Lord_Chris

Sounds like the "Burning Carts" and "Trebuchet" rules all over again ... 😁 Plus there are Ninjas too. I'm not sure yet whether they are invisible, but they sound a bit like Assassins tbh. But maybe we could allow a small amount with a rule of "don't attack the Lord" or something.

So I guess the first thing ot ask, is whether this is a disc version of the game, or the Steam one? Do you want to send your map over to me or attach it below and I will take a look to see if it's still happening in my game?

I think you'll really like Warlords. We'll have to arrange some tournaments or multiplayer games at some point, because I can already tell this is going to be a fantastic game.

Thanks for the kind words about the site! You should have contacted me and let me know you were having issues with your account, I could have unlocked it for you ☺️ My email is lordchris [at] strongholdnation [dot] co [dot] uk if you ever need to contact me about anything, or you can PM me with any concerns you have too. Looking forward to seeing what you've come up with! We also have a download section if you'd ever like to upload your content there ☺️

Going back to what you've found on the link..... this does make sense to me actually. Earlier versions of Stronghold, such as Stronghold 2 and Stronghold Legends contained Granny Viewer files for the models, and uni files for the compiled information on each model. But since Stronghold 3, this has ceased to be the case. I explain the files in these games briefly inthis tutorial: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/62-adding-units-from-stronghold-legends-into-stronghold-2 I often wondered why these files changed in Stronghold 3, and now this makes sense. They've obviously changed the format from Granny to merge them all into one file. Which makes sense given how technology has advanced since 2007-8 when Legends was released. My guess is that the .model file contains all of the information previously stored by these seperate files in some format or another.

Yeah I have to say this is disappointing. I do wish Firefly would change the game engine they use as I really haven't taken to it, but on the plus side Warlords is a far better game than the previous two (in my opinion). They have sorted out a lot of the mess and a lot of depth has bene put into it. This does alleviate some of the pain. Thanks for this... yeah, I have to say that this was probably my biggest concern that this would indeed turn out to be the case. Combining the file data was something deep down I kind of felt was "maybe" going on but didn't really want to acknowledge... It does make the job of modding a lot harder, certainly for me, without a deeper knowldge of C++ and game development. Hopefully you could help us out with that a bit. But, looking on the positive side, we do now have a breakthrough in at least we know the general format, even if we don't know the specifics yet. It also explains why when we've attempted to open the .model files in software specifically for that format, it just hasn't worked. So in your opinion, is this kind of format/setup "traditional"? Or has this been something completely custom made by Firefly that looks like it would only work on their system? The other good side to this is that if we do manage to crack this, then we've potentially cracked this on Stronghold 3, Crusader 2 & now Warlords as well. It would be a massive achievement. The situation kind of reminds me of the SH2 Map Unlocker & AI Castles and all the work that went into those by the fine folks over at Stronghold Knights many years ago. They found that a lot of the code could be edited, but it had to be done by building their own application to do it, so was the SH2 AI Editor born. My suspicion is that we would probably have to do something similar here, but I would be very interested in hearing your point of view on this.

Yeah I eventually gave up on Steam and just bought a Steam code via Instant Gaming. It ended up being quite a bit cheaper for me, which is good for me personally, but disappointing in some ways as I did want to support Firefly with this. But nonetheless, it's a fantastic game! I was initially a bit cautious after Stronghold 3 and Crusader 2, to which I (probably surprisingly to most people) preferred the former, because they were very badly optimised and I didn't really take to either game. However after taking a look at Warlords, yes it's using the same Engine, but from what I can see Firefly have done a pretty good job of fixing a lot of the mess. There's a great deal of depth added to the game and the music is just incredible. I really recommend it.

Interesting. Do you think this change with the troop limit would work on multiplayer? If so would it only be the host who has to change this value, or would everyone? Perhaps it's something we could try to figure out at some point......

Welcome to the forum, @needforbleed! Thanks for your reply. Your idea of a standalone mod project sounds very interesting. So this would be a new application entirely, or based off the architecture of one game (i.e. Warlords) with all the other stuff combined/changed? I really think there's something to be achieved here if we can all manage to collaborate on this. It would be a massive breakthrough if we can find out how this is done and get some modding started. As always my PMs are open if you want to bounce ideas around etc without posting everything publicly on the forum.

I'm delighted to announce that we're now accepting Stronghold Warlords maps, files, mods, missions, saved games etc to our site downloads section. We already have the new options in Warlords available for you to choose from when submitting your file. You can upload your content by going to the following link (you must be logged in before using it) : https://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/submit/stronghold-warlords/ You can browse our existing content for Stronghold Warlords at the following download category: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/category/stronghold-warlords/ Very much looking forward to what you all come up with!

I seem to be having an issue with purchase at the moment, I’ve tried from a couple different accounts but it seems to be declining the transaction...... still trying to see what’s wrong. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

How about trying to build a massive Citadel with a couple of Warlords to reinforce it, and the player has a small estate on the edge of the map to build up an army strong enough to attack and overtake it? Although, this is probably better as a custom scenario at some point!

I assume this is relating to Stronghold Crusader 2, so I've moved this topic to that forum.

Just a quick reminder that for anyone who hasn't claimed their prize yet, you have until 30 January 2021 to message me in order to claim it.

I assume you're talking here about the fact that colours are assigned in order of players and the crests represent those player colours? The answer I'm afraid to this is no, as it's an in-built game concept that the crests depend upon the colour of the player in Skirmish and multiplayer games, as opposed to changing them. The only thing you could really do is just rename the actual crest images, but to do this effectively you'd need to do it before the game is started, and know the order of the players you're going to have before you start. And if it's a multiplayer game, then even that would only work on your own machine. If you think about this, it actually makes sense because in a Multiplayer game, Firefly would have no idea which player was who and in what position, so they needed a standard way of ensuring it would always be the same. If you really want to do this with the player colours, you're probably best off starting to take a look at some of the shader files and see if you can make sense of them. This isn't something you can just walk into though, as programming in any language requires dedication, patience and most importantly time. My PMs are always open for any programming-specific questions that don't really fit into the main forum if you want, but you're best off using the forum if you have questions so everyone can benefit from the answer. I'm not trying to scare you with this, but it is important you understand that it is a commitment (however long that takes). I can see you're really passionate about this, and that's great. My honest opinion is that if you're really interested in going for this, you need to understand the background around all the files first and some of the C++ syntax. That's one of the reasons I know so much about SH2 myself, simply because of years of trial and error and looking into what things are, etc. Sometimes we spend an awful lot of time waiting for the "right" person to do something for us or the "right" event to happen, when we don't actually recognise that we are that right person to make change ourselves. You know, I first created SHN as a kid back when I was starting College. I never would have guessed it would come this far with a bit of drive and ambition. Sometimes if you don't see the light you want in the world, you have to create it yourself With a bit of guidance and support, you may well turn out as a really good programmer, who knows. The world works in mysterious ways....

Well I'm a bit late now, but Happy New Year all the same! Let's sit down, have some good Ale and wait for Gandalf's arrival!

Great question @Isaiah I'm not really a fan of the term "New Years Resolution" because of the stigma around them that nobody ever actually does them, which, obviously demotivates people into achieving their goals. But one of my goals at the moment is to balance my time a bit better, so that I'm focussing on a bigger variety of things at the same time rather than "overdosing" on certain things I enjoy. Another is DEFINITELY patience, because I always want to do things quickly, no matter what they are (lol).

Unfortunately, there hasn't been any progress, at least on my end. This is a very complicated process, and I just don't have the C++ knowledge to do this, at least for now. That's not to say someone in the future won't, but it would require many hours of my time sitting going through file after file first of all reading and digesting it all, hours of testing minor changes to try and interpret what each line of code & colour does, then assuming I can get the understanding of it all, try to change something. And as we've already said, a lot of the code is compiled anyway, so after all that there's not even a guarantee it would work. I'm happy to help you in your project where I can though, or perhaps you may know a few other people who could help as well, but it's too much to do all by myself on a single standalone project. I know you said you've discussed this with Nick on Twitter in the past, I'd be interested in reading any conversations the two of you have had- I have contact with Nick myself so I could also follow up with emails to clarify anything if necessary. Feel free to PM me the links if you don't want to post them publicly, but it may well be a starting point.

That's a really neat landscape! I particularly love the little island in the middle there off the shore. Must have taken ages to complete but honestly so impressive.

Welcome @LordOh! You know, me and @EaglePrince were actually talking about playing a Crusader game online ourselves soon. Perhaps I could add you to a three-way PM so we can talk about setting up a game? By the way, I edited your first post and masked your email address a bit so it won't be scraped by bots and spammed.

Hi @Hockeymask, welcome to the Nation! Are you sure you've downloaded the correct Java version? Can you let me know the version number and type that you've downloaded? Some for example are for server-side code or other things, so it may not be the correct version you've downloaded- I understand this can get a bit complicated. The flip side to this also is that the AI Editor is a very old program. It's possible that it does not work on the very latest version of Java because of some compatibility change. I don't really think this is the case, because I downloaded Java again just in May, and it has worked perfectly for me on my machine. However, because I don't have any access to the source code of this program, I really can't say other than my own experience, from which it has worked. If you've installed Java correctly, Windows should automatically determine that the AI Editor is a Java file and not need to manually open anything, but just double click on the editor file itself. I assume this is what's happening, that you're trying to open it with Java?

Just to let you know I haven't forgotten about you, and I'm not ignoring you. I've just been very busy. I'm not sure I can provide a quick answer on this one, as I think I will have to look into things quite a bit, but I will get back to you.

Now that's quite interesting actually. 1.4 includes all the improvements from 1.1 through to 1.3.1, but unfortunately no real official list of changes seems to exist on exactly what has been done. There is a known list released by Firefly of changes in 1.4.1 though, which is available on our downloads page for that patch here: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/downloads/file/12-patch-141-update/ Perhaps Firefly made some update in the 1.4 patch which allowed this process to work. Though it's good to know the issue seems to be solved on 1.4.1, at least. Thanks for sharing!

Hi @spin khan, Welcome to the site, and thanks for your files the other day. It's been a while since we've had some Stronghold 2 files, and they were really nice. I've split your post from the Old Stronghold Knights topic, as it wasn't really that relevant. Are you referring to the site (Stronghold Nation), or the games? Unfortunately we aren't the official developers and are only a fansite, so if you are interested in developing the games, you will have to contact Firefly Studios. However we are interested in developing a mobile app for the site at some point, although this is currently only in the very early design stages of an API. I'm happy to talk about this a bit more in a PM with you if this is what you mean though.

Welcome to the Nation, @Jm2020! I do have contacts with some of the former Admins and staff at Stronghold Knights, most notably @LordPaultheDubious. I actually approached Paul a year or so ago to ask for this exact thing, and we managed to make contact with another of the admins there (can't remember his name offhand) who had a backup of the database containing all of the things you're asking about. Unfortunately, the backup was in storage on another computer, so it never really went anywhere. I don't know if we will ever get some of the old Stronghold Knights data or not, but there are a few odd tutorials, downloads such as the SH2 Map Unlocker which are in our downloads section. Paul has also been great in assisting me by providing some of his own articles etc too. I need to get them finalised and put up actually, but I've just been so busy. If we do ever get any data from Stronghold Knights, I would port it to the site so we can display everything here so no information is lost at all. I'm totally confident that if I was to get a backup, I would be able to bring all of this information back, certainly the downloads & articles, so nothing would be "lost". However, it's more a case of retrieving it that is the problem. Hope this helps.