Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #50 - Living Map

[Morrowind3]

Thanks for the reply....

Thank you for the reply. Again, I am not a specialist so I might say noob things here, but a lot of personal computers (desktops or laptops) on the market are on the high end on CPUs and low end on GPUs (typically everything newish that is not a "gamer" PC) so could not it be a worry for such computers ?
Also, I am taking advantage of this topic to ask again (sorry if I am flooding here) : Isn't graphics issues the kind of problem that might depend on operating systems and does it lower the probability of having a Linux version of Vicky 3 ?

Short answer, CPU bottlenecks are often more of a code optimization challenge than a hardware challenge. Clock speed is more important than the amount of cores, and clock speed hasn't advanced all that much the fast few years. I think it's still around the 3Ghz for a mid-range PC of minimally quad core. Something a crappy on-board GPU might struggle with would be the shaders and perhaps a lack of RAM but Paradox games have historically had graphic options for this sort of thing. In Crusader Kings 2, for example, you could disable the water shaders (or download the Flat Water mod) to improve performance which is likely to have a bigger impact than removing choo-choo trains if your GPU is the bottleneck.
The Steam page shows Linux under the system specs (The system specs itself are TBA) so I think there will be a Linux release.

Spoiler: Long technical answer

If a computer's CPU is significantly more powerful than the GPU, then the GPU would the bottleneck, yes. In that case, it would help to use smaller textures, less particles and simpler shaders, but it's still a grand strategy game, all the models are small, distant objects so the biggest performance gain there would be shader adjustments. Shaders would be lighting, for example, but probably also texture transformations like the devastation.

I don't know how far on-board video cards have come these days but I expect v3 to be only marginially more gpu-intensive than Crusader Kings 3.
A rule of thumb though is that GPUs are generally more powerful than CPU's so the CPU being significantly better is not as common as you might think.
CPUs are good at doing a lot of things at once because they run your entire sytem, GPU's very efficient at a particular task because they mostly just have to focus on doing rendering calculations for your active process. That's why people mine Bitcoins with GPU's, not CPU's.

Additionally, most games don't actually use all of your processor's cores. In fact, Paradox games in particular are known to be heavily single-cored. (Look at your CPU usage during these games. Especially the late-game HoI 4 or Stellaris, and you'll see that most work is done by a single core). My point being, is that many of those PCs on the market like to promote their octa-core CPU, but if that Octacore is 3 Ghz, you'll be able to run a paradox game better on an old 3.7GHz quad core. Without getting into details, making data-heavy games like grand strategies truly multithreated while keeping it maintainable, moddable and most of all stable and bug-free, is quite a complex task, so it's not a lightly made decision for the lead developer and management despite the performance gains.

Whether it lowers the probability of a linux version or not just depend on whether they've used any platform-specific features. Video game graphics use an API like DirectX (Windows) or OpenGL/Vulkan (Platform-independent) to communicate with the GPU. If they use a feature that both DirectX and Vulkan have, it's a matter of switching out the façade and re-establishing all the right links with the new API. If they use features that DirectX has but Vulkan doesn't, they'll need to find a linux library that does or find an egghead who can do it himself (never worth the investment). However, if you'll look at the steam page, you'll see there's a Linux tab under the system requirements (The requirements themselves are TBA though) so I think there's a good chance that v3 will be on Linux.

 

[osvaldopiazzolla]

Long technical answer

Thank you for taking the time to answer in detail. Informative, and consistent with my own (amateur) experience . Appreciated.

 

[JamesJameson]

It's not that I don't like it, it's great and I will be running it full graphics on my personal machine. I am just saying I want to be able to mod it out, what if I change it and that representation doesn't make sense anymore? If I can then great but, as far as I understand you can't even mod some of this stuff out of ck3?

 

[Soter I]

I basically thinking about something along these lines:

Bunker fire

Flamethrowers!

But much wider and with colorful battle lines like this:
View attachment 852036

PS: This is a really good example because you cant make out any individual soldiers but you instantly know whats going on here and its all done in 2.5d. Also its from COSSACKS 2: BATTLE FOR EUROPE!

PPS: I also think they already use 2D sprites for the battle animations.

PPPS: READY - AIM - FIRE
View attachment 852108

This would be awesome

 

[ashbery76]

The map is amazing.The best I have seen Paradox do.

 

[striderhce]

I've made the conscious to try to steer clear from actual little humans running around, in part due to the already tweaked scale we have for a lot of things in game but also due to the performance cost of animations of non-rigid objects like humans. When it comes to the early era Battle Units each of the 5 cultures will have their own lowest tier of infantry that are more or less civilian buildings used as cover for basic weapons.

Please reconsider this, seeing infantry fighting might seem like a small detail but it plays a huge part in how easy it is to immerse yourself in the period. Seeing the uniforms and human level dose a lot to make the game more than a map on a screen.

Likewise, warfare is already quit a departure from typical pdx games and for me this is more important than the micro/macro arguments.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Please reconsider this, seeing infantry fighting might seem like a small detail but it plays a huge part in how easy it is to immerse yourself in the period. Seeing the uniforms and human level dose a lot to make the game more than a map on a screen.

Likewise, warfare is already quit a departure from typical pdx games and for me this is more important than the micro/macro arguments.

Maybe for you. But for others, seeing the units on the map is a big distraction from the more important things on the map and breaks immersion because of the necessarily oversized people running around. That seems like it will especially be the case with the new warfare system where there is no longer a need to physically show a unit is in a specific location at all times and there's only a need to show that a battle is occurring, which can be done well with the buildings only. Unit sprites and models were already mostly a frivolous cosmetic element in previous Paradox games, and now they are even more so. With such a big departure from strategy game conventions, it's better to have a full break departure from previous games and create what is best for the new system than be held back by clinging to a few of the old conventional habits that hurt the new system.

 

[luxfelix]

Maybe for you. But for others, seeing the units on the map is a big distraction from the more important things on the map and breaks immersion because of the necessarily oversized people running around. That seems like it will especially be the case with the new warfare system where there is no longer a need to physically show a unit is in a specific location at all times and there's only a need to show that a battle is occurring, which can be done well with the buildings only. Unit sprites and models were already mostly a frivolous cosmetic element in previous Paradox games, and now they are even more so. With such a big departure from strategy game conventions, it's better to have a full break departure from previous games and create what is best for the new system than be held back by clinging to a few of the old conventional habits that hurt the new system.

*Diplomatic play intensifies*

 

[striderhce]

Maybe for you. But for others, seeing the units on the map is a big distraction from the more important things on the map and breaks immersion because of the necessarily oversized people running around. That seems like it will especially be the case with the new warfare system where there is no longer a need to physically show a unit is in a specific location at all times and there's only a need to show that a battle is occurring, which can be done well with the buildings only. Unit sprites and models were already mostly a frivolous cosmetic element in previous Paradox games, and now they are even more so. With such a big departure from strategy game conventions, it's better to have a full break departure from previous games and create what is best for the new system than be held back by clinging to a few of the old conventional habits that hurt the new system.

Well yeah that was the point of my post, for me that is important. I think a majority of players will agree that a line of flame and six cannons shooting over it is hardly a ‘full break’ from the old system. Moreover, one of the biggest advantages of the new system, as you said, is that you don’t need to interact or click on units. They could show somthing that accurately depicts a battle not just giant men.

In fairness I can see your point in that the moving lines might provide enough engagement to be interesting enough but that’s somthing that I’d need to see in game to decide on. Oat the moment it seems more a strange half-way point, of which I’d personally prefer leaning more into more varied and interesting visual combat.

 

[Challenge]

In the 1800s military planners both at the Nation's Capital and in the field, often had map tables on which they placed figures -- what we call miniatures today -- to represent units positioned on the field of battle. They moved them around as reports from the front came in. On the field level they were individual units under a single command; at the strategic level they represented larger formations and their type.*

It doesn't need to be prettily uniformed soldiers, although that would be nice, a Risk Army block would work just as well. It could be a tent, or just a colored disk. I would like to be able to see where in the world my armies are located. If for no other reason, the ability to see about how far and how long an army could travel to get where I want to send it.

Abstracting combat based on the quantity, quality, and equipment level is what all games do, really. With formation construction added into the formula we don't get/need to maneuver units, and I think that might be a good thing. But an army is not a nebulous thing that is somewhere/everywhere in my territory; it has a physical location and that should somehow be marked.

*Okay, in the field they weren't always up to date since they were busy at the time.

 

[luxfelix]

In the 1800s military planners both at the Nation's Capital and in the field, often had map tables on which they placed figures -- what we call miniatures today -- to represent units positioned on the field of battle. They moved them around as reports from the front came in. On the field level they were individual units under a single command; at the strategic level they represented larger formations and their type.*

It doesn't need to be prettily uniformed soldiers, although that would be nice, a Risk Army block would work just as well. It could be a tent, or just a colored disk. I would like to be able to see where in the world my armies are located. If for no other reason, the ability to see about how far and how long an army could travel to get where I want to send it.

Abstracting combat based on the quantity, quality, and equipment level is what all games do, really. With formation construction added into the formula we don't get/need to maneuver units, and I think that might be a good thing. But an army is not a nebulous thing that is somewhere/everywhere in my territory; it has a physical location and that should somehow be marked.

*Okay, in the field they weren't always up to date since they were busy at the time.

I imagine that would work really well when zoomed out to the paper map level; and then, incorporate the animated models when zoomed into the living map level?

 

[TalTal]

This looks very amazing! I really like! A live map is what you need) I hope that in the future we will see power lines that will cut through your states, hydroelectric power stations, reservoirs, expanding river basins, oil pumps.