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EU4 - Development Diary - 15th of November 2016

Hello, my name is Carlos Lundhall.
I'm a 3D-artist here at Paradox Development Studio and today I'm going to talk about a coming visual change in the coming 1.19 patch: New vanilla sprites!

I started playing EU4 when working on the Mare Nostrum dlc to get a feeling for the game I was working on, and BAM! I was hooked!

I now have 300+ hours in the game (I know, I know, it’s not a number to brag about) and love playing underdogs like Teutonic Order and Byzantium.

Under all this hours in the game it really scratched my eyes seeing the old vanilla sprites compared to the new ones, so I decided to remake them, one by one.

Here's a comparison between one of the new vs old sprites.
old_new_comparison_tier_1_02.png


At first I was thinking of this as a personal project that would take a lot of time to realize.
But after finishing the tier 1 western vanilla sprite using my free time and what we here at Paradox call Personal Development Time (basically we get a day each month to work on what we want as long as it is related to what we do in some kind, to develop our skills and try out new things), I pitched the idea to Catalak to give me some actual work time to redo some sprites, and I got it!

From there it was business as usual, taking the sprites trough my character pipeline.

So what does the pipeline look like?

First off there's a lot of research. I have a good 1200+ reference pictures for all the different tiers combined, and it's being filled with new references almost daily (I guess I like to collect stuff).

Then comes the concepts, where I try to do it old school style and just draw it on paper.
concpets.jpg

As you can see I had the ambition to remake the tier 1 cavalry also, but there was no time for that.

Next thing is to make the sprite!

I'm not going to bore you guys to death with all the technical 3D stuff that goes into making a model, so in short the process is as follows:
* Concept
* High poly modeling
* Low poly modeling and UV mapping
* Texturing
* Get the model into the game.

This picture below visualizes the process in a VERY rough manner.
process.jpg

Also there’s a lot of feedback from my dear colleagues, especially mr Carlberg, whom is a bottomless well of history knowledge and technical 3D stuff.

I stumbled upon some obstacles along the way, one of the biggest obstacles was that there was some tags that used copies of the vanilla models, and were unique in the script.

This gave me some countries that needed either
1. be redirected to use the new model and texture, and be colored with dynamic coloring, or
2. to make unique textures for them.

I went with the second option, here's some of them.
renders_tiers_1-4.jpg


Finally I remade the weapons also, I felt that they too needed a level up in visual quality.
western_generic_weapons_remake.png



And here's the final sprites.
western_generic_remake.png

For the tier 3 sprite I felt that we had such high quality material already, so I put together a sprite from existing parts.


So that was all for me.
Thank you for your time and I hope you enjoy the new sprites!
 
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@Nifelfang did countries like Denmark, Castille, and England really have their flag/Coat of Arms on the front of their uniforms? Or is that just done to make them stand out from each other?
 
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1. Create an .asset file that will contain following lines: (let's name it say "france.asset")

Code:
entity = {
   name = "FRA_INFANTRY_4"
   pdxmesh = "FRA_INFANTRY_4_mesh"
   version = 2
 
   state = { name = "idle"        animation = "idle" }
   state = { name = "walk"        animation = "walk" }
   state = { name = "attack"       animation = "attack" }

   attach = {
       Left_hand_node = "western_musket_2"
   }
}


2. Create create a new folder in your Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\mod folder and name it say France. In this folder, create a chain of two more folders that will look like this:

Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\mod\France\gfx\entities

3. Put the new asset file in the "entities" folder.
4. Create a .mod file and name it the same way as your mod folder (thus France.mod) in the "mod" folder. It should contain at least these lines:

Code:
name="France"
path="mod/France"
supported_version="1.19.*.*"


5. Enable your new mod in the launcher

You can name the files and the mod however you want of course, unless you are using tons of mods and need to adjust your load order.

Sorry for shitty formatting, shitty advice skills and shitty modding skills.

This will not work for 1.18 and older patches of course.

Thank you very much! I will keep this code in handy for my personal mod, because right now I'm still on 1.18.
 
Looking really good!

Any chance for my precious Castile/Spain to get personal Tercio skins? They didn't really have a predetermined uniform, for a good part every soldier had to buy his own armour. Still, for some inspiration:

Batalla_de_rocroi_por_Augusto_Ferrer-Dalmau.jpg
 
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Looking really good!

Any chance for my precious Castile/Spain to get personal Tercio skins? They didn't really have a predetermined uniform, for a good part every soldier had to buy his own armour. Still, for some inspiration:
[/spoiler]
Castile/Spain already has their own Tercio style model in the Catholic Majors pack. I don't think they'll make a new one as these are just for non-dlc owners.
 
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Would any of you like to see more details on unit sprites? I'm not thinking about their armour details. What I'm thinking is units displaying information. If they are sitting or kneeling on one leg then the maintenance of owner must be low. Soldiers after won battle would rise their weapons in cheer (better visible on post battle screens) and when shattered they would have visible damage on them. Something like reinforcing units and recovering morale could also be its own sprite progression.

Armies with better generals would have some extra bonus on them too.

Some idle animation would cover things like cleaning weapon, feeding horse or taking care of cannon etc.
Would more things like that affect performance? One could also limit (or disable) visible state of soldier sprites to those outside of fog of war.
 
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@Nifelfang did countries like Denmark, Castille, and England really have their flag/Coat of Arms on the front of their uniforms? Or is that just done to make them stand out from each other?
This was something that struck me as well.

Uniforms only began to appear in the 17th century, and it was a result of it being the cheaper option - it was less costly to outfit a large number of people in the same garment when you have a territorial army of people who are not full-time professional soldiers. Before that, people wore their own clothes and as a result armies looked very colorful. There would be regulations where members of a certain army would be made to wear a band of the same color, so they could tell friend from enemy on the battlefield - language wasn't an option because armies were very varied on language and ethnicity. Look at the "last tercio" painting in the wikipedia page for the battle of Rocroi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rocroi Notice the pieces of red cloth tied around soldiers' arms.

The Landsknechts are reported to have loved wearing very colorful clothing, the more colors the better. Much of it consisted of pieces of loot which they would simply wear, in addition to what they had stowed away in the baggage train.
 
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On a sidenote, here is a feature change I would really applaud:

Make battle results be calculated immediately and battles last one day only, like in the AGEOD games, and instead of animation on the map, show a short pre-rendered movie in the results window, similar to Shogun Total War's pre-rendered clips that were showing success or failure of an agent's action. That would be both more historically correct and look better cosmetically.
 
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On a sidenote, here is a feature change I would really applaud:

Make battle results be calculated immediately and battles last one day only, like in the AGEOD games, and instead of animation on the map, show a short pre-rendered movie in the results window, similar to Shogun Total War's pre-rendered clips that were showing success or failure of an agent's action. That would be both more historically correct and look better cosmetically.

What happen when I try to reinforce a fighting army using another army in forced march?
 
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Hello, my name is Carlos Lundhall.
I'm a 3D-artist here at Paradox Development Studio and today I'm going to talk about a coming visual change in the coming 1.19 patch: New vanilla sprites!

I started playing EU4 when working on the Mare Nostrum dlc to get a feeling for the game I was working on, and BAM! I was hooked!

I now have 300+ hours in the game (I know, I know, it’s not a number to brag about) and love playing underdogs like Teutonic Order and Byzantium.

Under all this hours in the game it really scratched my eyes seeing the old vanilla sprites compared to the new ones, so I decided to remake them, one by one.

Here's a comparison between one of the new vs old sprites.
View attachment 219044

At first I was thinking of this as a personal project that would take a lot of time to realize.
But after finishing the tier 1 western vanilla sprite using my free time and what we here at Paradox call Personal Development Time (basically we get a day each month to work on what we want as long as it is related to what we do in some kind, to develop our skills and try out new things), I pitched the idea to Catalak to give me some actual work time to redo some sprites, and I got it!

From there it was business as usual, taking the sprites trough my character pipeline.

So what does the pipeline look like?

First off there's a lot of research. I have a good 1200+ reference pictures for all the different tiers combined, and it's being filled with new references almost daily (I guess I like to collect stuff).

Then comes the concepts, where I try to do it old school style and just draw it on paper.
View attachment 219043
As you can see I had the ambition to remake the tier 1 cavalry also, but there was no time for that.

Next thing is to make the sprite!

I'm not going to bore you guys to death with all the technical 3D stuff that goes into making a model, so in short the process is as follows:
* Concept
* High poly modeling
* Low poly modeling and UV mapping
* Texturing
* Get the model into the game.

This picture below visualizes the process in a VERY rough manner.
View attachment 219045
Also there’s a lot of feedback from my dear colleagues, especially mr Carlberg, whom is a bottomless well of history knowledge and technical 3D stuff.

I stumbled upon some obstacles along the way, one of the biggest obstacles was that there was some tags that used copies of the vanilla models, and were unique in the script.

This gave me some countries that needed either
1. be redirected to use the new model and texture, and be colored with dynamic coloring, or
2. to make unique textures for them.

I went with the second option, here's some of them.
View attachment 219046

Finally I remade the weapons also, I felt that they too needed a level up in visual quality.
View attachment 219048


And here's the final sprites.
View attachment 219047
For the tier 3 sprite I felt that we had such high quality material already, so I put together a sprite from existing parts.


So that was all for me.
Thank you for your time and I hope you enjoy the new sprites!
Oh my god, please do western cavalry next. I'd ruin my pants seeing a fully plated knight sprite.
 
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What happen when I try to reinforce a fighting army using another army in forced march?
One tick equals one day, sorry. :)
 
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