Hearts of Iron IV

[Neil]

That's probably going to be on the system requirements: 16 screens.

But the game will crash if you use a multicore processor.

[Josephus]

That's probably going to be on the system requirements: 16 screens.

But the game will crash if you use a multicore processor.

Well that goes without saying.

[jimmy olsen]

I loved HoI2 so much, but I never even bothered with HoI3, it just didn't look good.

This looks nice at least.

[Syt]

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/content.php?1886-Hearts-of-Iron-IV-Dev-Diary-3-Bringing-WWII-to-the-mainstream

One of our main goals with HoI 4 has been to simplify things to appeal to a more mainstream audience without sacrificing historical appeal. Initially this seemed impossible until the recent release of Call of Duty: Ghosts. The key to the success of Ghosts was the inclusion of Riley, a dog companion and playable character. Immediately the solution was clear: Popular games have dogs, and as everyone knows Hitler was famously a dog-lover, so the National Dog concept was born.



The National Dog(ND) system should be familiar to anyone who has played CK2 or EUIII/IV, as it is used in a similar manner to a Councillor, National Focus, or Agent from those games. You can monitor and control your ND from the Dog Management screen by selecting a Canine Power and then clicking on the appropriate area of the map or UI. You ND can be used for many missions, including:

Puppy Socialisation: By allowing the political elite of your national to play with your National Dog you win their hearts and unite them behind your cause, improving your National Unity.

Not one step bark: Your ND can be placed in a province where a defensive battle is taking place and will prevent units from retreating by growling threateningly at any unit attempting it.

Fetch Claim: If you are simply throwing sticks for your National Dog to fetch by the border to another country it is hardly your fault if one accidentally crosses the border and your ND follows it. However, any territory where your ND stands is sovereign land of your nation, resulting in a valid cause for war to retake it.

Ruff and ready research: Assigning your ND to a particular tech screen results in a increased research speed in that field by barking at any scientists who appear to be slacking off.

Every nation has a unique National Dog, which grant a special bonus when not employed on the above missions, some examples include:
Germany - German Shepard Dog. Passive bonus: Schutzhund. Coups are less likely to succeed.

Britain - English Bulldog. Passive bonus: Nodding. The constant nodding of this Dog's head makes visiting ambassadors feel they are being agreed with. Their good mood results in a relations bonus.

France - French Poodle. Passive bonus: Fluffy. Has a fine, white coat.

USSR - Siberian Husky. Passive bonus: Anti-tank dogs. All units gain bonus Hard Attack.

Japan - Shiba Inu. Passive bonus: Coins. Greatly increases your income as cash appears from seemingly nowhere.

In order to ensure players feel a genuine connection to their National Dog we are taking extensive motion-capture footage of all dogs to be modelled so that they move and react in a realistic fashion ingame.



Next week we'll talk about our DLC policy, but as a sneakpeak I can reveal that we noted the outcry after the previous diary revealed that Horses will not be tracked in HoI IV. While this initially surprised us, and we don't think it's for everyone, we are committed to listening to our fans, and so we are proud to announce that the HoI IV Horse Armour DLC will be available on release day!

[celedhring]

Not gonna beat the Cavalry Commander game from Matrix, sadly.

[Ed Anger]

I love cupcake dog.

[garbon]

I'm not really sure what this is, but apparently signing up gets you maybe a free DLC? Site isn't very clear (/potentially is just a pyramidy type scheme).

http://www.heartsofiron4.com/r/tm1jo06j9d

[Grinning_Colossus]

Maybe some kind of jew numbers ticker and the German player has to kill as many as possible before they go down. Oh how fun.

I've always advocated the inclusion of a POP system in new HoI titles. There are so many things it could model.

[PRC]

Here is a developer diary focusing on Naval Combat, always a contentious HoI subject.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/content.php?2013-Hearts-of-Iron-IV-Developer-Diary-10-Naval-Combat

Hearts of Iron IV - Developer Diary 10 - Naval Combat
by podcat
Published on 10-10-2014 15:27

Hi everyone! It's time to start talking about how the naval aspects of the game are changing with Hearts of Iron IV. There are a lot of aspects of naval gameplay, so we will be splitting this up in several diaries. Strategic warfare and details on missions will be in later diaries. This one will focus on direct combat and the general idea.

We had a few goals when designing naval mechanics for HOI4. We wanted it to both be able to handle the case of German surface raider ships relying on firepower and speed to tie up a large portion of the royal navy with a few ships like what happened early on in the war and the massive naval battles of the pacific between Japan and USA. We also wanted different ship types to be able to interact with each other and not make, say, convoy raiding a completely separate system.

What makes naval action so different from land is that the position of everything is not precisely known. So just because you know there is a German ship in a sea zone doesn't mean you can find it before it leaves.

To solve all this ships use both strategic areas (see Diary 7) and exact province locations. A task force of ships can have missions in a strategic sea area and this can cause events to happen. A naval event can be fleets coming into contact, or a raider or submarine finding enemy convoys. Once one of these happen the location is displayed on the map as a combat. Each mission (we'll talk more about these in a future diary about strategic warfare) controls how the naval task force is spread out. So for example if you set your task force to patrol an area they will spread out as much as possible increasing chance of finding an enemy, but because they are spread out only a smaller part of the fleet will actually make initial contact with the enemy. If you set up your task force on more of a search & destroy mission they will stick together and be much less likely to find lone ships, but when they do run into something most ships will be there for the initial confrontation. Typically this is something you'll want if you are fighting a large enemy fleet. Notice how I said initial contact, that's because naval battles can be longer affairs of positioning. Lets look at a picture:



The area in the middle is the active combat area with the ships distance to the center showing their relative distance. To each side is an area showing part of the enemy navy on the way. Depending on your intel you may or may not know what is coming (or just that *something* is coming) there. As an example from history here take a German fast heavy cruiser like the Admiral Graf Spee, hunting British shipping early on in the war. The British will be hunting for it in turn, but are spread out (so they can actually find it) so it will actually only face a smaller part of the royal navy at a time. Having strong armament and speed means that it may be spotted by a British cruiser with a larger fleet trying to get to the location of the battle to give support and the Graf Spee has a chance to take out that cruiser and get away before the rest arrive, which if it happens means they need to locate it again. This should hopefully mean that even small technically advanced navies have a place in the game.

So what about more even combat, like shown in the picture above? When large fleets meet the game will divides them up in groups of ships that will exchange fire because they may enter the battle from different directions and at different times depending on spread etc. Each of these groups is optimally one or more capital ship with a decent ratio of screen ships like cruisers and destroyers. Screens are very important because they defend the larger ships from enemy small ships that can carry torpedoes. Torpedoes have lower hit chance but when they hit they do a ton of damage on large ships. We have tried to make sure each ship type has a role to play in the battle, so for example destroyers are cheap screens that can evade large caliber fire, add anti-air capabilities and let you detect and neutralize submarines. Cruisers are good at at taking out other screens and carry torpedoes making them dangerous to capital ships if they get close enough. Heavy cruisers, Battlecrusiers and Battleships can take a lot of hits and carry a lot of firepower and Super Heavy Battleships add Cool and Flair to your fleet Carriers work like a mobile air field and can carry a variety of carrier-capable planes to project damage across the battlefield. Finally Submarines are good at destroying convoys, but can also fill a role in regular fleet combat should the enemy be low on submarine detection. A submarine starts out hidden and is either spotted if it gets too close to a destroyer or after firing a torpedo after which it will try to escape. It won't be an effective weapon against an enemy with a proper fleet, but unescorted capital ships won't have much defense. Again, another thing in favor of trying to develop a balanced fleet rather than specializing.

[Alcibiades]

Looks really interesting, will probably suck, but looks good.

[Josquius]

I just dont see how that small scale battle stuff will gel with the greater a year in 30 mins game

[PRC]

New Dev Diary for HoI4:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/content.php?2039-Hearts-of-Iron-IV-Developer-Diary-11-Map-Graphics&s=6774ab56a340a6b3ae22c5fa5def9034

Hearts of Iron IV - Developer Diary 11 - Map & Graphics
by larre
Published on 07-11-2014 17:08

Hello!

Welcome to the art portion of Hearts of iron 4(HOI4) dev diary series. This diary will focus on the visual aesthetics of the game and sexy graphic-stuff.
My name is Joakim Larsen and Im a 3D artist working with the HOI4 team on giving players of HOI4 the most visual pleasure out of the game.

Today we are happy to show some of the work we have done on the graphic side of HOI4.

For this dev diary, please ignore borders and country colors. Focus instead on the visual look of the images we will show. Borders, country colors are not final and are subject for change (Podcat: I know he says that, but I also know you all can't resists ).

When we first started out working on HOI4 we knew that we wanted a realistic feel for the game (realistic in a way that its okay having a 5km tall man standing in your province).

We felt that a realistic style would match the game and setting, World war 2 isn't childsplay(right?). Therefore instead of going for example a more stylized handpainted look we have gone with a realistic rendered style meant to mimic reality.
For this we have improved our lighting and shading substantially. Instead of just having texture channel control the specular of the item, we now have both glossiness, reflectivity and metallness (yes thats an actual word). We also use HDR, all adding up to giving a more physically correct look, and adding to the feeling of realism.

We also knew that we wanted to do alot better than Hearts of Iron 3(HOI3).



Say what you want, sure it has its charm - but I hope I wont need to have this argument after this dev diary.

With doing a world map that allows the player to be at a lot of different distances and anywhere in the whole world comes a lot of challenges.
Main ones are: How do we make the game look and play fantastic everywhere and how do we make the game look and feel different and interesting in various areas of the world meanwhile staying true to the real worlds map and making sure gameplay works?

The map has been through a lot of iterations, changes, paintovers and hard work to get to this point and we are now very happy to show it in more detail.





Gradient borders

In all our games we have tried to make the game look as pretty as possible, this is what is shown in screenshot and trailers.
Unfortunately, this is not how players choose to play, the info you need is not clear enough in terrain map mode, so political map mode is the only choice.

So in HoI4 we finally had the opportunity to try a solution we have had in mind for a while. Have a terrain map mode, with large fading gradient borders. Along with having political map mode fade in as you zoom out.

This way we can have the cake and eat it. You can clearly see countries territories when you zoom out. And when you zoom in, you can still clearly see the country border, while at the same time clearly seeing the terrain.

We have built a system that enables us to control the lighting and mood depending on where you are in the world. Depending on what zoom distance you are at, and what season your looking at, what time of day it is and if you are far out on the sea.
In short the desert feels warm, Europe feels green and winter feels cold.

We think this will make the world more believable and varied and that its a really nice visual flavour.





Terrain types

In HOI4 each terrain-type will have different penalties or advantages therefore its vital that it is crystal clear to the player so that you can see what terrain type a area has.



Weather

Weather has a big impact on gameplay but was in HOI3 hidden away in a separate mapmode which you quite often did not look at. HOI4 now displays weather directly on the map depending on zoom distance, to make it instantly clear what is going on. We will have another diary later focused on all the gameplay aspects of weather, but we simulate rain/storms, snow/blizzard, mud as well as sand storms currently.



Day and night cycle

Hearts of Iron has always had day and night, and the time of day matters. This has however not been very clear. Very early on we added night and day cycle and loved it instantly.

This feature has meant trouble for art at every turn, but we still think it adds a lot to the game, both aesteaticlly and gameplay wise.
During the nights city's light up, and everything get a more night-look.



Fog of war

To show the player what's visible and not we have fog of war(FOW) so its visually clear for the player what's visible and not.
We have chosen to go with a foggy-cloud FOW that shows mountaintops, hills and trees rather than darkening like in EU4 so that it isnt confused with night/shade. This looks quite nice and fills its purpose.





Characters and tanks

With HOI4 we wanted to really make the characters and tanks be as good as possible since they are key gameplay markers on the map.
We start with making a high resolution polygon model of the character. When that model is as good as its get we start doing a low resolution model.

Then we use various methods of transferring the details from the high resolution model to the low resolution model, making them indistinguishable with the use of normalmaps.

That starts off the texturing process where we give each area texture and makes the model pretty.



Thats all for this time!

Hope you like what you see. We are proud of alot of things with the map and alot cant really be told or shown in screenshots - you have to see it for yourself to really enjoy it.

Feel free to leave any comments and I'll read them. (Podcat: Please be gentle he is only an artist).

[Norgy]

Map barely sucks. 

[The Brain]

You have to research blackouts I see.

[Norgy]

You have to research blackouts I see.

I think they are a free tech for the Irish.