Stronghold 2 Map Editor Help

Hello,

Within the map editor, I am trying to make a trigger where the player takes control of an AI player for a period of time (like in the military campaign, or when you take over Sir William?s estate to gain him honour while he is gone). Does anyone know how to do this? I saw something about controlling AI and it says enabled or disabled... but it seems to not do what I want it to do. Feel free to DM me or reply here!

Thanks :)

Hi, ImTheFrostbite - and Welcome To Stronghold Nation!

First off check your Font Color. Your Posting is not working right. Perhaps it's a software issue (Word, Open Office?)? I had problems like this once. I had to reinstall the platform.

While my intimate ''knowledge'' of SH2 is somewhat ''nil'', be patient. The majority of our Staff will no doubt have an answer!

Welcome, again!

Hey! Thank you! Also, I tried doing the SH2 Map Unlocker download and I have been having trouble getting it to work... I have the latest java JRE and just can't seem to get it to run.? I really just want to figure out how I can essentially?take control of another lord while mine is turned into an "AI" or "Friend" in-game.? It has to already exist if the campaign has used it.? The very first war mission you control your lord as well as Sir William too :P? I am super anxious!

Any update on this?

Hi @ImTheFrostbite,

Apologies for not getting a reply to you on here. I actually thought I had replied several days ago but it seems I must have been sidetracked, most likely phone calls, and then forgot I had not replied. I've since subsequently had a few technical issues over the past few days.

As far as I am aware, you can't make a trigger to take control over the physical lord of another player in the game unless the mechanics have already been added to the game, i.e. through a converted campaign map using the map unlocker. That setting you're referring to there with the enabled/disabled is probably the take AI castle option. This allows you to temporarily take over the castle of an AI player, but not the lord themselves.

What problems are you having running the map unlocker?

Also, you may want to take a read of this tutorial. While not strictly relating to your question, it may help to provide some more information into the whole process behind modifying campaign maps in Stronghold 2: https://www.stronghold-nation.com/article/283-adding-custom-messages-briefings

Hello Lord Chris,

I have figured out how to use the map unlocker now, so we can disregard that aspect.

With the map unlocker, I unlocked war chapter 8 to figure out how they made the player control Sir William's troops.? My findings discovered that there is just a command that says something like "Take WIlliams Troops" and thus it cannot be edited or changed.? I wanted to hopefully take advantage of this mechanic to be able to control the Hawk (since I like his lord and also his colour is my favorite).? It seems as though this is not possible however.? I started digging around to look at color change tutorials where I found one that involved making the player lose their estate by capture very quickly and somehow it changes your color.? This method is a great starter, but it is rather lengthy and must be repeated often for new maps.? Also, it makes the castle weird since an invisible AI will build your granary and stockpile for you, as well as your capture can technically?be captured. LOL.

Then?I saw how someone (I believe you) discovered how to change the player's color in Stronghold Crusader using HEX edits.? Is there a way an effort can be made on this?? I essentially?want to play as the hawk (lord and colour wise) in whatever map I decide to map or play....? if possible.

Again, the workaround method works, but it just kinda makes the map buggy and function weird as a result.

No worries about responding late, I know that life gets in the way and things happen.? I just was wondering if this forum was dead haha.? Happy to see work can be done!? Feel free to reach out to me anytime :)

- Frost

Also, I forgot to add... I don't know why but for some reason on Stronghold 2 Steam Edition when I zoom in close enought on my knights they get shinier and their pony-tail things turn white...??? And I always wondered why Firefly made the crests not the original for each lord.. (For example, Olaf has the Hawk as his crest).? Was wondering if there were any comments on this as well.

Thanks again!

You can change the uni files in Stronghold 2 so that you (or another unit in the game) can be represented by any character or lord. We have a tutorial on that here.

As far as being able to take control of other lords, unfortunately it's only available on an "in the box" basis with what's already there. We can't add anything different. Likewise on the hex code stuff, Stronghold 2 is structured differently to Stronghold Crusader, and it's not possible to do that in Stronghold 2. @Tokamaps has a thread where he briefly described the colour changing process, although not much came of it. You can find that here.

Be warned, though, way back on Stronghold Knights one of the Firefly developers warned that it would mess the whole game up changing the colours. You need to take into account multiplayer, the siege mode .etc. when changing and it's a massively complex operation. I actually looked into this myself several years ago but I couldn't get anywhere due to the massive amount of hard-coding of the colours and shades .etc. You need extremely good knowledge of C++ and programming in general to be able to interpret it, let alone pull it off. I suspect a lot of it is compiled (i.e. non-readable) and therefore non-changeable, too. Firefly would have to release the source code for you to edit it, which I don't see happening any time soon.

On what you mentioned about the Stronghold 2 Steam edition, I don't have that version of the game, but I know @Mathew Steel does. He wrote an article on the changes here which you may wish to read, including many of the bugs introduced in that version of the game. It sounds like this could well be one of them.

Wow, that is rather depressing to hear considering it is one of the best titles in the franchise..... Hopes and dreams shot down lol.? Thanks for all the help and info!

Yup, I do think the knight's white pony-tail when zoomed in is one of the bugs in Stronghold 2 Steam Edition, I also have it. I didn't know they hand't fixed it yet, even by now, and right now they are saying they mostly work on Stronghold Next. Luckily for me, I still have the retail version of the game as well, so I can remain on the version 1.4.1.

Steam Edition used to have some other more serious and strange issues. In castle build my mom at some moment couldn't place a building somewhere in her castle, as if at some specific spot was something invisible object.

By the way, I myself am not bothered with the fact how many of them use somebody else's crest depending on their colors, though I agree Firefly should have taken care of that. Why not William to have his own crest when orange, only in orange color, right... But what I would like more is for me to have my own crest, and to make it visible by others in the multiplayer game. Now if Chris and I wanted to play a game with our custom crest we would have to sent our crests to each other, deal who would be the player 1, the player 2, etc., and then start the multiplayer game. Too much trouble.