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EU4 - Development Diary - 19th of May 2016

Hello all, time for another EU4 dev diary!

I'm Catalack, the producer of all things DLC for all PDS in-house titles. This time I've been invited to talk a bit about the production process of our DLC's - that is; content packs, unit packs, music packs... any type of pack really. These are usually released alongside the expansions and most of the time involves cosmetic content.

Buckle up!

How DLC's are born
First off there is always the brain picking. This is the part where I hunt down the designers for what type of content they actually want to accompany the next expansion. In EU4's case this usually means Johan, Wiz and in more recent times DDRJake. This step has a varying degree of difficulty since some projects have a detailed wish list with ideas already, and some don't. Sometimes it requires making designers sit down and iron out details over an after work beer. EU4 has a well thought out plan for future content packs though, so it's usually no sweat. CK2 on the other hand…

It does also happen that I put together my own suggestions for what should go into the packs. These suggestions still need to be looked at by the designer, but it usually means less work for them.

It can look something like this:
7KtY6yL.png



Brand Team Says Yay or Nay
When the designer or product owner has given their thumbs up on the content, it's off to the Brand Team for a final confirmation before production starts. This is the part of the company where all the different parts of the organisation syncs up. Devs, sales, marketing, production etc, and it's the final threshold for any type of content that will at some point reach our customers and players. The Brand Teams at Paradox are usually very quick to respond to any type of situation and while we agree with each other most of the time, it has happened that some content needs to be cut or altered for various reasons.


Production begins
When a pack has been approved by all relevant instances, it's time to decide who does what. We have a couple of really talented in house artists and composers, as well as third party studios who sometimes help out when our in-house resources are too strained working on main expansions rather than cosmetic DLC.
Usually the work is split between both in house people and outsourcing.

Worth to mention here is that we try to also make use if our dedicated community, as we have several third party content creators who are fans and modders. Collaborating with them gives us both an excuse to pay them for their dedication, as well as opportunities to work with people who actually knows our games, rather than a random outsourcing studio who might have the technical know how, but not be familiar with games such as ours. I'm amazed at what some of them go through for the sake of making our games better. Cudos.


Historical Research
This is a topic I expect many of you are interested in! Content production always begins with extensive research and mock ups. Both me and each content creator put in a lot of time on doing the research for each piece of content created. We have a lot of history buffs both among artists and scripters, so this step usually goes pretty smoothly.

The only problem is when sources lead back to... our own games and wiki.

Here's an example of what a mock up can look like:
PNtYx2T.jpg

One of my personal favorites. The Cossacks was really fun to work with.

Good sources can sometimes be really hard to come by, and can affect the end result negatively, as we saw recently with the Mare Nostrum Content Pack.
We recently hired an artist specifically for the purpose of keeping track of outsourced material and DLC creation. I'm happy @Carlberg has joined the team!


When the art happens
After the mockups are approved, 3D work starts. This is sometimes a challenge since we have to balance the restrictions of Clausewits with a proper level of details to make units quickly recognizable at a distance - since most people play with camera zoomed out.

Example:
1Wwf8VJ.jpg



Final prep and the deep dark depths that is the Steam Backend
When all content is done and delivered, I package it and make sure everything works in game. Then I leave it in our QA departments capable hands, and wait for release to come around.

That is when I must enter the Steam backend jungle. If you ever apply for a job where the job description says "experience with steam backend", turn around and run. Unless the position is at Valve because then I urge you to please take the job and update the steam backend and make it a bit more user friendly!

Anyway, here I set up all relevant depots and give them fake names to prevent data mining/leaks among other things.
Coming up with fake names is one of the highlights of this step:
HV5gQ6V.png


Not to worry, just before release I give them their proper names!

It’s usually around this time that we also post renders on the forums and get some feedback from you guys.
Example:
jNMe0mX.jpg



Rinse Repeat
And after release, the whole process starts all over again! I usually have all of the different projects up and running at the same time, and so I'm always in the beginning, middle or end of any one DLC cycle.


And never once is it boring.


//Catalack
 
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can u have polls on Twitter or the forum to have some fan input on any upcoming unit packs?

I for one would love to see some love for Malacca, Korea, Japan and Kongo.
 
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Nice dev diary about the inner workings of DLC content. One question, with so many studios and outsourced work, how do you keep a certain artwork standard?
 
Thanks for your awesome work and for the much needed update on the italian units. Since this thread is about content packs, I would like to ask if it was intentional that the older Mamluk cavalry models were replaced intentionally? I know the new ones have better textures, but I like when there is more diversity :p

Any word on the evangelical majors? The units are already present on the exporter ad so I guess it's just a matter of time, I can't wait to finally try some Prussia or Sweden game :)
 
The Brand Teams at Paradox are usually very quick to respond to any type of situation and while we agree with each other most of the time, it has happened that some content needs to be cut or altered for various reasons.

could you give an example of that, i.e. for what reasons content get cut by the Brand Team?
 
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I just wonder, it's related to EU4, do you guys ever considered to dynamically change scale of 3d models? It happens that I am playing almost exclusively zoomed out, so I am not sure if I had seen one 3d model once. My idea is that maybe somehow, when map is zoomed out models are scaled up so that you had general idea where your army is located and have look and feel of your culture. It could be interesting to see on less detailed maps all bigger groups of armies that are visible for you and even inspect them.
 
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Why Italian Go-Kart? :D
 
This is a great dev diary! Really interesting to find out a bit about your processes. And also keep pumping out the Unit Packs they are really amazing addition to the game!
 
We tried to fix most of the things we got feedback on, although we didn't have time enough to fix everything.

Any chance on changing the Purple Phoenix unit models, then?
 
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I'm much more interested if anyone at Paradox saw "The Deluge" (1974) ;)
I think @Carlberg actually watched it, or parts of it. We definitely did a lot of research into the "reply" and took lots of inspiration and references from those scenes.

can u have polls on Twitter or the forum to have some fan input on any upcoming unit packs?
Sounds like a fun idea, we should poke Johan about it!

Other changing is coming to mare nostrum content pack?
I'm just here waiting for them to fix the Mare Nostrum content pack
We did a major overhaul of those units and released with the latest patch last week. Italians are all updated and we fixed some of the textures and models of the other countries as well. Go check it out! :)

Nice dev diary about the inner workings of DLC content. One question, with so many studios and outsourced work, how do you keep a certain artwork standard?
This is a really good question actually. It's pretty difficult from time to time, especially when we're closing in on a deadline and have less time to put into giving feedback for our third parties. Here are some of the things we do to keep these things together:
- We have a tight knit team of artists in-house who keep track of the artistic vision of all our games.
- We also have a dedicated dlc-artist who, together with me, is in constant contact with all our third parties, usually via chat. This allows us to provide quick feedback and support for the third parties at all times, and for us to keep them in line with our vision.
- All outsourcers get exstensive guides for what workflow and level of quality we expect when collaborating.

Any word on the evangelical majors?
Unfortunately not. This ball is in another part of the company now and out of my hands.

Why do you usually not bother with artillery units when they're the same as infantry ones?
Because the infantry is scripted to artillery within the game, and often the designs are very similar. We do have some unique ones though!

Broken pictures! Post them again please
Are they working now?

could you give an example of that, i.e. for what reasons content get cut by the Brand Team?
Often it's about money, for example if there's a sale we might want to add more, or if we have a release parallel with something else we don't want to compete with we might make the Content Pack smaller than first planned. Sometimes though it's that we realize that content didn't fit because of reasons we didn't first think about. These are obviously a bit of a sensitive topic to discuss so unfortunately I can't be more specific than that.

I just wonder, it's related to EU4, do you guys ever considered to dynamically change scale of 3d models?
Interesting idea! Don't think we'd implement it anytime soon, but cool idea nevertheless!

Europa Universalis IV: Tribal Cooking Simulator.
A personal favourite of mine :cool:

Why Italian Go-Kart? :D
Well I was just researching the Italian units there, and I had also been playing a lot of Mario Kart in my free time, soo.. yeah. There you go :oops:
 
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We did a major overhaul of those units and released with the latest patch last week. Italians are all updated and we fixed some of the textures and models of the other countries as well. Go check it out! :)

Would it be possible to update the content render thread to reflect it?
 
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