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Hello again folks!

It's Thursday, and... well, you know the drill by now. The subject for today is the message system. Basically, we have been trying to find ways of making messages less intrusive. In a single player environment, a steady stream of pop-ups is not that bad, but when you run a multiplayer game where you cannot pause all the time, pop-ups are incredibly annoying. So we added the little Message Window and nuked all pop-up messages. Those of you who have played Sengoku will be familiar with that system. However, there are problems with that approach. Pop-ups still have their place when a message is really important. Thus, for Crusader Kings II, we took a few steps back.

What we have now is a system very similar to the one in Victoria II and EU3: Divine Wind, but instead of the little flag notifiers we have the new Message Window. Message pop-ups can be customized to look like either letters or normal event windows, and can be toggled on or off for every message type. They also support custom (and fully moddable) pictures and sounds. Oh, and you will probably be pleased to know that the message log is back again. :)

Crusader_Kings2_DevDiary_20111027_02.png

There are a few special pop-up messages, such as battle results and the message you get when a child is born (where you get the option of naming the baby yourself.)

Crusader_Kings2_DevDiary_20111027_01.png

That's all for now. Next week: Crusader Pandas.
 
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I'm very happy to see the message box is back... now I wonder whether or not we'll be able to only get messages from vassals, allies, marked dynasties and neighbors (and other things that directly affect, of course)?

This would make me truly happy.

After all, I'm not really interested that King Joe Schmoe from Latvia has declared war on Estonia (when I'm playing Ireland or Spain). But I really do care if France declares war on one of it's vassals.
 
Very good point Aloriel.
I didnt care what Antiochia or Novgorod were doing when i played
Munster(Ireland) for instance.

Messages were most interesting for me regarding kids being born, marriage (kids becoming 'grown ups', which wasnt in CK1) and foreign rulers dying..oh and yeah wars starting of course.

When foreign rulers died my interest lay on two points:
Is the new leader still a children, so it was easy to intrigue or go to war and get everything you want through diplomacy (as stats arent that good yet) and..
Is the leader still unmarried

If i could do this in options/messages that would be marvelous.
On the other hand, the message system is really one of the least important parts of game development, methinks.
We'll see..
 
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siis said:
Is it possible to follow characters / mark them as interesting like in Sengoku or V2-AHD?
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Darkrenown said:
Yes.
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Aloriel said:
I'm very happy to see the message box is back... now I wonder whether or not we'll be able to only get messages from vassals, allies, marked dynasties and neighbors (and other things that directly affect, of course)?

This would make me truly happy.

After all, I'm not really interested that King Joe Schmoe from Latvia has declared war on Estonia (when I'm playing Ireland or Spain). But I really do care if France declares war on one of it's vassals.
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Is your question answered?
 
Marking them, yes. However, this doesn't answer the over all question. When I tick "pop-up and pause" on "When a nation declares war on a third party"... will I find out when every single count, duke or king in the world declares war on another, or only when it's nearby or otherwise monitored (Vassal, ally, marked).
 
This is all great news. I was afraid I'd have a hard time following the events of the world or even my own country and family. Thanks for being wise and choosing the middle road, Paradox. You make Buddha proud.
 
Aloriel said:
Marking them, yes. However, this doesn't answer the over all question. When I tick "pop-up and pause" on "When a nation declares war on a third party"... will I find out when every single count, duke or king in the world declares war on another, or only when it's nearby or otherwise monitored (Vassal, ally, marked).
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You will probably get messages every time in your example. But maybe the message system is a little bit more detailed, so no "Nation declare war" but "Duke declare war", "Count declare war", "King declare war", "Dynasty declare war" and so on (by the way - what is a nation in ck2).
But you can turn of all these and only mark these Dukes/Counts/Kings where you want messages if they declare war. Looking at message dev diary from V2-AHD there might be many filter option when selecting/marking interesting persons.
As far as I understand you will have two sets of message settings, first the one that we already have in paradox games and the second might be the same settings again but only effecting the persons/countries/nations you have marked.
For example:
generel settings: do not show messages for nations that declare war
marked as interesting settings: show messages for nation that declare war - and then you just have to add the nation you want to follow

I don't know if the following is in CK2 but in V2/AHD when you enable "show message for nations that declare war" for both, the generel settings and the marked as interesting settings than you will get messages when every nation declares war, but the messages about marked nations are highlighted
 
Crusader pandas? Would that be the Hospitallers or the Teutonic Order?

As for the dual message box/log, looks like a nice and functional combo.

iron0037 said:
Thanks for the new diary! I have one minor suggestion on the naming window. It's great that you have a suggested name and the ability to write in your own. But what if I don't care for Astrid, but I want another Swedish sounding name for my princess? Being that I'm not too familiar with Swedish names, this might be challenging without additional choices. If I'm Polish or Bulgarian or Georgian, I have even less of a clue of what an apt name would be.

So what you might do is add a pulldown menu or list of some kind where you have alternate names based on your dynasty or culture. That would be awesome :).
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That would be great, a drop down menu should do the job pretty nicely.
 
I know I just mentioned it in the former DD, but it hurts my eyes (both as a Dane and as a sailor) to see "The Sound" named "Skagerak" when Skagerak is the sea province between the northern part of Jutland to the Norwegian south coast. Is it something that will be changed before release.

Other than that I think the game sounds promising

Edit: Further more Baltic sea is the entire area from the sound and along all the Baltic coasts. Including the Swedish east coast. It would be more correct to call it Gulf of Riga. I guess you wouldn't name a single sea province Mediterranean either?
 
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Skolehaven said:
I know I just mentioned it in the former DD, but it hurts my eyes (both as a Dane and as a sailor) to see "The Sound" named "Skagerak" when Skagerak is the sea province between the northern part of Jutland to the Norwegian south coast. Is it something that will be changed before release.

Other than that I think the game sounds promising

Edit: Further more Baltic sea is the entire area from the sound and along all the Baltic coasts. Including the Swedish east coast. It would be more correct to call it Gulf of Riga. I guess you wouldn't name a single sea province Mediterranean either?
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I agree. Especially when the other seaprovince is called Kattegat. Skagerak is north of Kattegat, not south of it. I don't know what to call the sea-province otherwise, but The Sound, Øresund, Öresund or The East Sea are all good.
 
In HoI2 I have often found it very annoying that events will not let you open other screens when they pop up, for example checking minister stats before deciding to fire him or not. So please don't make those important messages in CK2 block everything else on the screen.
 
Very cool about message log. it's nice to scroll up and see what I missed (my current HoI3 settings are frustrating, but not so bad that I remember to fix them).
 
Please provide the option to toggle the message log full-screen. Please!

Bonus points if you make the message log keyword and/or pattern match searchable. And filterable.
 
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Dear lord, the opportunity to name kids? Oh my god!
 
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