Beyond New Horizons Alpha Release

[Hammie]

I'm happy to present the first public alpha release of Beyond New Horizons (New Horizons Build 15).



Finally!

Expectations
This is an alpha release, so you should expect to encounter some bugs, and we expect you to report any bugs or issues you find.

You can report issues on the project's Github or in this thread.

We are also on a quest to eliminate all game crashes, so if your game crashes for any reason, be sure to report it!

Installation
1. Download the installer from ModDB
2. Unzip somewhere and run the installer
2a. You can install to any folder you want (and don't need the base game), just make sure to note where you install it, you will need to access this folder later.
2b. During installation you can disable the "Visual Studio Runtime", if you already have it or want to install it separately. This will allow you to install without admin privileges.
3. Download the latest patch. Extract this archive into the folder you installed the game, confirm to overwrite if prompted.
4. Open engine.ini (located in the installation folder) with notepad, and modify the settings to your preferences (most important settings are located at the top).
5. Run engine.exe and enjoy testing

Download the game from itch.io, or even better: use the itch.io client to get automatic updates whenever they become available.

Helping out
Want to help out? We would be happy to receive any help we can get so be sure to let us know!

You may notice some of the loading screens look messy, so if you have some photo-editing skills and want to help us update the loading screens that could be a great place to start. Loading screens should now all be simple jpg images, so it's never been easier.

We converted all texts to use utf-8 text encodings, this makes it a lot easier to work with non-english languages, but it is possible this conversion has introduced some errors. If you see any strange errors in the Spanish, Polish or Russian translations, let us know and we can fix them together.

TL;DR;
Download the game

 

[Hammie]

Did some more bugfixing today based on feedback provided by @DeadPain

* Added an option to the gameplay settings menu that allows you to disable storm generation on the worldmap
* Fixed time acceleration controls no longer working when loading a saved game
* Fixed excessive voice line spam of enemy attackers
* Improved layout of the keybindings options menu
* Updated description in tutorial dialogue to match the new battle interface

Download patch alpha.3

 

[JTem]

Thank you very much for this great job mate, I'm going to try it.

 

[Hammie]

Another updated with several fixes:

• #26 Fixed being unable to enter worldmap after entering storm
• #28 Fixed combat music keeps playing after combat has ended
• #30 Fixed player data being deleted when granting a ship to character while in a coastal scene
• Fixed excessively loud cannon fire
• Fixed incorrect call to LAi_CreateFantomCharacterExOt
• Fixed stack overflow crash when saving game with corrupted data

Download patch alpha.4

 

[AkrimalS]

I downloaded beyond new horizons and decided to check how it is played in Russian, but when you start a new game for Nathaniel, the game just crashes. And a translation of the old version.

 

[JTem]

Hello.

The game crashes when I change the language to Spanish even if I do it just after starting the game.

If you need any file you can ask me.

 

[Hammie]

I downloaded beyond new horizons and decided to check how it is played in Russian, but when you start a new game for Nathaniel, the game just crashes. And a translation of the old version.

I was not able to get it too crash with the Russian translation. Can you try again with patch alpha.5?

If it still crashes can you check the "C:\Users\Hammie\Documents\My Games\Sea Dogs" folder and share the following files with me:
- The "Logs" folder
- Under "sentry-db\reports" their should be a (.dmp) file that was created the moment the game crashed.

Hello.

The game crashes when I change the language to Spanish even if I do it just after starting the game.

If you need any file you can ask me.

This was very easy to reproduce, turns out some of the Spanish translation files were still encoded in ISO-8859-1 instead of UTF-8, this has been corrected in the next patch. Can't guarantee all the encoding issues are fixed but at least I was able to play through the standard prologue.

 

[Hammie]

Fixed some issues with the Spanish translation:

• Fixed file encoding issue for some Spanish translation files
• Fixed game crashing when encountering invalid characters while rendering buttons

Download patch alpha.5

 

[AkrimalS]

I was not able to get it too crash with the Russian translation. Can you try again with patch alpha.5?

If it still crashes can you check the "C:\Users\Hammie\Documents\My Games\Sea Dogs" folder and share the following files with me:
- The "Logs" folder
- Under "sentry-db\reports" their should be a (.dmp) file that was created the moment the game crashed.

Unfortunately, for some reason I can't download from this site. Can you please upload this to google drive or DropMeFiles – free one-click file sharing service

 

[Hammie]

Unfortunately, for some reason I can't download from this site. Can you please upload this to google drive or DropMeFiles – free one-click file sharing service

That's unfortunate, but here you go: DropMeFiles – free one-click file sharing service

 

[AkrimalS]

First it crashed at the start of the game for Nathaniel, then just after pressing the new game in the main menu

This was very easy to reproduce, turns out some of the Spanish translation files were still encoded in ISO-8859-1 instead of UTF-8, this has been corrected in the next patch. Can't guarantee all the encoding issues are fixed but at least I was able to play through the standard prologue.

This is most likely due to the encoding in Russian files, it was Windows-1251 so that the letters are displayed correctly, but as you wrote, the idea should be UTF-8 encoding

 

[DH27]

@Hammie: I downloaded patch 5 from protondrive but with windows explorer I keep getting the error that the file is corrupt and cannot be opened. I can unzip the file with 7zip though (in case somebody else has this problem). I also tried downloading the file from dropmefiles but I am being asked a password for that file?

 

[AkrimalS]

@Hammie: I downloaded patch 5 from protondrive but with windows explorer I keep getting the error that the file is corrupt and cannot be opened. I can unzip the file with 7zip though (in case somebody else has this problem). I also tried downloading the file from dropmefiles but I am being asked a password for that file?

password 123

 

[DH27]

In case it has not been reported yet, it seems that in free play mode the text for the first quest is not working right in the quest book, as text I am only getting "errorerror"

Also, if I may, is tabbing in and out of the game not working a limitation of engine version 2.9 or of this port version?

 

[Hammie]

@Hammie: I downloaded patch 5 from protondrive but with windows explorer I keep getting the error that the file is corrupt and cannot be opened. I can unzip the file with 7zip though (in case somebody else has this problem). I also tried downloading the file from dropmefiles but I am being asked a password for that file?

Looks like I have been creating 7z archives with a zip extension

Should be fixed now

In case it has not been reported yet, it seems that in free play mode the text for the first quest is not working right in the quest book, as text I am only getting "errorerror"

Also, if I may, is tabbing in and out of the game not working a limitation of engine version 2.9 or of this port version?

Not being able to tab out when in fullscreen mode is currently a bug in the engine.

 

[DH27]

Thanks for the fix!
One more thing I noticed is that there seems to be a script that when visiting a pirate settlement, sometimes some pirate tries to kill an unarmed person and the main character can decide if he wants to step in. When I decided not to step in, I am assuming that the pirate should have killed the civilian but for me it just resulted in being stuck in that script and the pirate not killing the civilian (he just stayed in front of the civilian with his sword drawn).

 

[Hammie]

Thanks for the fix!
One more thing I noticed is that there seems to be a script that when visiting a pirate settlement, sometimes some pirate tries to kill an unarmed person and the main character can decide if he wants to step in. When I decided not to step in, I am assuming that the pirate should have killed the civilian but for me it just resulted in being stuck in that script and the pirate not killing the civilian (he just stayed in front of the civilian with his sword drawn).

I think I know which scene you are talking about. But if you happen to have a savegame, that would make thinks easier.

The script probably needs to be updated to use the new attack instruction.

 

[Homo eructus]

This was very easy to reproduce, turns out some of the Spanish translation files were still encoded in ISO-8859-1 instead of UTF-8, this has been corrected in the next patch. Can't guarantee all the encoding issues are fixed but at least I was able to play through the standard prologue.

At least in regular old Storm engine,UTF8 doesn't play well with special characters (ñ, accented vowels and so on), so all theSpanish files have to be encoded in ANSI. Don't know if that's still the case with the new engine.

 

[Hammie]

At least in regular old Storm engine,UTF8 doesn't play well with special characters (ñ, accented vowels and so on), so all theSpanish files have to be encoded in ANSI. Don't know if that's still the case with the new engine.

Old engine was a bit weird, with it using different encodings depending on settings. New engine is just strait-up proper UTF-8 all the time.

We used a script to detect file encodings and convert all the files to UTF-8, but because some files actually used multiple encodings in the same file, the script could not always correctly identify which encoding was used. Some manual corrections may still be needed.

So while the conversion is a pain, the new system will be much easier.

 

[DH27]

@Hammie: Here is a savegame from one map before the pirate settlement with the cutscene: