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The future of DH

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macgregor2150

macgregor2150

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Aug 24, 2011
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  • Arsenal of Democracy
  • Darkest Hour
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From what I'm reading on here, there are a handful of modders; and I use the word handful generously, who are out there working on tweaking their mods or trying to develop new mods. Novapaddy and Lord Rommel come to mind, but I know there are others. They have multiple mods it seems going, and some seem to get bogged down before or shortly after their original release. They continue to graciously tweak their mods as they field questions from players such as myself. While I would like to help and get involved in some way; short of doing some research, I'm unfortunately not of much use. Ask me to do something and let me try is all I can say. I have to start somewhere. The energy is there.

In my interactions with modders I've often heard that the game limits them. Hopefully there can be a way to openly discuss the limitations and sift through trivial improvements that can be made from people like me, to more pragmatic improvements that can be made with the help of say, MartinBG from those who are actually struggling to improve the game experience/performance.

I'm just curious what would it take to:

Get the multiplayer to function more smoothly with 5 or more players.

Add units that can be based on other mobile units such as CAG groups or even expensive missile systems with their own range and capabilities.

Add just one more level of zoom so I can see the map just a little closer.

There. I've added a few trivial requests, to hopefully get a discussion started.
 
I doubt there will be anymore code changes. There is plenty of original neat stuff that can be done with scripting. One thing I've always wanted to do was just correct the economic model so that resources are not devalued by production time/cost reductions in technology or policies. With stricter limitations in most of the games interface where most elements were loosened in DH I think the game would play alot better. I'm perfectly fine playing against an AI that has inherent production and combat bonuses. Too old for multiplayer "gotta-go-fast" mode but, I might like that too.
 
mccarty.geoff said:
I doubt there will be anymore code changes. There is plenty of original neat stuff that can be done with scripting. One thing I've always wanted to do was just correct the economic model so that resources are not devalued by production time/cost reductions in technology or policies. With stricter limitations in most of the games interface where most elements were loosened in DH I think the game would play alot better. I'm perfectly fine playing against an AI that has inherent production and combat bonuses. Too old for multiplayer "gotta-go-fast" mode but, I might like that too.
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Totally agree on the "gotta-go-fast" mode. If you're interested in the teamplay I have setup, send me a pm with your email and I'll try to organize you into a teamplay match. I won't allow the "gotta-go-fast" mode players into my game. With a game so complex moving already so many times faster than reality, no one striving for any sense of realism would want to apply time pressure. Yet most do. That's why I want a players catalogue; to weed those people out.
 
Honestly, I can only stomach about an hour of gaming every other day. I'd have to jump through some hoops to connect as well. Not a very good candidate. Used to play HoI on a LAN a long time ago. Was very fun although serious gaming or roleplaying isn't nearly as fun as goofing off. How fast do you play during peace/wartime? I think above/below are pretty good settings. Below normal is set (1sec/tick) so that a 10 year game takes 24 hours. Would have been cool to have a dedicated server interface with this engine.
 
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Installed GameRanger. Good news is that it doesn't use flashplayer anymore. Bad news is that it streams ads now :/
I wonder if I'd need to forward ports or if gameranger passes off a direct tcp/ip connection? By the way my nick is mccarty.geoff on there if you want to call me mean names.
 
If there is a REAL further development. I have a lot of ideas ...but it is a lot of work! I have work on
Arsenal of Democracy for more than the last 10 years for my self.

And i have find out a lot of work is not doing by the developers in 2008.
 
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Hopefully(and I know this is all a numbers game) PI will listen at some point to the Darkest Hour community and offer us a proposal that gives THIS game SOME chance, a PATHWAY for development. If it is of no value to Paradox, perhaps they could explain this to the community (Me) and offer some way for the gaming community to be able to improve and develop it. I realize that while DH has active modders, that this does not equate with having developers.

It eats away at me I guess, that people may be being prevented from helping develop their favorite game, from the company that made the game in the first place. I hope I'm wrong about this. Money certainly affects this, but not the way we might think. More in that Paradox does not lack the money to develop DH-HOI2, but more the fact that players of DH likely have already bought copies of HOI4 and HOI3 hoping for an improvement of their game. I did.

Perhaps Paradox simply gave DH it's best shot and came up with something that augmented the game in every way except the ways that mattered. I forgive them. Hell buying the games, I funded this misadventure for chrissakes.

Even though HOI3 and 4 miss the mark, I didn't give up. I bought them and didn't return them knowing full well they were different games. That's because I thought it was on ME to learn what PI did before criticizing and punishing them by asking for my money back.

Well I for one have tried those games and find them both unenjoyable to the point of being unplayable. I don't WANT my money back. I want Paradox do develop the 'Europa' engine if that's what you want to call it. This 'Clausewitz' engine is not worth trying to make every game into EU4 over. Oh, and I bought that too by the way and no I never play it.

But let's get out of the nomenclature. I want a global map with pieces on it I can look at for hours, that's it. The rest is in how accurate to history these pieces and map can be made along with how realistically they interact, get it? The rest is just carbohydrate.

I can only speak for myself. But after having spent-wasted plenty of time on HOI3 and 4, like them or hate them, they are both ENTIRELY different games by ANY stretch. I'm thinking to myself, 'Is that it for Darkest Hour?' I can't speak for any so-called 'community' of DH players. Any group that can't organize a webpage or an active multiplayer group with the tools offered, i probably don't want to speak on behalf of regardless.

It just seems that this game never reached the people who would like it the most; the boardgame grognards, some who have spent decades recreating history. Instead, it was marketed to, and is being played largely by people who would just as well play a game like 'Men of War'. This is so tragically ironic to me.
 
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mccarty.geoff said:
Installed GameRanger. Good news is that it doesn't use flashplayer anymore. Bad news is that it streams ads now :/
I wonder if I'd need to forward ports or if gameranger passes off a direct tcp/ip connection?
Click to expand...
It's still giving me Port-Restricted Cone NAT Router Error even after opening GR up in the firewall on the PC, and UPnP in my router.
Baffles me that this was an issue in 2011 and is still an issue now.
 
MacGowan said:
bumping this.

Seeing the split between likes and dislikes in these posts I feel there's a good debate to be had here.

what do you believe is the future of DH?
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this answer may be cynical, but I personally believe that Darkest Hour doesn't have a future. Now before you go trying to get your pitchforks out, hear me out. Darkest Hour is a great game (my first paradox game that I got in 2012) better than HOI4 and it's dlc fest, and personally unable to get into Arsenal of Democracy despite it being well received. (only have about 9 hours in it.)

The main issue I see is the fact that Darkest Hour doesn't earn enough revenue for Paradox compared to its newer ip's, despite having better gameplay than say HOI4. The simple fact of the game not earning enough money (for the company, given they only publish and not dev the game) and the devs of this masterpeice are underpaid despite being overqualified and deserve better salaries (imo), as a result of the (assumed) low profit earnings the game has essentially been relegated to the proverbial graveyard receiving updates that are few and far between.
 
There are people who will never play and never buy such ugly shit as Hoi 4 and they still play Hoi-3/DH/AoD. (I bought Hoi-2/AoD and DH many times each, but I'm proud I didn't spend a cent on Hoi-4!)
Also, there are young people who are forced to play Hoi 4 because they think that there is no other alternative.

'Darkest Hour-2' or 'Hoi-2.0' could sell good among this target audience.
(Of course if they will not follow the fu**ng path of 100500 millions microscopical provinces on Map again and again :mad:).

I'm sure there's special place in the Hell for the creators of Hoi-4.
 
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I want to add that I've been pretty surprised lately: Our multiplayer group (70 members strong/shameless plug) has many young new players who only recently started playing DH.

This blows my mind.

How is DH still gathering new players?
 
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MacGowan said:
How is DH still gathering new players?
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I bought it via GOG last year when they offered it for a shameful low price (for which I am quite thankful because I haven't got much money) and had it on my wish list for quite some time. Always on the lookout for superb strat&tact games I had somehow missed or my pretty much standard computer wouldn't had been able to cope with at the time when it came out.

Over time I figured out that one major criteria for me is, besides the game being strat&tact with map and round-based or in the case of DH with a very good pause option, wether the game has accomplished to aquire a long based player and modder community and a heap of good strat articles. This speaks louder for the quality of a game than a dozen skyhigh reviews.

This way, as a matter of fact, it is rather an advantage to lag quite some years behind with many games.

And yes, I am a bit picky, because I tend to play good games like DH, X3, Nexus, Homeworld, Stars!... for many months years?, and couldn't care less about them being 10 or 20 years old. My guess would be that those feelings and criteria are shared by quite many serious strat & tact players.
 
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I see steel division 2 will soon be using events? Would be great if the event side of the game could somehow use DH events and then have SD2 for tactical battles.
 
Altruist said:
I bought it via GOG last year when they offered it for a shameful low price (for which I am quite thankful because I haven't got much money) and had it on my wish list for quite some time. Always on the lookout for superb strat&tact games I had somehow missed or my pretty much standard computer wouldn't had been able to cope with at the time when it came out.

Over time I figured out that one major criteria for me is, besides the game being strat&tact with map and round-based or in the case of DH with a very good pause option, wether the game has accomplished to aquire a long based player and modder community and a heap of good strat articles. This speaks louder for the quality of a game than a dozen skyhigh reviews.

This way, as a matter of fact, it is rather an advantage to lag quite some years behind with many games.

And yes, I am a bit picky, because I tend to play good games like DH, X3, Nexus, Homeworld, Stars!... for many months years?, and couldn't care less about them being 10 or 20 years old. My guess would be that those feelings and criteria are shared by quite many serious strat & tact players.
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Have you read this article? You may find it interesting.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/2014-dh-mcwar-wwii-aar.770718/
 
Lucifer, thank you for having provided that link, very interesting. I have also read your Aaachtung Panzer AAR with much pleasure and was finding myself more often than one should think laughing out loudly.

And to connect it with the topic of the thread "The future of DH":
I might belong to a rather bizarre minority here (actually I don't know wether minority or not) but I truly despise seeing a favourite game spoiled by military usage and if it is only as an additional "learning" tool, it nevertheless connects the game with possible real life combat and losses as a result.
When I talked to Red Army Veterans, as a German and more than 50 years after the war, I truly admired their stance that because they had experienced and survived WWII they felt a longlife responsibility to all following generations to convince them to not ever allow and wage such a war. They are dead now. Looking at the world now, I cannot other but miss their commitment.

Concerning DH: As a gamer, well, yes also a wargamer and absolutely nerded on strat & tact map games, the border, the line between the real world and the virtual world is very important. Now I feel dirty somehow. And while I can see and understand the fascination of our beloved DH also used by the Marine Corps, I so very much wished they would rather not. And/or paradox taking a stance that this is not why they made the game: for the real military, real combat and real death.
 
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Personally, I think there's a lot to consider.

I don't blame the devs if they don't feel like developing much, especially if they're doing patches for no profit.

So I think it would be pretty reasonable for them to release new expansions for it. I'm sure the team could deliver us nice expansions full of meaty content. WWII is so complex, there is lots more to build upon on.

Either way, I think the future of DH is taking out hardcoded content and making it moddable. Things like hardcoded resources, harcoded three alliances, etc. Of course, I don't know how viable that is, but I might as well thrown my ten cents here.

Contrary to some people, I don't think DH is "obsolete". Especially because HOI4 smacks of such an incomplete game, and newer paradox games don't play well on older computers.
 
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