New Patch

[EaglePrince 230]

1.4 version of Stronghold Crusader has been released.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/40970/announcements/detail/1330101023049338879

 

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Updates, Steam Editions and New Games!

 

A free update has just been released for Stronghold Crusader HD. The new patch adds support for new resolutions and a few long overdue bug fixes! This will be followed by at least one additional patch for the game, as well as a Steam Edition upgrade for Stronghold 2 and new Stronghold games on PC and mobile.

 

Available for both HD Stronghold titles, today's patch adds support for two additional resolutions requested by players as well as a few small bug fixes involving archer fire and map crashes. These minor additions to the our first two games are being released to signal that they are both still important to us! Further updates can and should be expected.

 

For the time being we will continue to work toward the release of Stronghold 2: Steam Edition this summer and Stronghold Kingdoms on mobile, with cross-play available on PC. Once these titles are released focus will shift to the next mainline Stronghold game for PC.

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Now some stuff work smoother, but now I need to see how to make my game work on my other PC as well. :) Also, I haven't managed to play a multiplayer game less than an hour ago with any version of the game. I hope I'm going to make it work. Plus, it appears that the .cfg file of 1.4 is not compatible with 1.3 version. Make backups of your cfg files just in case!

Edited July 9, 2017 by EaglePrince

[Nigel 71]

In any case: good to see they are still supporting their older games. :)

[EaglePrince 230]

I agree, but I wish they supported it by giving us larger maps ability to add more players into the game, or something like that. I would pay for a DLC like that!

 

And same with Stronghold 2. They are bringing those Steam related stuff, which is good, it is, but I was hoping for more stuff that regard the actual gameplay, such as adding AI lords into multiplayer games, making moats look better (which is less relevant, but still...), etc.

[Charles of Tours 69]

For those of us with non-Steam versions of Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader, the new patches are also available here:

 

Stronghold HD v1.4: http://www.strongholdhd.com/patch.html

 

Stronghold Crusader HD v1.4: http://www.strongholdcrusaderhd.com/patch.html

 

EDIT: Now I have to install both patches on all of my computers. :lol:

 

EDIT 2: I just noticed this ... (from the article @EaglePrince shared)

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For the time being we will continue to work toward the release of Stronghold 2: Steam Edition this summer and Stronghold Kingdoms on mobile, with cross-play available on PC. Once these titles are released focus will shift to the next mainline Stronghold game for PC.

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That means we're getting a new Stronghold game soon. Huzzah! :)

[Mathew Steel 151]

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getting a new Stronghold game soon

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I hope it's not another Crusader :P don't get me wrong, I love the crusader games, but I've always preferred the non-desert games, such as SH2 and SH3. Even if SH3 wasn't the game we all wanted...

[EaglePrince 230]

Unfortunately, although Stronghold 3 is from some aspects the best Stronghold game, they left out too many things. Same holds for Crusader 2 as well. No moats, no laddermen, etc... No skirmish at Stronghold 3, bad performance on many computers... I hope that the guys from Firefly learned what they need to know in order to deliver us an awesome game.

 

And I get it that they needed 3D to sell the game, but in long terms it would be better for the game to be 2D is that will improve performance, enlarge the multiplayer community, and make the gameplay better.

[Mathew Steel 151]

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to be 2D is that will improve performance, enlarge the multiplayer community, and make the gameplay better.

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Not sure I'd agree with that today. It really doesn't take that much power to run these games, but it takes take modern components. These components have come down so much in price the last couple of years, and the bigger market for PCs is actually high-end believe it or not. Less and less people are buying from pre-made PC companies such as Dell, HP, etc, and instead are buying their own parts and buildings them. I do understand though, that in some countries, PC parts are ridiculously overpriced.

 

Whilst I still enjoy the 2D games, they simply aren't as easy on the eyes, and don't look as good. What they needed to do with SH3 was keep everything we love, but make it 3D. Instead, they decided to make a terrible sequel to SH1's story, and removed the greatest parts of the game, such as Kingmaker. Map editing was actually really great with SH3, but the game wasn't fun enough for me to bother making a map for it.

 

Crusader 2 on the other hand, is a lot of fun, and whilst it doesn't stack up to the older one, I love playing it.

[EaglePrince 230]

Well, they obviously rushed it too much, and they released it without kingmaker. And what is worse, they didn't even come back with their experience with Crusader 2 (since it uses the same engine) to implement kingmaker into Stronghold 3. So from that point of view, Stronghold 3 is simply waste of their time. Unless we count that they earned some experience with it which they later used for Crusader 2. Not to get me wrong - I do like Stronghold 3, but it's such a bummer that it doesn't have kingmaker like you said, and that it is not optimized. But the entire idea is really great - finally being able to build walls in any direction, and the way how the walls got damaged or destroyed is perhaps the best among all Stronghold games. First it would just crack, and soldiers could still walk on top of it, while if it gets hit few more time, then it would collapse as well. Also, if a catapult hits the top of the wall where are some droops, then it would knock them off. Just like in Stronghold 2, but in Stronghold 2 it knocks them off in all cases, which is not as good.

 

Now, speaking of prices... I don't know, I've recently got a laptop, it's an HP 250 G5, and I can't say the game runs smoothly on it. It appears that Crusader 2 is going to be fine in low settings, but when it comes to Stronghold 3, I feel that it's not going to work so great... Yup, this is not a gaming laptop, but it's an about 400 bugs laptop, and Stronghold 3 is a six years old game. So they failed with Stronghold 3... Performance is far below acceptable.

 

I can accept that 3D game doesn't have to have bad performance, but if they cannot make a 3D game with better performance, they better give up, and make what they can. :)

 

Also, a 200 euro GPU is not a cheap GPU. There are many people living outside EU, or USA who don't have couple of thousands salaries, and who work their asses for 400 bugs - if they are lucky. Only Western Europeans may not give a damn about that. :D

[Lord_Chris 251]

Thanks for those links Charles - I'll have to upload them to the downloads section. Even though with my awful connection it will take a very long time ;)

 

I completely agree with you too @EaglePrince, building walls in any direction was a massive bonus in Stronghold 3. I really hope Firefly bring that back in their latest game. And the different weather patterns too. That was a brilliant feature. I hope that they use a different game engine, though I do have suspicions it will sadly be the same one again - which would be very disappointing.

 

I have a strong feeling that the performance issues in SH3/SHC2 are linked to the game engine. I have no evidence to back this up, but it's just a gut feeling I have.

[EaglePrince 230]

Well, now when I think about it, yes, Stronghold 2 and Stronghold Legends are also 3D games, and they both have good performance. I suppose it could do something with the engine, what you suggest does make sense.

[Nigel 71]

I have been wondering: does anyone know how the gaming industry works with regards to engines?

 

 

My assumption is, that one company makes a game engine and another company (like FireFly) goes and licences it in for developing their game, i.e. FireFly is paying money to the enginge developer to use their engine.

 

I also assume that such a licence is limited to certain games or a certain time. Hence FF got a licence of the SH2 engine for SH2 and SHL and later they purchased a different licence (from a different developer) for SH3 and SC2. And when they saw that the SH3 engine did not work for them too well, they no longer had access to the SH2 engine to make Crusader 2 on the SH2 engine, but were stuck with the SH3 engine (and could only try to make the best of it).

 

That would also explain why we are not seing any actual game improvements for SH2 (like AI lords in MP). They would have to re-gain access to that engine and probably pay a lot of money to the engine developer, even to be able to change a single hard-coded feature.

 

 

Again, these are only my thoughts and speculations.

If anyone knows more about how this industry works, I am all ears.

[Mathew Steel 151]

In regards to your question, Nigel, it depends. Some game engines require you to purchase them, however, Unreal Engine, has in the last few years allowed developers to use the engine for free. I don't believe there is a limited time. What usually happens is that developers will upgrade or change engines depending on what they want. Of course, each engine requires the user to learn it, and hence, this can be a setback when it comes to availability!?

[EaglePrince 230]

I don't know, could that be possible that the engine used for Stronghold 2 and Stronghold Legends got outdated, and that its support from its developers had ended, or was about to end? I mean, otherwise I think that it would have been better for Firefly to stick to the old engines instead of learning how to do stuff on another one, and as we can see - they didn't handle it so well with the new engine. And my guess is that they could have known that it wasn't going to be easy for them with the new engine. I mean, if the engine is not supported, then they might have worries whether their new game would be supported for newer Windows releases, and stuff like that.

 

Or maybe that older engine couldn't support higher quality models, and stuff like that... Does seem so much likely to me, but who knows.

 

As about not getting AI lords in the multiplayer... I think that Firefly simply wants to make it easier for themselves. Keep in mind that they did have to do some work on enabling Steam achievements, Steam multiplayer, etc. I don't think AI lords in multiplayer would be harder for them. After all, it is there, only its disabled. Otherwise, how would we be able to add AI lords using the AI manager... But as we know, it still doesn't work so great, AI lords don't attack with siege equipment, so Firefly went the easier way: disable AI in multiplayer, other than trying to fix the issue with AI lords not laying sieges.

 

But if you ask me, it would be much better to have AI lords even without them laying sieges, than not having them at all.

[Nigel 71]

Thanks for this feedback, guys. Interesting to know.

 

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...Unreal Engine, has in the last few years allowed developers to use the engine for free...

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In that case, how do they earn their money? Do they get a share on sales of the games that use their engine?

 

Also, good point about learning the use the engine. There probably was a lot of staff change-over at FireFly between SH2 and SH3. So perhaps the knowledge of using that engine just got lost.

 

On the other hand, as far as I remember SHL has AI Lords in MP battles. I would think it would not be too difficult for a programmer to just look at the code for that and transfer it to SH2. But what do I know? Maybe it is.

Edited July 11, 2017 by Nigel

[Mathew Steel 151]

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In that case, how do they earn their money? Do they get a share on sales of the games that use their engine?

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That is correct. They receive 5% of the first $3000 per quarter. This can be read more here - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-03-02-unreal-engine-4-is-now-free-for-everyone-really

 

 

However, Epic, the developers of Unreal Engine, also make their own games, such as Paragon. They therefore make money from this too!

[EaglePrince 230]

I feel the same, I don't get it why would that be so hard for them to look into that, and make Stronghold 2 with AI lords in multiplayer, and perhaps even sell it as a DLC. Like I said before, I would pay for it, but as long as at least host has this possibility, so do others. I mean, same as DLC AI characters in Crusader 2 - when you added some AI lords which I didn't own at that moment.

 

Or they could make it like they did with Crusader Extreme at least...