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News and latest findings about The Settlers II or Return to the Roots.

Now within European hosting

Moving the service from under United States jurisdiction to within European Union.

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The Settlers series 30th anniversary!

The first game of the series was available in stores in early December 1993!

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How to translate The Settlers II

Should you be interested on bringing The Settlers II Gold Edition to your language this is the page to read!

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How palette and lighting works in The Settlers II

This is a look into how palette and the effect of lights and shadows is achieved in original The Settlers II Gold Edition.

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Introducing BlueByte Archives!

There is now copies of original Blue Byte FTP Settlers files as a browsable site.

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Site overhaul and a new design

This change has been on my work queue since the start of the year, and I finally found the time to complete it.

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A new map generator

I have rewritten the map generator again from scratch, with new features.

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Jürgen Nagel Software site back online

Thanks to a community member The Archivist we now got one legendary site back to the internet.

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New texture pack: Rusty Polar

New alternative texture set for the original The Settlers II.

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World Editor wishlist

A minor update about the World Editor and some further ideas on features that it could have.

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A new tool under construction

World Editor utility is now under construction.

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Welcome Astro, goodbye WordPress!

A new site engine to replace the old one.

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Happy 25th Anniversary!

The Settlers II is now 25 years old!

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Map Generator has been fixed

Map Generator download feature was broken for an unknown period of time.

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TEX5.LBM Greenland Debug Texture

Another debugging tool for figuring things out.

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Texture regions

Analyzing the texture drawing a bit further.

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A new upcoming settlerish game

A new game which has a bit of a familiar vibe to The Settlers II.

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Campaign mission tool released

Settlers II Map2Mission utility.

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DOSBox emulation soon viable in a browser!

Emulation may bring in new possibilities.

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Bugs in the original game

Some insight of issues within The Settlers II.

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Map: Coast Complex

A new map you can try to play.

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Now on Facebook!

The Settlers II.net is now on FB.

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Map Generator improvements this week

Generator has been released in GitHub and are now compatible with the original game.

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Map for download

Map Generator map you can check out.

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Important milestone!

Playable maps generated, but only for Return to the Roots.

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Downloadable generated maps

Improvements done the the Map Generator.

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It's been a long time

Map Generator written as a Codepen.

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Another "minor" update

WordPress theme changed to a new version.

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Minor site update

Commenting system swapped to Disqus. Also have been hired as a programmer to a company.

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Return to the Roots 0.8 released!

New stable release of RttR is now out with big improvements to AI and speed.

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Work again drains my energy

Doing stuff continuously is hard.

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New OGG songs (for RttR)

Game songs in OGG file format.

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Replacement Roman Fortress

Another pixel art piece.

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Safe building palette

It is a palette to help making pixel art compatible with the original game.

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Improving Charburner for Babylonians

Doing some pixel art graphics work.

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New Babylonian building

More pixel art work.

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Map header's last unknown byte now known!

Knowledge of map file format is again one step closer to being complete.

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RttR Campaign

Some little work done for creating a Return to the Roots campaign.

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To validate or not to validate

Guaranteeing quality is slow.

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Hacker's guide to WORLD800.DAT

Original beta maps in a format that is usable with the later versions of the game.

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User cleanup

Spam account removals.

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Online Editor now good for map uploads!

Uploading map files is now possible.

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A lot has happened today

New technical documentation added to the site, landscape objects table.

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Gathering objects information

A new technical documentation page about objects.

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Blue Byte official site down

Ubisoft is removing existing sites in favor of moving people to Facebook.

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Forgotten projects: The New Greenland

Map based on an earlier texture pack.

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Jesus Builder

A funny glitch in the game where a water walks on water.

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One more texture ID to use

Reverse engineering discovery when analyzing the map files.

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The problems of data and performance

Issues with existing web standards not being performant enough.

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Bug fixes and added features

Improvements to Online Editor utility.

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Early version of Online Editor

Created a new tool, Online Editor.

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Getting into something usable

Letting you know about my week's plans.

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Figuring out building sites

Continued work on analyzing game's internal logic.

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Sidequest for more texture sets in S2

Experimentation to see if the original game can handle more than just the original three texture sets.

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Map handling updates

Improvements in Canvas Map Viewer utility.

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Canvas limitations conquered

Utility based on canvas.

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Setting a PNG standard

Thoughts on creating a new PNG format for easier manipulation of map files.

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Thoughts on maps, PNG & JavaScript

Have been working with the map stuff again after a while of hiatus.

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BuddyPress removed

Removed a WordPress plugin.

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Economic Basics

Short article on some basics for managing your economy in The Settlers II.

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Return to the Roots has a new domain!

rttr.info is the new domain.

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Where is the international community?

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Settlers I remake now open source

There is a new open source project, Freeserf. Get links here!

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Texture and palette differences

I have been analyzing the textures and palettes between the various game versions.

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Great LEGO buildings

Somebody made nice LEGO buildings based on The Settlers II pixel art.

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New Greenland texture

A new replacement texture for The Settlers II

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Too happy colors? Have a new palette!

Alternative palette for the game.

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The Wooden Fortress

Drew pixel art based on an old pre-release screenshot.

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Chat with fellow Settlers II fans!

There is an Internet relay chat (IRC) channel to talk with other fans.

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The missing pieces of map file format

I've been looking further into the map files and now also RttR documentation to figure out the remaining pieces of the puzzle.

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Artwork @ 1920x1080 (unfinished)

Continuing work on the art stuff.

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Talking about maps and related things

An ongoing forum discussion over at Return to the Roots forums.

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Thoughts about the map service

Map service is something that would be very useful.

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Quality map previews

A look into results of generating map thumbnails with higher detail level than the original The Settlers II did.

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Random art

Had fun in graphics editor and it resulted into this.

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Working on it after so many years

I have been analyzing and reverse engineering the map file format and looking into possibilities the format has.

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Technical documentation @ Cheats page

Work put into improving the technical documentation on the site.

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Plan revealed: an online map generator & mission builder

Thoughts about creating a new online map generator and mission builder.

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The map generator is back!

Map generator has been made available again on the downloads page. Thoughts on further improvements.

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Site updates

New content on the site such as a page for DOSBox.

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Working on a new tool

New localization tool would be nice.

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Reorganization

Organic growth of a site results into need of moving things around to make things clearer.

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Welcome to the new Settlers II.net!

The site has been updated to use WordPress. Updates on recent developments in game availability and fan activity.

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When you post on social media use tags #RttR, #settlers2 and #Settlers2Net!

You can follow Vesa Piittinen on Mastodon:
@MerriNet@mastodon.social

This site is made with Astro, source code available on GitHub