Development Diary #29 - 20th of May 2009

[kingterranes]

An important note:

Make red attacking and green defending, The two colors reflect the opposite better in my opinion.

To have it less confusing




Epic work once again.

[Prinz Jakob]

The "our forces are under attack" window looks cluttere though with all the icons and flags.
Might look better and be easier to read quickly as two lists on either side of the window. With forces of the category across from one another with the totals at the top of each collumn. That should make it easy to quicly evaluate the strength of the armies.

Agreed!

[Registered]

An important note:

Make red attacking and green defending, The two colors reflect the opposite better in my opinion.

To have it less confusing

Nah, it makes sense as it is. Red is the colour of danger after all and the enemy's atacks are more dangerous to you than your own.

[Neomann]

Great DD, I wish I was in Augustus tu buy the game!

[wolf1455]

Good show, cant wait to play it.

[GrimReaper]

Nice goodies! Why is it so long to August?

[Chaplain]

Really fantastic details for AAR writers. :-)

[Azkor]

Hello, and welcome to the 29th issue of the development diary. This week, I was going talk to you about the little details that make the game so much easier and fun to play.

Snip...

Have you ever cursed the slider interfaces in Hearts of Iron? With the new “need” buttons you can always just click it to get the slider at the position for what is required. Of course, if you lack enough IC for all your needs, you still have to manually adapt your slider.

There is plenty more of nice things in the interface for this game, but this is enough for today.

Wednesdays are my favorit days of the week now. This little gem here is a god send, thanks Johnan and company. Also the attack/defend progress box is a SUPER idea. Letting us at a glance see the battle status without having to dril down to each battle is amazing.

[Gigalocus]

Oooh! Lots of colour coded hints! ... Which are of course pointless for me

I'm sure they'll be great additions though

Nice updates

[ok2useLane]

Great dev diary!!! What a teaser... These get me more and more excited to play this game!

[Rommel22]

Absolutely love the last screenshot, not that I don't the rest of them and the entire dev diary. But the fact that the reports details what units are attacking with what amount of soldiers is great!

[Gixian]

Nice and handy tools!

And, what is important too, i just have to say that I love the graphics of all the GUI. Just an awesome work.
(the gui graphics looks better than the map/units graphics, and from the screens Johan posted so far it's obvious HOI3 will have the by far the most beautiful gui a paradox game ever had)

[Arcanjo Zero]

The "our forces are under attack" window looks cluttere though with all the icons and flags.
Might look better and be easier to read quickly as two lists on either side of the window. With forces of the same category across from one another with the totals at the top of each collumn. That should make it easy to quicly evaluate the strength of the armies.

I agree too.

[merlin2199]

Despite being the third in the series, this is turning out to be a landmark release.

Kudos! Keep up the good work, as with many titles past, you'll be having my money soon as it hits the shelves

[Bobb4]

I assume the movement arrows will be linked to sprites as well?
I assume they can be turned to always on so you can see at a glance whether your units in a theater are in combat moving into an empty province or about to engage. This will be particularly useful in monitor AI controlled theaters or army groups.
Now a suggestion for the combat boxes, turn them into either red or green splashes. They will just look better.
Stunning stuff.

[ok2useLane]

Sometimes as a developer you do not see the forest for all the trees. One great suggestion by the beta tester Luka, was to show combat progress on the map, where the battles are actually fought. So I went ‘DOH’, why did not I think of that, and told podcat to code it. Here’s how it looks, with red blocks indicating where you are defending, and green blocks indicating where you are attacking. The numbers indicate your progress of either losing or winning the battle.

Will we be able to turn this feature off? It can also go the other way and be too much info, at times.

[Gixian]

The "our forces are under attack" window looks cluttere though with all the icons and flags.
Might look better and be easier to read quickly as two lists on either side of the window. With forces of the same category across from one another with the totals at the top of each collumn. That should make it easy to quicly evaluate the strength of the armies.

Yes, something like in battle description on wikipedia, a column based view could look more clear...

For illustration, it could look something like this>>


instead of the Johan's>>

[Guillotine]

Agreed - a split column view looks much better

Excellent DD overall

[Inner Circle]

Yes, something like in battle description on wikipedia, a column based view could look more clear...

For illustration, it could look something like this>>

I´ll support this one

a very good DD Paradox!

one question: can these features be turned off at any time?

[ok2useLane]

Yes, something like in battle description on wikipedia, a column based view could look more clear...

For illustration, it could look something like this>>

Yes!
Sorry, Johan... But this is easier on the eyes...especially after hours of playing the game.