I've sent you an friend invite. Let's PM! :)

Ok, I just send message

Szwagiermc has been helping me to test mods and AI changes for the better part of two weeks now and has also made a number of great suggestions we are looking into.

Right now we are tinkering on a few things at the same time, meaning both AI and game modding progresses same time with other new features. No ETA, but progress right now is pretty good.

Thanks again to Szwagiermc for helping out as relentless Betatester!

Hey Zombecz!
I'm sorry there seems to be a problem. I invited you friend so we can tackle this via galaxy chat. I hope you have galaxy installed.

I'll gladly try to work you through and try to figure out what might be the problem. It definitely should work.

Cheers!

Thnx a lot! I've just downloaded it. I'll be on later and reply there.

Hey Lyranaar, your map editor is amazing! Thank you so much!!

Is it possible to create a map from a bitmap? I have a 128x128 pixels domain map and it would be great if I could import it and set the domain flags automatically.

Edit: I solved it myself. Created a 64x64 bitmap and exported it as 256-colors bitmap. Then I used a hex editor to copy the bitmap into the .l2map at offset 0x5000.

Edit 2: I'm an idiot. There's already an option that generates land and domains from a BMP.
I think there's an issue with the first color. The manual says the first color is for the 'No man's land' but it's black which is the color for the sea. Not really a problem since the map editor can assign the domain 32 to all unassigned land areas.

Hey!
You are very welcome, hope you have loads of fun with it!
I'll check back with the coder if this issue is already fixed in the (still unreleased) new version. Again sorry for missing out on the post, for forum Galaxy 2.0 is a real downgrade.
Give a shout anytime if you have suggestions or input.

Cheers!

Apologies for the resurrection, but I've been playing this game forever and just came across the editor. Very cool work, it's great to have new overworld maps, and the editor is pretty slick for a community-made tool.

I'm curious if you plan to release the source code?

At the least, do you have a table which identifies/groups the game files so I don't have to manually look at and identify them myself?

I found someone had made a new engine demo, there are a lot of missing features but it is a solid base. Between these two tools, I'm hoping I can make a little tool to convert LOTR2 native assets into a format that new engine could use.

Feel free to add me as a friend, I don't use the GOG launcher but I'll check back on this thread.

has\was there an update to the editor?

I'm have no words to describe how happy I am to find this editor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Many many many thank you to Luranaar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what I need and looking for is a way to edit castles and import to the main game of course lol.

also, there was a patch exe way back in the win95\dos days that would let you do that along with changing the army sizes.

have not been able to get it to work with the newer installs for win10, 11.

man would be a great add on to the L2Patcher.

the L2Patcher is great but very limited. Again, this is a very appreciated and I love the start locations on the map with the randomizer off.

that's me wish for this great game and again, many thanks Luranaar!

Hey jballou!

Sorry for the late reply. I have added you as friend and have you in the friends list.

Right now there is no source code release planned. I still hope though the quite some more develloped version makes it out of internal beta. Sadly, in the last years I had no head to clean up on my end and the coder was swamped as well.

As I understand quite some stuff is sorted out but I do not know in which state the documenting is. It probably would need quite sorting out. I need to ask though. It was not done with releasing any of it, that I'm sure.

Cheers!

Hey dksjr!

Happy you are having fun!

There was no released newer version. The extended newer editor didn't make it out of internal beta. Actually the internal tools, before dev and modding went to sleep, have a seperate Castle editor and a more powerful patcher that basically supports mods. The new version of the map editor can use defined castle sets and use them.

One of the problems we ran into are the limitations of the rts-AI. So it is easy to build cool castles, but the AI will not be able to play them properly if you not do it in very strict ways. So basically you need to playtest the hell out of every new castle and see if the AI really gets it.

On the modding-front I was tinkering with improving the strategy-AI a bit, changing prices and some game rules. So basically we have now some defined mods from that you can choose. There was some polishing and loads of fine tuning to do on my end, but initial feed back was good.

What exactly doesn't work in Win10/11? Is it the editor or Lords2? In all cases, did you check, that everything is not in programm files as both need writing into the games directory (and windows doesn't allow that for program files directory anymore).

What exactly did the old exe-patch exactly change? Could you describe that more?

Cheers!

Hello Lyranaar,

the old patch I referred to was called Lords Edit.

it allowed you to import the castles from the original game mapl2.exe editor.

it would replace the vanilla game wood castles with the other wood castles found in the mapl2 editor. same with stone and royal castles.

you could edit the size of your armies up or down that you were allowed to build. the same for the AI.

you could make it only play with a limited size of armies. no 1500 max size armies allowed for the player to use. 750 max size for example.

that's the editor I couldn't get to work.

LOTR2 works on my win10\11 os great.

the castles are fine the way they are in the game. it's that KISS of LOTR2 is what I really like anyway.

I have grand strategy games if I want it complicated and I'm burnt out of those for a while and love KISS games lol!

AI: the biggest improvement for me: archers and crossbowmen. I can always bait them to come out from behind protection of their army or forest in a land battle. if they would stay behind Pikemen like I use mine, well sometimes I would lose the battle.

the AI can move and place its units faster than I can. that can be a solid strength for the AI if it could place its units strategically.

the same goes for sieges.

to me: the hardest siege is when the countess or the knight own a royal castle maxed to 600. due to both of them using crossbowmen for defense. both can have many crossbowmen on the towers and walls that shred my Pikemen digging the mott....but....all I have to do is bait those crossbowmen to the walls and towers and slowly kill them off with my archers from out of the crossbowmen range. then its digging time and in I go.

if done right I can take the bishop and baron's stone and royals with very few losses to my 2(32) Pikemen diggers.

AI pricing: when I play the game I usually end up like this(not armies eat).

Bishop and Barron: early start I attack and defend against them with Pikemen and Archers and don't add crossbowmen until later if I want.

Countess and Knight: it's Pikemen, Archers and Crossbowmen.

My 1500 max army always ends up being 700 Pikemen, 200 Crossbowmen and 600 Archers. works for sieges and ground battles every time but gets really boring if I don't let the AI build up.

I think this gets back to the AI having no strategy....the long game view.

same goes for taking counties. Bishop seems to like stone quarry counties and the Countess likes iron mine counties but, they all go after counties in a hap hazard affair. leaving it easy to divide by taking one of their counties and splitting their empire in half.

Again, no long game strategy.

I would love to be forced to use other types of units that I rarely if ever use like the Swordsmen and Knights!

my hunt and peck two fingers got long winded lol. I hope it made sense?

Again, many thanks for your work!

Pikemen: they are way too strong in my opinion.

have been playing the campaign with advance farming, explore and armies eat.

I can still take a royal castle with a 1000 strength army. the only reason for the 1000+ army is to have the 32 size units.

these 32 sizes, so the pikemen can take archer hits longer and have (2) 32 strength rams.

something that can change the stats would be great.

Thanks and well done Lyranaar. The map editor is amazing. My buddy and I have been playing this game multiplayer for over 25 years lol. We play every weekend and the only map that really worked to be fair to both players was Centerville. We needed to create a bunch of rules even at that. But, in the last two days I used the map editor to redesign Centerville to play so much better. Cant wait to try it out this weekend. Looking forward to edit a few of the other maps to make them more appropriate for head to head play. Have you run across any way to edit the troop characteristics? For example, swordsman are pretty much a waste. They are expensive and go down so easy. Would be great to enhance them and make them worth the money. Anyway, thanks so much for this. Love to see others appreciate what a great game this is.