HoIIV - Developer Diary 11 - Map & Graphics -[ NO COUNTERS DISCUSSION ]

[Filou]

So when designing hoi4 we decided we wanted both a pretty model that could show stuff a counter couldnt (stances, tech levels, maybe more) and a counter below it giving you as much information as quickly and completely as possible.

I had missed that models will give info on equipment and stance. I guess that's reason enough to try to work with them.
The counter grouping was one of the first thing that I noticed on the gamescon video and it's a great addition btw.

On the other hand at the moment the counters don't increase in size as you zoom-in, at least that's what comes out of the series of images in the first post. I just find it weird that fully zoomed-in we don't see the flag and org/str bars in more details. Hopefully this is part of the stuff that is the works.

Thanks for taking time to address this issue.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

Overall I like the map a lot it appears to be a big improvement over HOI III; having said that I have to join the counters bandwagon, please give us the option of replacing the 3d models by NATO counters (just like in HOI III). I never had trouble keeping track of my units, their strength and organization in HOI III and I always used counters. Also not having names in all provinces with the exception of VPs will be hard to get used to it (and takes away some of the education value of playing these games) and I reckon that it will be even harder for AAR writers.

 

[Had a dad]

yeah I have the same problem. its on the long list of cool-stuff-that-would-be-awesome-to-get-in list, so eventually it will probably happen.

I look forward to seeing the long list of things you want to get in as HOI IV continues to grow.

 

[Kesselschlacht]

I have to say it's a little surreal to be reading a gaming thread where people want a game to look old lol. I play all sorts of games and I've always been of the opinion that how it plays is far more important than how it looks. This is the age old "substance overy style" argument except there seem to be people who could care less how much substance they get, they simply will not accept any style. I have some things I would like to see IV work a bit different from III and eagerly anticipate the DDs that touch on those aspects. If a 3d map or model will keep you from playing a great grand strategy game you aren't really a grand strategy gamer.

I'm probably making a mistake letting myself get dragged into this one but it's not a question of liking it old; it's a question of liking it not silly.

To represent one or more armoured divisions with a tank model, and one or more infantry divisions on their own with a rifleman, is the equivalent of representing France by using a little mime walking against the wind instead of the Tricolour and the UK with a toff in a bowler opening his umbrella instead of the union flag.

Sure, it gets the job done but there's already an established way of representing that graphically - why not allow those familiar and comfortable with it to use it? It's not something that will stop me from buying the game (the OOB might be) but it's disappointing.

 

[tommylotto]

Counters.
- The other option is 3d counters that look like 2d, or boardgame chips (sort of what the hoi3 ones were, they were costlier to render than the 3d objects btw). The problem with these is that the shape isnt natural and when placed into a 3d map trying to represent the world will end up clipping into, falling off mountains and lots of other terribleness that is extremely hard to work around. we would also end up having to reimplement all the work we did with the 2d overlay counters in the previous section, but now in 3d. We are still a small core team of 3 programmers and I cant justify spending that much development time just to add a visual choice of the same thing, or we'll end up where hoi3 was with too much stuff, none of it balanced or working quite right.

There. That is what we want. There are some technical difficulties to work out and it is a lot of work... and we are just not going to get it.:sad:

And unfortunately, this is something that has to be done by the developers and cannot be done by modders. Modders can only work with the tools that the game provides. They can cause the sprite to disappear, leaving only the counter portion of the HoiIV unit display. They can change the counter's appearance (the icon used) but not how it acts. Will the counter zoom with the camera? And hopefully, the removal of the sprite will cause the counter to self center on the province, otherwise each province would need to be modded to reposition where the counter would be located. Even then, the game display (of this counter only version of HoiIV) would suffer as the HoiIV counters are probably not designed to give us all of the information we got from the Hoi3 counters (that information is probably conveyed through the sprite). Hoi3 counters gave us a great deal of information, not just what was displayed on its 2D face. They stacked, so you could see at a glance how many units were in a province (at least until the stack reached its maximum height) and you could click on the stack to cycle through the units to see and select each one individually. When moving or attacking the moving unit's counters were off center from the stationary unit's counters. So, you could tell when units in the province were on the move. You had the out of supply indication and the attack delay indication. You had the battle progress indicator that on a click would lead you to the battle window. All these things worked, because Hoi3 was a game designed from the beginning to be played with counters. Modders will not be able to add those things. Trying to play HoiIV with counters only will unfortunately be trying to fit the proverbial square peg into the proverbial round hole.

So, we need to square our heads on right. We are going to have to get used to the damn sprites. HoiIV is adding tons of great mechanics -- tools of war with customizable variants, division builder based upon battalions, division templates, battle plans, etc. There are just too many exciting new features for a wargamer not to get pumped up about this game. However, the :sad: list just got longer:

:sad: no divisional leaders
:sad: no hierarchical chain of command
:sad: no province names!
:sad: no option to play with Hoi3-like 3D counters.

 

[jju_57]

While I'm used to playing board games I also learned in life to be open to trying new and different things. I can tell Podcat cares about the game. He enjoys playing HOI games. So I am more than willing to give this a shot. Those writing off the game saying they will never buy it are making an emotional choice right now. As Spock says there are two possibilities:

1) The design will work as Podcat intends and the game well worth buying.
2) The design fails to meet the intended design goals and few buy the game.

To claim you know for a fact that #2 is reality means you can predict the future. People have every right to be skeptical. Hell I'm a big skeptic in many things. But a skeptic is not someone that is a fanatic or ideologue but instead is someone that requires proof and yet willing to be shown that proof.

There are so many great things we have seen about HOI4. While I might be a skeptic on how models will actually work I'm also willing to wait to find out without saying I'll never buy this game. Who knows it might actually turn out to be the best game PDS has ever created. Time will tell. That's just my opinion.

EDIT:
Maybe the :sad: list got longer but let's also keep in mind the list.
1) New air combat mechanism that is way more accurate
2) New division builder that is many times better than any previous HOI game.
3) While not much ahs been shown the resources and how production ahs drastically improved.
4) Country specific goals and ideas.
5) Big improvements in naval combat.

Plus others.

 

[sic96]

:sad: no divisional leaders
:sad: no hierarchical chain of command
:sad: no province names!
:sad: no option to play with Hoi3-like 3D counters.

the map doesn't look that cool when you think about all the stuff we already lost.......

 

[bokrif]

So, we need to square our heads on right. We are going to have to get used to the damn sprites. HoiIV is adding tons of great mechanics -- tools of war with customizable variants, division builder based upon battalions, division templates, battle plans, etc. There are just too many exciting new features for a wargamer not to get pumped up about this game. However, the :sad: list just got longer:

:sad: no divisional leaders
:sad: no hierarchical chain of command
:sad: no province names!
:sad: no option to play with Hoi3-like 3D counters.

I knew it. New features in exchange for old and good ones. :S

Rather worrying. The complex HOI won't be played by more casual gamers because it's shiny and have nice looking map and sprites. They will find it good looking and still to hard core to play. Meanwhile core hoi gamers will have to trade design for great features.

I still hope counters will be back...

 

[Kesselschlacht]

So, we need to square our heads on right. We are going to have to get used to the damn sprites. HoiIV is adding tons of great mechanics -- tools of war with customizable variants, division builder based upon battalions, division templates, battle plans, etc. There are just too many exciting new features for a wargamer not to get pumped up about this game. However, the :sad: list just got longer:

If there weren't so many changes for the better compared to HoI 3, like division design, production, air and naval warfare, the things that seem to have taken a turn for the worse, like obligatory 3D models and the OOB, wouldn't matter and we wouldn't care.

EDIT:
I should probably add both the map and how it zooms to the list of HoI 4 achievements. In fact that's something that should be implemented in every PDS strategy title using the Clausewitz 4 engine from now on. It's very elegant.

 

[HMS Enterprize]

Summation of thoughts.

Gradient borders- looks good but concerned that it may be hard to tell who owns what in close views.
Weather-good
Day/night-good
Fog of War- is the whole map gonna look foggy? That would suck.
Terrain types-good but more variety please, or at the very least easy modding options. Ive been advocating more levels of urbanisation since HOI2 days. NYC is not the same as Tokyo or San Francisco/LA, and it should be reflected accordingly with different urbanisation levels. Don't have to get too complex with this, a simple light, medium, heavy or something akin to it would do, with according bonuses & penalties.

 

[seeds24]

Sprites are for tactical games. Sprites for strategic games is a big no-no.

 

[jju_57]

:sad: no divisional leaders
:sad: no hierarchical chain of command
:sad: no province names!
:sad: no option to play with Hoi3-like 3D counters.

Divisional leaders was just a human crutch and nothing more. It added nothing to the game outside of allowing a human player to gain an advantage over an already dumb AI. So no way is this a loss.

Chain of command in HOI3 was pretty dumb also. What was the purpose of all those HQ units on the map outside of causing a battle delay? Not to mention this was another human only exploit. Some claimed it added to immersion but many others said it was micromanagement hell.

Province names? Really? First off in the US the majority of the names were wrong or misleading. The only thing that province names gave you was a way to quickly find a spot on the map. They were just a label and did nothing more. I'm willing wo wait to see how HOI4 handles the State regions before claiming the lack of some label is a big game changer.

I'm leaning to agree with the counters and I'm skeptical. But I'm also more than willing to wait to see how it actually plays out. Back in the old days of DOS a company named Apple came out with this stupid mouse and click thing. Us old timer command line guys roared and yelled about it. But in the end it was the right choice.

 

[Premu]

The new map looks nice - but I have one remark regarding the day/night-cycle shown on it. Will this feature be deactivated on higher speeds? I believe it could get extremely nauseating if the map is getting lighter and darker all the time while you're still in peace and playing with speed 4 or 5.

 

[Snow Wolf]

NATO or icons?!
From a pure game design standpoint nato counters are insane. There is almost nothing about the symbols that indicates what they symbolize, so thats why they arent the standard symbol for stuff. However, in wargames they are pretty common so a lot of people have experience with them and so including them is a no brainer because plenty of players wont have to relearn a new icon set and feel at home. So we are giving players the choice between both NATO and regular symbols.

awesome a+, $10 extra for podkittie

Sprites (models) or Counters?!
Why not both? See you can have the cake and eat it as well.
In hoi3 the choice was simple, the 3d models were frankly an atrocious interface and offered little information and made playing really hard. I hated them and just played with counters. In HOI2 the sprites were well done and clear so in that game there wasnt really an advantage to either, although counters could show a few things more if I recall.
So when designing hoi4 we decided we wanted both a pretty model that could show stuff a counter couldnt (stances, tech levels, maybe more) and a counter below it giving you as much information as quickly and completely as possible. HoI3 style counters stopped being useful when zooming out, or when stacks were too big, so our new counter system can summarize information for you in a much better way. They will stack by category so that you can see how much of a stack is made up of armor for example, as well as when zooming out instead of overlapping into a giant mess like in previous games they combine to show a summarized stack over areas. see example picture, here we zoomed out so much most of the german army is clumped up in one stack makign it super easy to see exactly how much of each you have and to select sub groups (click the 3 armored divisions just to select those to see more info for example):

I disabled sprites in HOI3 because it's much better performance. Until I get a new computer that is able to run GTA V, i'm very worried about performance. I'd rather have a game that runs fluently in 1952 with 200 divisions per country than a game that looks awesome in 1938.

 

[Holy.Death]

- The other option is 3d counters that look like 2d, or boardgame chips (sort of what the hoi3 ones were, they were costlier to render than the 3d objects btw). The problem with these is that the shape isnt natural and when placed into a 3d map trying to represent the world will end up clipping into, falling off mountains and lots of other terribleness that is extremely hard to work around. we would also end up having to reimplement all the work we did with the 2d overlay counters in the previous section, but now in 3d. We are still a small core team of 3 programmers and I cant justify spending that much development time just to add a visual choice of the same thing, or we'll end up where hoi3 was with too much stuff, none of it balanced or working quite right.

I am no programmer, but... what about hooking 3D counters above terrain? We use a bird's-eye view anyway so as long as counters will be between camera and the map the end result should solve most of the issues related to 3D map (like clipping, etc.) while looking like traditional counters on map? Just a thought.

I just feed him the good bits over skype. if he kept reading past page 3 he would probably be a wreck by now/

It's not his fault. He did good job on 3D models and the map. The issue people have with 3D model is conceptual, not visual.

 

[podcat]

The new map looks nice - but I have one remark regarding the day/night-cycle shown on it. Will this feature be deactivated on higher speeds? I believe it could get extremely nauseating if the map is getting lighter and darker all the time while you're still in peace and playing with speed 4 or 5.

it currently deactivates on top speed yeah. we are currently not decided on exactly when it should start to be faded out. As a feature it isnt useful on the top 2 speeds for example because you dont have time to react anyway

 

[Aodhan_]

This game is looking really good and the maps seem to be very well thought out giving plenty of information at glance, as for the no divisional leaders and such I think its a plus i hated half my army running around with no leaders when playing a smaller nation.
But I do hope they put nato counters in for those that love them I'm easy either way and switch between sprite and counters in HOI 3 depending on my mode.

On a side note and of topic in this tread but does anyone know if we will still be able to play with out Steam running the way we can at present.

 

[jedi72it]

The map is looking really gorgeous, i like it!!

A question, will FOW disappear for us also on allied troops field of view? I guess yes...i did not read the whole report.. just staring at the images..

p.s., being a mainly counter user, +1 on counters option...maybe in a later dlc/patch.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

so I hope people will give it time to read through and think about the points I raised before giving feedback and staying on the side of logic and politeness in the following discussion.

When I provided feedback earlier I did not noticed this post, the new system does have its strengths but at least for me it is redundant info because I always know the forces that I have in a given theater of operations due to several reasons (one of them is not to overload the supply system). Now that I think about it the lack of NATO counters only was probably one of the reasons why I felt the HOI IV gameplay video was a bit underwhelming. Regardless I can see how that will help new players and despite hating sprites/3d models in a strategic WWII game I probably can live with that if the NATO counters are made as big as possible.
Despite being very critical sometimes I want to say that I have a lot of confidence in your work, it is actually a no brainer because a person that worked to make HOI III a better game must know what he is doing. Thank you for your work and commitment.

 

[jodirola]

Sprites are for tactical games. Sprites for strategic games is a big no-no.

+1