This is a tutorial to teach you how to freeze the ingame time, using an external program called ArtMoney.
This is mainly meant to give you a chance to complete those quests with little amounts of time when the winds aren't on your side.
You can use ArtMoney for a lot more in this game, but if you really want to cheat your way through everything, you should be able to use this tutorial on time freezing as an example. However, I don't encourage you to cheat unless you feel you need to. Please don't blame me for any problems that may arise, although I didn't encounter any problems (yet). USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Ok, let's get started:
01. First of all, if you don't already have it, download ArtMoney at http://www.artmoney.ru/e_download_se.htm and install it.
02. Start the game in windowed mode.*
03. Enter worldmap mode and do not leave it untill you have completed all following steps.**
04. Look at the date and remember the day of the month.
05. Alt-tab out of the game and start ArtMoney.
06. In ArtMoney, select the process "Age of pirates II" in the drop-down menu.
07. Now press the "Search" button and enter the current day of the month in the "Value" box.
08. Press the button with the 3 dots, it's next to the "Type" box.
09. Clear all checkboxes, except for "Integer 4 bytes", and press OK.
10. Now press OK again to start searching. This shouldn't take too long on a reasonably fast machine.
11. When the search is finished press OK and alt-tab back into the game.
12. Now, when still on the worldmap, wait untill the next day and alt-tab back to ArtMoney.
13. In ArtMoney press the "Filter button". Enter the current day of the month and press OK. Press OK when the filtering is finished. In the left window of ArtMoney the results are displayed.
14. In case you get only 1 result you may continue to the next step, otherwise repeat step 12 to 14.
15. Double-click the result, it should now appear in the right window.
16. In the right window, press the box under the "F" column. An "x" should appear in it. This indicates the date is now frozen.***
17. If you want you can alter the day of the month under the "Value" column.****
18. Leave ArtMoney open and sail to your destination.
The date stays frozen untill you leave the worldmap or reload a savegame so I recommend avoiding all encounters. Or just repeat the steps again after an encounter, it takes less time than it may seem.
* This is necessary because you will have to alt-tab in and out of the game later and the game will crash when you use alt-tab in full-screen mode. You can still make it look like fullscreen by running it at your desktop resolution.
** If you leave the worldmap or if you are attacked and need to reload you will have to repeat all following steps.
*** The time in your logbook will update after the next midnight. It will then always be 1 day ahead of the time displayed on the world map. This is because the worldmap time doesnt really get frozen but it gets set back to it's value every 100ms(+/-) by ArtMoney. This means that at midnight the logbook date updates before the worldmap time gets set back to it's value. So make sure your worldmap time is at least 2 days before your quest's deadline.
**** You can go to the next month by entering a value of 32 or higher. Then wait untill after midnight to start the next month. If you leave the time frozen you will advance 1 month every midnight this way.
This is mainly meant to give you a chance to complete those quests with little amounts of time when the winds aren't on your side.
You can use ArtMoney for a lot more in this game, but if you really want to cheat your way through everything, you should be able to use this tutorial on time freezing as an example. However, I don't encourage you to cheat unless you feel you need to. Please don't blame me for any problems that may arise, although I didn't encounter any problems (yet). USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Ok, let's get started:
01. First of all, if you don't already have it, download ArtMoney at http://www.artmoney.ru/e_download_se.htm and install it.
02. Start the game in windowed mode.*
03. Enter worldmap mode and do not leave it untill you have completed all following steps.**
04. Look at the date and remember the day of the month.
05. Alt-tab out of the game and start ArtMoney.
06. In ArtMoney, select the process "Age of pirates II" in the drop-down menu.
07. Now press the "Search" button and enter the current day of the month in the "Value" box.
08. Press the button with the 3 dots, it's next to the "Type" box.
09. Clear all checkboxes, except for "Integer 4 bytes", and press OK.
10. Now press OK again to start searching. This shouldn't take too long on a reasonably fast machine.
11. When the search is finished press OK and alt-tab back into the game.
12. Now, when still on the worldmap, wait untill the next day and alt-tab back to ArtMoney.
13. In ArtMoney press the "Filter button". Enter the current day of the month and press OK. Press OK when the filtering is finished. In the left window of ArtMoney the results are displayed.
14. In case you get only 1 result you may continue to the next step, otherwise repeat step 12 to 14.
15. Double-click the result, it should now appear in the right window.
16. In the right window, press the box under the "F" column. An "x" should appear in it. This indicates the date is now frozen.***
17. If you want you can alter the day of the month under the "Value" column.****
18. Leave ArtMoney open and sail to your destination.
The date stays frozen untill you leave the worldmap or reload a savegame so I recommend avoiding all encounters. Or just repeat the steps again after an encounter, it takes less time than it may seem.
* This is necessary because you will have to alt-tab in and out of the game later and the game will crash when you use alt-tab in full-screen mode. You can still make it look like fullscreen by running it at your desktop resolution.
** If you leave the worldmap or if you are attacked and need to reload you will have to repeat all following steps.
*** The time in your logbook will update after the next midnight. It will then always be 1 day ahead of the time displayed on the world map. This is because the worldmap time doesnt really get frozen but it gets set back to it's value every 100ms(+/-) by ArtMoney. This means that at midnight the logbook date updates before the worldmap time gets set back to it's value. So make sure your worldmap time is at least 2 days before your quest's deadline.
**** You can go to the next month by entering a value of 32 or higher. Then wait untill after midnight to start the next month. If you leave the time frozen you will advance 1 month every midnight this way.