Lord_Chris

[colour=#6EA4BF]Venus - our sister planet[/colour] Venus is described as Earth's sister planet, because for a long time people thought they were similar, and are similar in size. It wasn't until 1962 that people found out the truth .... When the Romans looked up at Venus, they named the planet after their goddess of Love. But if they knew what we know now, they would probably have called it after the god of underworld. With toxic air, intense heat, volcanic eruptions and atmospheric pressure 93 times heavier than Earth's, this planet is certainly not the planet of beauty. Venus Venus has been hit by some massive asteroids and meteors in the past. Scientists believe that it's been hit by one so big, it has actually reversed the rotation of the planet. Venus is the only planet which rotates in a retrograde rotation (backwards), and it also has a very slow rotation - in fact, a Venusian day, which lasts 243 Earth days, is longer than a Venusian year, which lasts for 225 days on Earth. So not only does the sun rise in the west and set in the east, but a day lasts considerably longer than a year! Even though Venus is the second planet to the Sun, it is considerably hotter, at an average temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit (approx. 482 degrees Celsius). This is due to the greenhouse effect, the very process which keeps life alive on Earth (without which, the Earth would be roughly 40 degrees cooler). Some scientists have called this the "runaway" greenhouse effect, and stipulate that this could be what Earth becomes, if global warming is not taken care of, as we are already heading in that direction. Venus really could become hell on earth, literally. On Venus, 96% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, which traps the heat inside, keeping the planet roasting. The planet also has a lot of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere from the constantly erupting volcanoes. Sulphur dioxide alone can cause circulatory collapse and severe breathing difficulties. But in addition, lightening is constantly going off, which is not only more powerful, but also never reaches the ground, due to the atmospheric pressure. Instead, it simply jumps from cloud to cloud. Interesting fact: On Venus, it snows metal, and rains sulphuric acid. There are no plants to convert the Carbon dioxide to oxygen, and even if plants existed, they would probably last a few seconds at the most, due to the pressure of the atmosphere, and also the heat. Similarly if a person could survive the heat, they would also probably be crushed by the pressure. Potentially anyway, a human would last maybe 1 second before being burned up. Venus is littered with hundreds of monstrous volcanoes, such as Maat Mons (see below), which is 35,000 feet high (much higher than Mount Everest). The constant eruptions only worsen the state of the atmosphere. Scientists speculate there could be any amount of volcanoes between a thousand to a million. Another major difference between Venus to other planets is that it is not covered in a lot of craters; instead, most of the surface is littered with cooled, and cooling, lava flows.

Welcome @Martarse! Thank you, we certainly will! ;)

Source: http://www.strongholdcrusader2.com/?p=1992 That really was a nice reference. Completely unexpected too!

Yes, your files, and contributions really are very good, you (and Crusader) keep this place alive! Keep up the great work! :D

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out some of the things I've changed in the downloads section. First though, all the download section maintenance has been completed, and all pages are fully functional once more. I've changed the ratings system so that you don't need to comment to rate anymore. I'm hoping this will encourage more people to rate more files, and I feel that the old system prevented people from doing so properly. Instead of having to write, now head toward the stars at the top of the page. Hover over them, and then select your rating. You will be alerted if there are any issues, otherwise the colour of the stars will be slightly brighter. Once that happens, you can no longer hover over until you refresh the page. Note that once you've rated a file, this cannot be changed, even after refreshing the page. You only have one rating per file, which has one use. Next, I've added a new category to Stronghold 2: In light of siege maps being able to be created, and my tutorial (see http://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/205-how-to-make-proper-siege-maps) I've added a siege category. I don't expect we'll get a massive mount of them but siege maps don't really fit into custom war, peace custom, kingmaker, free build, or saved games. And to alienate them into miscellaneous just doesn't seem right. I've also removed the report feature on downloads. This was pretty redundant seen as files need manually checking both after updating the archive, and after first upload. If anyone has problems with a file, or needs to report anything, you can send a PM to an administrator, or just report a comment (if one exists) and say in your message it's for the file. In light of this fact, I've moved the subscription link into the nav-bar, which is where I would have preferred it if I'd been able to originally. I'd also like to request that on uploading images inside your .zip, you compress it using TinyPNG, which also works with JPEGs. Preview images, and gallery images do not need this, because the site automatically runs them through the compression tool on upload, but images inside archives do because the site does not open them, this is done manually. The difference can be a entire Megabyte of file space saved, as seen in @Tokamaps' file The rescue of the king, the images in total take up a whopping 10 megabytes of server space, whereas the maps take up a total of 700 Kilobytes, the difference is staggering. I will be compressing these images later today and re-uploading the new archive, so the size may have changed when you read this. I'm not saying don't include images, all I'm saying is, try not to make them an excessive size. The only exception to this rule is the BMP type of image. I for one, will be removing any BMP images I find in archives because they are just too big, not very nice for users to download with bandwidth limits .etc, and take a while to load due to their size. Personally, I recommend using PNG or JPEG images wherever possible, not only for the best quality, but also the best experience for all users. And as always, any issues let me know and I'll sort them out ASAP. Finally, it's time for a promotion! Unrelated to the downloads maintenance, @Mathew Steel is one of the hardest working users here, and has been faithful since he first came in early 2014. I therefore feel that we can't not take notice of this, and I've decided to promote him to a contributor!

Thanks Crusader! I try to add pictures that immediately hook people, looks like I'm on the right track! :D

[colour=#6EA4BF]The formation of The Moon[/colour] It's been a beacon for travellers, a guide for keeping time, and in some cultures, it's even been a god. It's the only celestial body ever visited by man, and NASA is talking of a permanent outpost there. But just how did the moon form? The formation of The Moon There have been four theories on how the moon formed. All but one, have significant weaknesses. The Capture theory This states the Earth simply captured The Moon through it's own gravity. This theory would show why the moon and the earth have different iron compositions, if they formed in two different places in the solar system, however, it does not explain why the moon is moving away from us each year - or how the Earth's gravity managed to capture something that big in the first place, since the moon is roughly a quarter the size of the earth. And if the earth did capture the moon, it would be moving closer to it, not further away. The Accretion theory This theory states the earth and the moon were formed as a double system. But there are a lot of problems with this theory, such as the angular momentum of both planets. Fission Theory This theory was proposed by George Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin and in part received some attention because of his father. However, he very soon moved out of his father's shadow. George Darwin discovered through mathematical calculations that the moon is moving gradually further away from the earth each year, and managed to work it backwards, to get to the stage where the moon was moving around the earth 5-6 times a day, however, unfortunately he couldn't get any further, the maths just wouldn't let him do it. It wasn't actually proved the moon is moving further away fro the earth until Astronauts landed on the moon and set up mirrors on the surface of the moon, approximately 86 years later. You can shine a light on the moon, this will bounce back, and you can monitor the distance. The distance the moon is moving away from the earth is 3.8 centimetres per year. The fission theory states that the earth just ejected part of it's mass which then started orbiting around the earth, becoming the moon. The giant impact theory This theory is the most up-to-date and accurate theory as to how the moon formed. According to tests done, another planet about the size of the current planet Mars could have formed near the Earth at the start of the solar system. This theory stipulates that the planet came too close to Earth, and smashed into it. The debris then was thought to coalesce into the moon without a year. The planet in this theory which crashed into Earth has been called "Theia". It accounts for the small metallic core of the Moon, as well as the fact that the moon has a much lower iron content than the Earth, which was proven when Astronauts brought back moon rocks after the Apollo missions. There are a few small discrepancies still to be corrected, but by large, it works. The Earth was probably molten at this time anyway, but we believe that this is what started the Earth spinning, which is what gave us day and night.

[colour=#6EA4BF]The formation of the Earth, and life[/colour] We see Earth as a pretty important planet, but as a matter of fact our solar system is just a home for our sun with a few bits and pieces left over. The formation of earth began as all of the other planets did; forming from rocks which were left over after the sun was created 4.5 billion years ago. These were then held together through gravity, and over time began to orbit the sun. The Earth was almost entirely molten, and it was collisions with other asteroids, meteors and space objects that made the planet bigger. One very large collision was thought to make the earth start spinning on its axis, responsible for day and night. Another was thought to have made the moon (more below) and it was over time that the planet cooled, the Volcanoes stopped erupting, and eventually liquid water was formed. But just how did water end up on Earth after it was molten for so long? No one really knows. One of the most common theories is that comets, which are made up of frozen Ice, smashed into the Earth. However, there are a few weaknesses with this theory. One being, that comets are only really found in the outer solar system, so for the most part, they would be too far away to impact the Earth. Another significant weakness is that the water here in earth contains a mixture of H2O (Hydrogen water) and HDO (Heavy density water). In 1986, a space probe had a close encounter with the comet Halley (Halley's comet) and discovered that the composition was in similar quantities to that on Earth. However, most of the other comets which have so far been analysed have twice as much HDO as on Earth. But comets are so far away from the sun, that we do not know if in fact this was representative of all comets. One other theory about how water formed was due to the Steam the volcanoes were giving out. But because this is part of the water cycle, and some kind of water source must exist, there is a flaw in this theory too. The origin of life The earliest life forms were only in the oceans on the planet, and were very basic bacteria, and some of these are called "extremophiles". These have the ability to survive in the most extreme conditions, such as at the bottom of the Antarctic now, which receives 0.1% of sunlight - or possibly 3.8 billion years ago. Some believe these also exist of Jupiter's moon "Europa". But there are also questions as to how exactly this formed in the first place. We believe it was from a comet with water, but there is no firm evidence. Eventually, over a long time, animals became increasingly complex, and divided into two groups; one that used the air, and the other which chose the stay hidden and use the water, and we evolved to better use the planet.

More and more users lately have been getting this error, especially on Windows 8/8.1. Rest assured however, that I feel I have finally found some kind of proper fix for this error. It only appears to occur on disk versions of the game. There are two potential methods I am posting, the first is less drastic, and I recommend you start from here- though there is less chance of it working. The second, is the way in which I have fixed this error (at least for now) for myself. The cause of this problem is somewhat unknown; for me, the first time it appeared to be caused by a crash, however, the second time this happened to me, I turned my PC on, attempted to start the game and got this error. Note: This error only seems to occur on Stronghold 2 1.4.1. If you're using an earlier version of the game, this should not affect you, you can verify this by reinstalling the game back down to 1.3.1, and it should work. It will also work if you patch up to 1.4. Only if you install the 1.4.1 patch will the game react. Another suggested cause I've heard is that Windows 8 does not like Direct X 9 at all, which is required to play Stronghold 2. And what worsens this problem is when Direct X 11 is installed. I've also heard that once the game crashes a certain amount of times, Windows 8 will mark it incompatible. Method 1 Note: I'm using a 64 bit system, therefore I have an sysWOW64 folder in C:\Windows. If you are using a 32-bit version of Windows, I'm sorry to say I do not know how this will work. You could attempt to Google this, or move onto method 2. In your sysWOW64 folder, find the file called d3dx9_27.dll Copy and paste this somewhere else, such as on your desktop Delete the original in sysWOW64 Attempt to run the game, which will give you message it can't be ran because the DLL you moved is missing. Now, copy the moved DLL back to the original location, and run the game This may, or may not work. It probably won't. If/when it doesn't, try a few times. If it doesn't work after two or three attempts, you'll have to use method 2. Method 2 This is the method that works for me. Unfortunately, it's not as clear into what causes it to work. I'm guessing there is some kind of cache that Windows keeps of incompatible programs, when you reset this, it appears to reset the cache and allow the game to run. Each step is assumed that the previous does not work. Reinstall Stronghold 2. Check the game works on 1.3.1 (the version you installed) Patch up to 1.4, and check the game works again Patch up to 1.4.1, you will almost certainly get the same error Perform the exact same steps above again, without checking if the game works Restart your computer, and check if 1.4.1 will run Download CCleaner Check every box except the "wipe free space", and run Run the registry cleaner Uninstall Stronghold 2 Run both cleaners again Now reinstall Stronghold 2, and patch up Restart your computer Run CCleaner, and then attempt to run Stronghold 2 afterwards only That should work. If it doesn't I can only suggest you attempt to do the same steps waiting a few days between reinstalling, I waited and it eventually worked again. You can also reply to this topic and I'll see what I can do to help you.

Editing downloads should now work again. Let me know if you have any further problems.

I used to play a game called Imperial Glory (I know, yet another story :D ) and there you used to have open fields with different terrain. So for example, you'd have hills and highlands in Scotland, in England you'd have a castle (below), and in Russia for example, you'd have snow and mountains. Each player would start at the opposite end of the field, and there would be a few defensive buildings at one end (or maybe even the middle) of a field. The players would then attack each other through open fields, and either attempt to take buildings, or high points .etc, any way to wipe out their opponent. I see a "field battle" as this, where basically two players fight to the death with set troops. The only problem I can see, is that there is no use of artillery .etc, so there aren't any long ranged units, only mid to long ranged. Is this the kind of thing you have in mind? I think this would be a really good idea. I would say that the player with two armies would be the best option, we're all used to fighting on walls .etc, but without them, perhaps it might be more of a challenge - and maybe make some more interesting results too. The general goal would be to annihilate all enemy forces, or kill the lord. But I'm assuming you'd have to kill all the enemy forces to get to the lord anyway. Someone may even go as far as to re-create entire battle armies (as close as the game will allow) for real battles, Crusader might be able to help us there.

I guess you forgot about this then, @Nigel ;) Actually, I only just remembered myself.

I admit it's not exactly clear, the deluxe version of the game has 1.3.1 update in by default, along with all the new features only in the deluxe version. When you said patching up, I assumed you had an earlier version on your disk that would have likely caused problems, which is why I wanted to double check. If you did have an earlier version, then you wouldn't have had the deluxe. It's essentially another name - just like Stronghold 3 gold which has all the updates in prior.

The 1.3 Deluxe is 1.3.1. :)

Moved to Stronghold 2. What version did your game originally install? And where are you getting the 1.3.1 patch from?

[colour=#6EA4BF]Days, Months Years and Seasons[/colour] These all happen at different times, and for different lengths on each planet. Ancient Civilisations took note of days months and years by two possibilities: One, the Sun, or two, the Moon. This allowed people to know when to plant crops and search for seasonal foods. Several civilisations including the Mayans and Babylonians developed complex ways to tell seasonal changes. Days We all know what a day is, and every planet has them. But do you actually know what causes them? A day is the amount of time for a planet to spin 365 degrees on its orbit. Because of this fact, there is always one side of a planet facing the sun, while the other half is in darkness - and this is exactly why the night is dark; there is no light making it from the Sun, which makes the opposite side of the planet dark. Most people think that a day is 24 hours, but in fact, it's very slightly less. A day is actually 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. The extra four minutes gets added up, and every four years, this is responsible for what becomes a leap year - an extra day gets added into February to make the calendars correct. Interesting fact: The calendar was created by the Romans in 45 BC. Months A month is the amount of time for a moon to orbit the earth. The luna orbit means that one side of the moon is deadlocked towards the Earth, and the "dark side" of the moon will never be shown on the earth due to how the moon rotates. The moon rotates in this manner due to Earth's own gravity. The moon also goes through various stages, such as Waxing Gibbous, Waning Gibbous, Full Moon and New Moon. Years This is the amount of time that a planet takes to orbit the sun. A planet is rotating constantly on its axis (as shown above) but it's also moving around the sun at the same time. This is what is responsible for years. Every 365 and a quarter days (due to a day not being exactly 24 hours) a new year begins. Seasons Seasons are the one thing that people can find confusing. Seasons depend on the tilt of the Earth's axis. You now know that the Earth moves on its axis, and moves around the Sun. The seasons Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter are all caused by the tilt of the Earth's axis. This is also why the opposite side of the Earth has the opposite season. For example, in Australia, it can snow during the Summer, because Australia is on the opposite side of the Earth to the UK. So when we get warn weather, it's Australia's winter even though the season is called Summer still. I'd also like to point out that the tilt of the Earth is in fact caused by the Moon. Due to seasons, Constellations in the night sky can appear at different points in the night sky throughout the year.

[colour=#6EA4BF]The Universe, Galaxies and Nebulae[/colour] What exactly is The Universe? There are lots of similar, confusing terms in space, and this is certainly no exception. The Universe is everything in existence. What is a Galaxy? A galaxy is a system of millions, or billions, of stars, together with gas or dust, which is held together by gravitational pull. A galaxy contains hundreds of solar systems, similar, or not similar to our own. Each solar system contains a central sun, like ours (or mostly bigger) and several planets of several shapes and sizes. Each star inside a galaxy is a sun, and each sun belongs to a unique solar system (in 99% of cases). Our galaxy is called The Milky Way, below is a map of our Galaxy along with the position of our sun. http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0ecf217e39e271c7a6e09a1015e01149?convert_to_webp=true[/img] What is a Nebula? A Nebula (or Nebulae plural) is a cloud of gas and dust in the outer solar system. Many people mix up the difference between Galaxies and Nebulae due to this difference. They are in some ways, similar, but are completely separate things. A Nebula is a region where stars are formed. Every star is born in a Nebula - and they can also contain remains of dead, or dying stars. http://static.giaoducthoidai.vn/uploaded/tranghn/2015_02_22/329801423735560_woyc.jpg?width=500[/img] How many galaxies are there? There are hundreds of billions of galaxies, and in each one is hundreds of billions of stars. That's one to two hundred billion solar systems at least in The Milky Way, including our own. Our sun is just one of the hundreds of billions of stars in The Milky Way alone.

Thanks both of you! I'm going to start today at some point with articles. Stellarium is really good for showing you what stars are in what place - and it's not even limited to Earth either. I've viewed from Mars, and Mars' moon Phobos before. You can have custom landscapes, plugins, star regions .etc.

We have a history thread, so why not an astronomy thread too? ;) I've got to say, this thread was kind of inspired by Crusader's history thread, I'll keep this thread updated with all the things to look out for in the night sky, and I'll try to add some articles every now and then about what is what, how you can tell and what the features of the different things are .etc. But before we get started, I'd recommend downloading the program Stellarium. This can be configured to show the stars where you live, and is available on Windows, Linux, MacOS as well as Ubuntu for free. It's also available on Android and iOS for a small price. I'd like to start with the full moon (or this time, Super Moon - I'll let you know more about that at some other point ;) ) which will be available in four days time (August 29th). The moon will be on the opposite side of the earth to the sun, and this will occur approximately 18:35 UTC. That's one hour later here in the UK due to DST. The moon will be on one of its closest approaches to earth, and will probably look brighter and larger compared to usual.

This explains why it's detected as a virus; from what I can tell myself, and you've explained there, it's injecting something into the game - this explains why all anti viruses start screaming and attempt to quarantine it. And since we can only play online in 1.4.1, this pretty much makes this redundant, unfortunately. I contacted the creator of this tool yesterday asking him for information on how it was done, and whether or not it can be upgraded or not. I'd be more than happy to attempt to upgrade it to be compatible with 1.4.1 myself, but I would need the source code first - and know how it was done in the first place. And I'm guessing that the email I sent to will probably be abandoned by now, after all, he was last active in 2007.

I've ran the program myself and MalwareBytes also gave a false positive to me. However: I've only ran the program, I haven't tested it yet. I'll test it at some point, and if I deem that it doesn't have anything inside it (which I really don't think it will have, otherwise it will have been executed as soon as I ran it probably) then I'm happy for it to be uploaded. It does have an unknown publisher which means windows smart screen attempts to block it, but it seems to be fine so far. Anyway, you can upload it now if you'd like, and it can sit in the queue for a bit until I get the chance to review it, there's no harm in it sitting there a few days.

... And, it depends on how the mod is configured. Adding to what Charles said, some exe files do things based on your system architecture (i.e x64 or x86). I'm downloading it now and seeing what it does, perhaps you might want to upload it to the download section - if you get permission as Charles says.

Thanks for the report. Unfortunately, this is still off moving forum software, I've been unable to update that page yet. There are three more pages (I think) in the download section that haven't been updated yet, I'm trying to push ahead but I just don't have the time at the moment :( I'll try to expedite this and get it done within the next few days if I can, but I can't make promises. I have been fixing several other things in the download section such as the comment system and ratings, and they are massively enhanced now, but as of yet, I honestly haven't had a chance to do it.

So you won't be playing?

Absolutely. Just as Charles would say - A hobbit need never leave his hobbit hole.