Someone else pointed out this "glitch" but since I've never actually seen the original game, I have no idea what's wrong, so I asked...never got a reply. I'm going to assume it's the black boxes, which are the shadow offsets and from what I can see in the interface .ini files, they are deliberate for all I know. The defaultnode.ini is a direct copy of what I downloaded, so the TEXTBUTTON configs are exactly the same. Since POTC does not have this large offset, I decided to compare the INTERFACE\shadow.tga.tx file that is specified and the one from NH is vastly different, and huge, compared to the one from POTC. So I renamed the one in NH (to keep it for backup, if desired) and copied over the POTC file. The menu now has very subtle, small shadow offsets, which maybe is what the "glitch" was? Anyway, I'll throw it in the next NH update and people can take a look. But honestly, these are the types of things I'm really not usually interested in tracking down...if something is clearly broken, and someone gives me the info, I'll see if there's a way to tweak things in order to remain somewhat compatible with older features, if it's feasible. But something like this is easily remedied by people more familiar with the original NH, which I don't have because I also don't have the POTC engine either; I only have original 2.8 COAS on cd.
Thanks Jeffrey, you are the man! With Maelstrom engine, New Horizons could be a pearl. But no one seems to be working on it. It has so many potential, I get crazy frame rates with no crashes and the graphics are way better.