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Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 1 - Our Vision

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podcat said:
Welcome to the first development diary for Hearts of Iron IV!
[...]
Oh, I almost forgot! Here is a screenshot of the map (click for larger version). This shows just the terrain currently. It is early and political borders are not yet polished to be accurate enough to show them off. Enjoy!
[...]
Click to expand...

beautiful, but still no globe :(
Anyway, I will buy the game... as all Grand Strategy Titles from Paradox
 
The map looks absolutely stunning - very impressive work.

I'm not overly concerned about the political map yet - Pdox have said on a number of occasions that it's not an area they have spent much time on yet. It would be interesting to see British India handled differently - but if not it will be very easy for modders to tweak that.

Pretty cruel making us wait a month for the next DD though :p
 
OHgamer said:
this is the result of the design decision made by Xie and I when we first made the map as a mod back for Vic-1. The problem is that the Americas have a wider range of latitudes from North to South vs the Eastern Hemisphere. If you went -strictly- geographic then you would have to make the surface area of the Eastern Hemisphere smaller and include a lot of empty ocean in the South in order to match the latitude of Cape Horn. This would mean reducing the number of functional land provinces in the Eastern Hemisphere since there would simply be fewel land pixels in the region and you need a minimum number of pixels per province to make them viable for gameplay without being too cluttered or difficult to click on.

For purposes of gameplay, we decided to use slightly different latitude lines in the Eastern Hempisphere as opposed to the Western Hemisphere so as to maximize the land surface playability in the East while still being able to include the sea lanes around Cape Horn at the end of South America. In the end, I would argue that the result is a highly functional map that, while not 100% geographically correct, represented a major improvement for Paradox games as a whole, something Paradox apparently must concur with as they continue to use the base map for EUIV and now HoI4.
Click to expand...

I know. In Victoria or EU it doesn't really cause any problems, but when you have that realistic sunlight, it causes daytime/nighttime to be off on the American continent.
Oh well, it's not really important for gameplay anyway, at least I would guess, I don't actually play HoI.
 
podcat said:
Yeah its a good map for gameplay. No projection is really "accurate" its all about what you need it for. We moved some stuff around as well for example the english channel is much wider than in reality to make invasions and strategic warfare more interesting. It was much too narrow for doing that ok in hoi3.
Click to expand...

Maybe one day we will finally see Paradox move to a 3D globe representation :cool:
 
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Is it just me or does the map look like someone was using it for sniff? All that snow looks like grainy white stuff... or at least leftovers thereof.

But yea, I concur - beautiful. Except for those slightly disturbing whitey dusty bits that represent snow.
 
OHgamer said:
this is the result of the design decision made by Xie and I when we first made the map as a mod back for Vic-1. The problem is that the Americas have a wider range of latitudes from North to South vs the Eastern Hemisphere. If you went -strictly- geographic then you would have to make the surface area of the Eastern Hemisphere smaller and include a lot of empty ocean in the South in order to match the latitude of Cape Horn. This would mean reducing the number of functional land provinces in the Eastern Hemisphere since there would simply be fewel land pixels in the region and you need a minimum number of pixels per province to make them viable for gameplay without being too cluttered or difficult to click on.

For purposes of gameplay, we decided to use slightly different latitude lines in the Eastern Hempisphere as opposed to the Western Hemisphere so as to maximize the land surface playability in the East while still being able to include the sea lanes around Cape Horn at the end of South America. In the end, I would argue that the result is a highly functional map that, while not 100% geographically correct, represented a major improvement for Paradox games as a whole, something Paradox apparently must concur with as they continue to use the base map for EUIV and now HoI4.
Click to expand...

So basically, the Americas being in the wrong place is the game-design equivalent of the QWERTY keyboard - a kludge that made sense at the time but which may not make sense any more?
 
@podcat
As long you have all possibilities and game-ways of HOI3, all good stuff from DH and your paradoxian new things - you bring out a good common loved project.
Btw from dev diaries: I was always feeling about global warfare in HOI3, so I am excited what you have in your pocket yet.
Map looks nice :cool: but are we able to switch somehow to a political map mode?
 
Mipe said:
Is it just me or does the map look like someone was using it for sniff? All that snow looks like grainy white stuff... or at least leftovers thereof.

But yea, I concur - beautiful. Except for those slightly disturbing whitey dusty bits that represent snow.
Click to expand...
Whaa... never would have thought of that, what's on your mind, hehe.
 
Bravo, PDS! Map looks tremendous; I've been playing HoI since the first game, and I am very impressed so far.

I do echo the ideas of others, here, about India; it really needs to be "British India," and perhaps a separate/puppet nation.
 
The map is very nice-looking but I have one comment though: will the map be functional?
IIRC the HoI3 map looked nice but made it hard to determine what type a province was, so a simplified terrain mapmode was released shortly after.

Now I'm not saying this will be the case now or that a simplified terrain mapmode is needed, but I wouldn't want a beautiful but non-functional or unclear map. That'd be a shame :)
 
Hearts of Iron V Wishlist ... Go!


;)
 
Why would you make the map 3d? It's absolutely disgusting to look at and completely inappropriate for a wargame.
I was under the impression that the more in-depth games like HoI and Victoria would remain 2d while those with broader appeal (Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, I think Ck2 is one of Paradox's best games) would be 3d.

I Implore you to rethink this design decision, HoI3's map may have been awful, but that was only because of its projection and bizarre smooth coastlines. Victoria 2 has the best map Paradox has produced thanks to its simplicity, I really think something along those lines should be aimed for rather than a 'modern' looking 3d mess.
 
-Toni82- said:
@podcat
As long you have all possibilities and game-ways of HOI3, all good stuff from DH and your paradoxian new things - you bring out a good common loved project.
Btw from dev diaries: I was always feeling about global warfare in HOI3, so I am excited what you have in your pocket yet.
Map looks nice :cool: but are we able to switch somehow to a political map mode?
Click to expand...

If you look to the top-left of the 'S' in soviet union, there's two icons for now which, I assume, are the two mapmodes that are available as of yet: terrain (mountain icon) and political (flag icon).
 
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