- Details
Highlights:
In this update, 2 alternative farms and starting areas and the survival mode are added to the game.
All three farms play differently and offer a new gaming experience. Ideal for a second or third playthrough. Details below!
Survival mode can be added and changes the gameplay even more. It can only be selected at the start of the game and only works in connection with the "Volcano Farm". This mode is intended for experienced players and is full of challenges. It should be chosen with care.
Patch notes V3.3
Game:
When starting a new game, you can now choose one of three starting areas.
All three play very differently and invite you to play Behind the Horizon again. The areas cover the entire area around the farm. The following options are available:
- The Standard Farm:
The standard farm offers a balanced landscape with lots of good farmland and enough woodland and water. There are large areas available for stables and pastures. This farm is ideal for a cosy, not too difficult game.
- The river and woodland farm:
Here the farmland is divided by rivers. Bridges lead to the various islands. There are fewer large areas, but more forest and water. The land is more varied overall, but the planning of the farm requires more care and there is less space. There are some fertile areas where plants grow right at the beginning of the farm that can be harvested and there are also many fruit trees in the forests. An interesting alternative to the standard farm.
- The Volcano Farm:
The Volcano Farm is dominated by rocky areas. There are two dormant volcanoes to the north and south. There is less space and less fertile soil. To compensate, there are more ore and stone deposits. This farm is a real challenge, especially at the beginning, as it prevents rapid growth because the soil has to be upgraded first. A good choice for a second, more challenging game.
- The survival mode:
Survival mode can be activated in conjunction with the Volcano Farm. There are numerous gameplay changes that greatly alter the game. In survival mode, Behind the Horizon plays like a survival game, especially in the first few years. This should provide a great challenge even for experienced players.
A list of all gameplay changes in survival mode:
1) Inhospitable conditions, poorer soil around the farm and two active volcanoes in the north and south
2) the plantable area on the farm will grow more slowly than usual
3) permanent energy and life essence boni are only half as large
4) using tools and weapons costs more energy
5) Monster portals can control more monsters at the same time
6) Monsters have increased vision
7) The volcanoes on the farm erupt at irregular intervals and spew lava flows or rocks
8) Storms such as floods, droughts, hail, thunderstorms, etc. cause more changes in the world
9) Positive weather events are less frequent or weaker
10) Buying and selling prices at all traders are increased
11) When harvesting, the player does not get any seeds back
12) There are fewer quarries in the world
13) Extreme weather events can occur immediately after starting the game
14) Trees from the player are just as affected by hail and lightning as wild trees
15) Locust and vole infestations occur more frequently
16) There are more locusts and voles in a plague
In addition to the new starting areas, the old farm has also been improved in many places.
In the "Start new game" menu you can now also select the difficulty of the battles. This can still be changed in the settings menu during the game.
The cutscene when you first enter the farm has been redesigned to fit all three farms.
An error in a quest description in an early quest has been corrected.
Manual:
New section: Update V3.xx: All changes to the game after the release of the 2nd DLC, the Sky Fortress, are summarised here.
Updated the manual to the latest version
Bugs:
When starting a new game, the temperature and light values of the last few days were not set correctly. This has been fixed.
- Details
Seasonal events:
This update integrates the first four seasonal events into the game. I have greatly expanded the scripting language for cutscenes so that interaction within cutscenes is now possible.
The first 4 seasons events are 4 auctions that take place once per season, each with a different theme. Different items are offered in the auctions each year and I hope that you will have a lot of fun bidding skilfully in the auctions and getting good prices.
There will be more new events in future updates that make use of the new possibilities.
- Introduction of the first 4 seasons events. Contact persons for the quests are Tiffany, Alfred, Marco and Nira. The new introductory quests are available early in the main game. Further information on auctions can be found in the in-game guide in the "Trade" section.
- Monster training portals in the Star Forge have been made even more indestructible.
- Fixed a rare bug that can occur in old savegames , causing Star Forge training portals to stop working.
- The English translation of some items from the DLC The Desert was mixed up and has been corrected.
- Minor errors with some German item names have been fixed.
- Added section about auctions (Trade section).
- Added section about the new info window when placing plants (section Plants).
- Various explanations in the sections Clues and Plants and Nature simulation updated.
- Details
Nature simulation:
For a better understanding of the nature simulation and the interrelationships in farming, I have integrated some changes and a new window into the game.
The new window opens automatically when you are about to plant seeds or plants in the ground and displays the values of the soil and plants and the local climate in detail and graphically. The game analyses this information and points out possible problems (for example: wrong soil, too few nutrients, temperatures too high, etc.).
An exclamation mark means that it is not advisable to plant this plant here at this time. A question mark indicates possible difficulties (such as a longer growth phase and stagnation over a few days). A cross indicates that the conditions are completely impossible and a green check mark means that everything is fine.
You can usually rely on this assessment. If you want to know more, you can get detailed information about the temperature and light of the last few days on the right-hand side of the window. You can also see what nutrients and water the plant currently needs to continue growing (please note that several plants in the same field add up their requirements). For temperature and light, the plant's comfort zone is shown as a green bar.
Of course, you can also plant a plant if the conditions are not right. As before, the exception is the soil, which must always be suitable.
In addition, the amount of experience the soil has already gained is also displayed. This was previously only visible in the farm overview (CTRL/Control).
The exact germination period for the seed, which also depends on the soil type, is also displayed, as is the minimum growth period of the plant.
If you have already read the relevant book on the plant or tree species, you will be rewarded with further information on the flowering time, the possible soil types and the growth period. This information can also be found on the seed packets.
Feeling plants skill:
I have removed the large speech bubble that was previously used for the "Feel plants" skill and instead the window with the detailed information is displayed. There are some additional details, such as how long the plant can tolerate the deficiency. If a tree and a farm plant grow together on a field, the tree is displayed on the right and the farm plants on the left.
If you also want to find out about self-planted ground cover plants, you also have to press the ALT key and then open the window as usual with the right mouse button. Since you rarely need this data in the game, I think this is a good way to further simplify operation (previously there were 3 regions on each field to be able to "address" the plants individually). In addition, it was rather annoying to always get the info mouse pointer on the pastures that you have planted with grass when you wanted to deal with the animals ;-) !
Game:
Trees now provide half the shade for the field when they are not yet fully grown.
The plant feeling skill can now also be used on planted seeds. The remaining germination time is always displayed.
The player's awareness requirements have been reduced in order to learn Sophie's Sense Plants skill.
In spring, the snow cover now melts faster or slower depending on the temperature and weather.
The plant overview (automatically displayed after the farm overview is shown) no longer uses the current values for heat and light, but instead displays the current deficiencies (from the previous day). The reason for this is that the display in the plant info window and the overview should match. During the day, the temperature and light can fluctuate greatly due to different weather conditions. It is therefore clearer to use the values from the previous day.
Tutorial:
I decided to use the window in full even in the tutorial, although you don't have the skills to analyse water and nutrients precisely at the very beginning. However, I think it is important to understand how farming works in the game right from the start. This may save some people a lot of frustration :-) ! The Plant Feeling skill still has to be learnt in-game.
Remark:
The average values of the last few days in the new plant info window are set to the current climate values at the first start after the update. A progression therefore only develops after a few days.
- Details
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.
- Details
General:
With this update HintermHorizont 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.