Development status

[Hagar]

Well, you know, I didn't care to mod every graphical side of the game - I rather focused on the elements I thought were more important (just like the terrain and political map colors). Nothing forbids me to take a look at other gfxs, though. Feel free to ask, I'll see what I can do.

Oh, terrain is very important... But I happen to like imagery that is oozing 'vintage' terrain shots rather than generic ones. That, indeed, is all a matter of opinion. Which pretty much rules out going for color imagery, in my case. Given the interface, the B&W actually delivers in combination with the interface background colors, so I'm not complaining there, for one...

Thank you very much too, Hagar (and, re: the Kharkov shot, it took me some patience to find it. Google didn't provide appropriate WW2-era pictures for the city, so I had to scout for a magazine with good ones, which I eventually managed to find).

And it shows... It ticks all the boxes required of an image to end up in the Travel Guide, for all the right reasons.

 

[Hister]

Hagar, I might be wrong but the "terrain" feature of the mod we speak about are new terrain map mode colors that are much easier to spot and identify then vanilla ones used in CORE. You would like that terrain to look like vintage?

 

[Hagar]

Colors are no problem whatsoever... It's the province specific imagery I was referring to.

 

[Hister]

Ah I thought so. I'm not using his province specific imagery with your mod.

So do you consider implementing new terrain map mode colors? I find them so much more informative then the vanilla ones.

And there are a lot of interface graphical improvements that can be added to CORE from Tripartite Pack:

- modified counters with small symbols on the border to let you identify at a glance your armor, HQs, paras etc. even when they're in a stack (I obviously haven't added them but I'm sure Titan would be willing to implement them for CORE).

- in the unit panel:
new colored clock;
colored symbols for HQ nearby - unit in supply;
marked bars for unit carried oil/supply (at 0%-50%-100%);
new experience star;
marked ORG bars (at 33% and 66%);
new oil icon

- new attack arrows on counters (more visible)
- new coal, oil and money resource icons in the topbar (as well as the new nuke, dissent and TC icons)
- new "show arrows" icon (no longer resembling a cross)
- new map mode buttons
- darkened max zoom level buttons to be more visible
- smaller circle symbol for capital city; new nuclear reactor map icon
- new rocket site icon
- new naval fort icon
- new land fortification icon

- in the sidebar/province screen: new icons for AA guns, land forts, infrastructure, coal, oil, synthetic fuel/rubber plants (with fuel barrel and tyres to tell them at a glance)
- new weather symbols
- reversed airfield icon (no longer resembling a big "A")

All these could be inserted into CORE without much hesitation. That's what I've inserted in the CORE anyway (apart from small symbols on the border of counters) but since majority of other gamers don't know much about modding it would be neat if those would pre-exist in the mod itself.

 

[Tegetthoff]

Since Titan has given basic approval for use of some of his elements, I have started to copy some of the interface improvements into CORE and like the results:

map: AA gun, fort, land fort, nuclear, rocket site
interface: org bar, supply bar, fuel bar, experience star

I´ll probably use the weather icons, too.

There are many button icons that seem to be identical to the ones already in AoD, so I am unsure there.

 

[Talar]

While we are on graphics, why some german ministers in colour and some in b&w?
Country colours looks horrible after playing for years with the sexxicolours from SMEP, but I realise they are probably just the default ones.

I have just started my first CORE game for AoD. The level of detail, events, all the purchase events etc looks great, but individual smaller ships seem a bit overambitious. Tech tree is confusing in finding the requirements to activate a certain tech, but I should admit I have not yet read the manual, still should be nothing compared to understanding the CORE HoI1 tech tree

I would have expected research to be faster since there is more to research, but I'll see how it turns out after a couple of years.

 

[Hagar]

did you install GIP, as well as our colour graphics pack? It's supposed to supplement GIP, rather than replace it...

 

[Hister]

Since Titan has given basic approval for use of some of his elements, I have started to copy some of the interface improvements into CORE and like the results:

map: AA gun, fort, land fort, nuclear, rocket site
interface: org bar, supply bar, fuel bar, experience star

I´ll probably use the weather icons, too.

There are many button icons that seem to be identical to the ones already in AoD, so I am unsure there.

Weeeeeee! Thank you Sir.!

I'm not sure what button icons are supposed to be identical though. I don't have the pack on this laptop but I remember seeing just a few that looked alike (board on ship and the like). Not sure why he added them, maybe there's just a little change in color saturation, dunno.

While we are on graphics, why some german ministers in colour and some in b&w?

Next version is supposedly going to have cleaned up graphics which means that B&W graphical pack is going to be only B&W. For now some of those German officers are in color 'cos that is what Tegetthoff uses and he compiled his version for all of us to use.

but individual smaller ships seem a bit overambitious

It would only be so if they implemented it badly but I don't see any drawbacks here besides the hardcoded screen ratio from vanilla. It makes only one single DD in core equal to DD unit in vanilla which consisted of more actual DD's. Hope they manage to fix this screen ratio requirement but also if not - it doesn't present any major gameplay malus.

Tech tree is confusing in finding the requirements to activate a certain tech

When you will get used to it you will see that it makes perfect sense from the realism point of view of how they set it up.

 

[Hagar]

Next version is supposedly going to have cleaned up graphics which means that B&W graphical pack is going to be only B&W. For now some of those German officers are in color 'cos that is what Tegetthoff uses and he compiled his version for all of us to use.

That could very well be the case - I forgot T.'s perseverance in using the color imagery as a base for the Beta. The official release should be fully B&W, with a color graphics pack add-on. Which won't be far off, by the way. We're winding things up at this very moment for an official 0.5.0 release.

 

[Hister]

Very good! Besides that what other changes are we gonna get?

 

[Titan79]

Since Titan has given basic approval for use of some of his elements, I have started to copy some of the interface improvements into CORE and like the results:

map: AA gun, fort, land fort, nuclear, rocket site
interface: org bar, supply bar, fuel bar, experience star

I´ll probably use the weather icons, too.

Very good, then! Feel free to use all the files you like.

There are many button icons that seem to be identical to the ones already in AoD, so I am unsure there.

I'm not sure what button icons are supposed to be identical though. I don't have the pack on this laptop but I remember seeing just a few that looked alike (board on ship and the like). Not sure why he added them, maybe there's just a little change in color saturation, dunno.

Well, like Hister wrote, some of the buttons that seem identical to AoD ones are taken from original HoI2 which means they just have more color than AoD's desaturated ones. On the other hand, some really identical files are there because AoD official patches include some things from the Minor Graphics Mod which contains something I've done way back then and which I've later added to my T.Pack as well.

Anyway, please refer to my mod's readme for a complete list of the changes I've made (modded files are listed by folder location and file name).

 

[Talar]

It would only be so if they implemented it badly but I don't see any drawbacks here besides the hardcoded screen ratio from vanilla. It makes only one single DD in core equal to DD unit in vanilla which consisted of more actual DD's. Hope they manage to fix this screen ratio requirement but also if not - it doesn't present any major gameplay malus.

Yes I agree it's no big deal and sometimes even nice to see all the individual ships, but it adds some micromanagement.

When you will get used to it you will see that it makes perfect sense from the realism point of view of how they set it up.

Yes already starting to get into it and it does make a lot more sense now when some techs that I could not understand how to get to at first are activated by event. The tech-tree does not seem to cover the whole period up to 1953, but I guess I'll see if I get there. It is a nice touch that some countries are starting with doctrines in areas where they should be strong.


All in all CORE is a really nice experience and seems much more polished than I first thought. I was watching the JAP-CHI war with nofog in the early years and the JAP AI made some really nice moves and managed to encircle some 10+ CHI divisions with a very well-timed southern landing. I really would like to believe that was AI and not just dumb luck
Thought that would win them the war, things were looking good for JAP and given some more time I think they would have broken the chinese, but then they go and declare war on the allies a few months early and lose both wars instead..

 

[Tegetthoff]

Single ships were a decision taken very early on in the development of CORE. By now, most of us would have no problem to go back to flotillas, but this would be a lot of work for little gain (not just OOBs and naval build events but also unit stats and general rebalancing).

On the other hand, as our computers get faster the CPU load aspect of single ships, at least, is diminishing in importance.

 

[Epaminondas]

I was watching the JAP-CHI war with nofog in the early years and the JAP AI made some really nice moves and managed to encircle some 10+ CHI divisions with a very well-timed southern landing. I really would like to believe that was AI and not just dumb luck

You just wouldn't believe how much time the CORE team spent on getting an effective Japanese AI incorporating amphibious invasions in appropriate areas. I got a view from the bleachers and it was simply incredible the amount of time and effort put in on this. Great to see such successful results.

 

[Talar]

Nice to hear it was not a one-time occurance. Yes the japanese AI performed very well on a tactical level, but not on the strategical. They were invading everything at the same time, and I really mean everything: Mauritius, New Guinea, Philippines, Ceylon, Somalia, Oman, Iraq, Persia, Dutch east indies to name some. All of this became half-finished projects because they never completed one objective before engaging the next, like taking only southern part of Phillipines. While it is nice to see them doing unexpected things, they should not drop primary objectives closer to home for doing so. Also I noticed that they put a lot of garrisons in New Guinea (where there are no partisans) but almost none in China. Because of this they had a lot of problems with partisans on the chinese east coast.

But it looks like Nat. China could be an interesting challenge now, will probably try it for my next game.

 

[Hister]

I'm having a blast as Japan fighting the Chinese. It's a herculean effort where you sweat for every province.

 

[Titan79]

I've already posted the link in the Tripartite Pack thread but I think it would be good to do it here too. For anyone who's interested, here are my improved counters with side symbols adapted for CORE (unpack and copy the file in your ...gfx\map folder).

 

[Hister]

Wohooo, that was fast Titan! Thank you.

 

[Titan79]

No problem! Now I hope the CORE guys will put this in the mod as well...