Welcome to another Dev Diary for Waking the Tiger! Today is a dev diary of sights and sounds, so first I’ll be handing over the mic to @Metal King to talk about what we are doing on the sound front.
Sounds and Music
Hey guys, @Metal King here! Once again I’m back to talk about audio improvements and also shortly about the new music which is included in the expansion.
For this I’m going to talk a bit about improvements we have done for this expansion which has been focused on combat ambient! Some time ago, even before we started working on the current expansion, I was in the Workshop page to look around for what kind of audio mods the community liked. While going through various mods which mostly were about music, which was not surprising, I found a certain mod that had exchange all my assets and added more audio assets with more focus towards combat. It made me realize that guys would love to have more sfx whenever your troops are in combat in the game.
So I started trying convince all involved that this was something we want to add for a upcoming expansion and that you guys would enjoy this addition a lot! After that everything got approved we started to create new audio assets that were going to work more as a ambient for combat and which you would also be able to hear even if you don’t see any animations on a certain distance (the screaming is actually the HoI team being subjected to some very awful puns). So in the end if you have enough units in combat the game will start triggering these ambient tracks that not only increase in volume the more units are in the combat, but also trigger different sound effects depending on what kind of units you have in your division. So if you’re sending in a division with infantry and AA-artillery you will start hearing flak cannons shooting in the background during combat or if there is a lot of tanks, well then you get to hear more tanks.
I’m can write all I want about how the various ambient tracks sounds like and how it will play in the game, but I think it is better show you a demo that I made during the development so can instead listen to the results. Also in this video there is a sample from one of the new track that is written by Andreas Waldetoft and is recorded by orchestra in Budapest. The two other tracks are written by another composer with collaboration with Head of Music.
Art and Visuals
One of Waking the Tiger’s main focuses are the generals, which are now much more interesting and central to the gameplay. The Chain of Command feature also meant that most playthroughs should see significantly more generals being used. To make them feel more distinct and prevent the appearance of clone armies, we have added a large number of new generic portraits to the game - about 30 new ones spread across all continents, with Europe and Asia receiving the lion’s share.
Of course, we have also added historical portraits for the named Generals of China as well as some new leader art for the alt-history branches of Germany.
With the new focus tree (-branches), we also had a lot of fun with new focus icons. I think the Japanese Kraken and the Great Red Menace really knock it out of the park in terms of quality.
Also, have a look at the new national spirit icons you will see in the game. Some of these are part of a sequence of national spirits that show various levels, like Manchukuo’s Low Legitimacy or Nationalist China’s Inflation.
To add more visual flavor to China there is also also new 3d models. For China and the warlords there isn't really a lot of historical tanks that we normally do, so we decided instead to flesh out infantry related models. We have new cool cavalry models (with swords!) as well as artillery pieces and other things to make them stand out. Check out these awesome high-poly renders:
And this is what the cavalry looks like on the charge ingame:
Finally, we have a little treat for you: The loading screen for Waking the Tiger as a Wallpaper:
(pick the one that matches your screen resolution among attachments below)
That’s all for today. In the stream today, Daniel and Gabriel will take out Nationalists China for a spin, so tune in at 1600 CET at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive and watch them trying to survive against the Japanese onslaught.
See you again next week where we will be getting our feet wet with some more changes for the 1.5 Cornflakes update coming together with Waking the Tiger.
Sounds and Music
Hey guys, @Metal King here! Once again I’m back to talk about audio improvements and also shortly about the new music which is included in the expansion.
For this I’m going to talk a bit about improvements we have done for this expansion which has been focused on combat ambient! Some time ago, even before we started working on the current expansion, I was in the Workshop page to look around for what kind of audio mods the community liked. While going through various mods which mostly were about music, which was not surprising, I found a certain mod that had exchange all my assets and added more audio assets with more focus towards combat. It made me realize that guys would love to have more sfx whenever your troops are in combat in the game.
So I started trying convince all involved that this was something we want to add for a upcoming expansion and that you guys would enjoy this addition a lot! After that everything got approved we started to create new audio assets that were going to work more as a ambient for combat and which you would also be able to hear even if you don’t see any animations on a certain distance (the screaming is actually the HoI team being subjected to some very awful puns). So in the end if you have enough units in combat the game will start triggering these ambient tracks that not only increase in volume the more units are in the combat, but also trigger different sound effects depending on what kind of units you have in your division. So if you’re sending in a division with infantry and AA-artillery you will start hearing flak cannons shooting in the background during combat or if there is a lot of tanks, well then you get to hear more tanks.
I’m can write all I want about how the various ambient tracks sounds like and how it will play in the game, but I think it is better show you a demo that I made during the development so can instead listen to the results. Also in this video there is a sample from one of the new track that is written by Andreas Waldetoft and is recorded by orchestra in Budapest. The two other tracks are written by another composer with collaboration with Head of Music.
Art and Visuals
One of Waking the Tiger’s main focuses are the generals, which are now much more interesting and central to the gameplay. The Chain of Command feature also meant that most playthroughs should see significantly more generals being used. To make them feel more distinct and prevent the appearance of clone armies, we have added a large number of new generic portraits to the game - about 30 new ones spread across all continents, with Europe and Asia receiving the lion’s share.
Of course, we have also added historical portraits for the named Generals of China as well as some new leader art for the alt-history branches of Germany.
With the new focus tree (-branches), we also had a lot of fun with new focus icons. I think the Japanese Kraken and the Great Red Menace really knock it out of the park in terms of quality.
Also, have a look at the new national spirit icons you will see in the game. Some of these are part of a sequence of national spirits that show various levels, like Manchukuo’s Low Legitimacy or Nationalist China’s Inflation.
To add more visual flavor to China there is also also new 3d models. For China and the warlords there isn't really a lot of historical tanks that we normally do, so we decided instead to flesh out infantry related models. We have new cool cavalry models (with swords!) as well as artillery pieces and other things to make them stand out. Check out these awesome high-poly renders:
And this is what the cavalry looks like on the charge ingame:
Finally, we have a little treat for you: The loading screen for Waking the Tiger as a Wallpaper:
(pick the one that matches your screen resolution among attachments below)
That’s all for today. In the stream today, Daniel and Gabriel will take out Nationalists China for a spin, so tune in at 1600 CET at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive and watch them trying to survive against the Japanese onslaught.
See you again next week where we will be getting our feet wet with some more changes for the 1.5 Cornflakes update coming together with Waking the Tiger.
When asked for rejected titles, Gabriel simply mentioned that he felt a lot like Oppenheimer, having unleashed something terrible upon the world.
