there is a German manual if people can just use the English one instead (well, there... isn't one yet, but... you know).

In the end I do all that stuff for you guys though. If you think this isn't necassary then I will do what you want. It's not me who has the last word on this.