New Version in Development

[Asophix 113]

Greetings to All!

The Castle Editor for Stronghold Legends has been serving us well for almost two years now - at the time of writing -, as it allows for modifying castle layouts for all the Legends lords, in an intuitive and considerably user-friendly way. One example would be the Vlad Enemies pack by @ Sir Windows  , which brings us Radu and a handful of other characters to fight in Skirmish mode.

However, it is obvious that the Editor's design and overall serviceability does not hold up to what we would expect in current times, since this application is essentially a re-compilation of Lord Britian's SHK Editor, intended for SH2 from 2006. Even though the source code had been somewhat modernised and extended with a handful of nifty features, the underlying visual tech is still the original one. Due to its dated presentation appeal and challenging maintenance hurdles, I decided to start working on a re-implementation.

The new Castle Editor aims to bring a similar editing experience that feels more like present times, powered by the same tech presented by our Lord Editors, while also preserving portability for your comfort. The key advantage is that the source code would be fundamentally similar, while the visual style can also reminisce that of SHL with colorful backgrounds and visual elements adapted from the game itself. Some more advanced features could also be added upon request, as always.

As a recap, allow me to list the core features to be expected for the Castle Editor:

• Displaying a Lord's castle on a 100x100 grid overview, with small pictures sized exactly to the footprint of each building.
• Setting the order of buildings based on their priority.
• Placing troop markers in the layout to tell the AI where to send its defensive and patrolling units.
• Placing traps in various key locations.
• Placing 'no build' tiles in order to restrict the AI from building in places of patrol points, or the way of rolling logs.
• Taking note of a file history so that you can recall your favourite files from a bullet list.
• Automatic saving option.

And more to come. At this point, the parsing and creation of a castle file is done, and the presentation is being worked on. Should you have any remarks or feature requests, feel free to comment or send a DM to my profile!

Until next time,

Asophix

[Planewalker 16]

Fantastic news! I've been pleased with the castle editor, but there's no question that the UI feels very dated and can be hard to work with at times.