What Makes the Clausewitz Engine Special?

[paulatreides0]

So I'm wondering about what's under the hood of the PDox games, why exactly PDox uses Clausewitz instead of some other engine. Could these games be made in a similar fashion in, say, Unity? What does the Clausewitz engine allow that makes it a better choice than other options.

I'm mainly asking out of sheer curiosity, as I've gotten increasingly interested in stuff like this.

 

[Gwayne]

They have full control over it. That makes it special.

 

[Warial]

It's their own engine, developed by PDX. Why would they want another engine, when they have one fully tailored for their games?

 

[paulatreides0]

It's their own engine, developed by PDX. Why would they want another engine, when they have one fully tailored for their games?

That's exactly what I'm asking, what precisely makes it better than the alternatives. It's clear and obvious that it's better tailored to their games (or else they wouldn't have made it), but I'm curious why or, rather, how it is tailored to their games at the mechanical level.

 

[Onirim]

That's exactly what I'm asking, what precisely makes it better than the alternatives. It's clear and obvious that it's better tailored to their games (or else they wouldn't have made it), but I'm curious why or, rather, how it is tailored to their games at the mechanical level.

There are no alternatives. It's unique.

 

[paulatreides0]

There are no alternatives. It's unique.

...how? You're telling me that it's special but not why or how, which is the whole point of the thread.

 

[Onirim]

...how? You're telling me that it's special but not why or how, which is the whole point of the thread.

It's an engine (algorithms, rules, definitons, etc.) powering alliances mechanics, warfare, dynasties, every aspect of the game, you name it, and probably solves many user interface features and hardware issues. If you deployed clausewitz you would get a game behaving exactly like any of PDS games. There are no other games like them, no alternatives

 

[Gwayne]

I am pretty sure that the secret sauce that makes it special is something they will not talk to much about. You can not hide it for the competition but telling them the details would not help. The same reason why older versions are not open sourced.

I assume that it is a package around the display management in combination with data management in the backend. By creating that themselves they can decide about what the limitations are and bug fix everything themselves. So they are less dependent on third parties.

 

[RelVleDy]

I can't speak for Paradox, but from a modding perspective, it's heavenly. It's the easiest time I've ever had coding mods. They even have that Clausewitz Maya character model exporter tool. Paradox games are some of the most easily modified games around, and knowing the success of Bethesda games, it's very important nowadays for PC titles to be moddable. It's the difference between shelving a game after you've beaten it, and coming back to it months later to see what mods people have put out.

I wonder how many people have bought CKII just because of A Game of Thrones.

 

[aruon]

I wonder how many people have bought CKII just because of A Game of Thrones.

HBO wonders that too.

 

[Simmy93]

HBO are probably just irked that the best GoT video game is a mod of another game haha.

 

[aruon]

HBO are probably just irked that the best GoT video game is a mod of another game haha.

uhhh yeah... if they were irked, they'd have forced paradox to pay out the ass for a license or DMCA'ed the mod. fortunately HBO isn't disney.

 

[Simmy93]

uhhh yeah... if they were irked, they'd have forced paradox to pay out the ass for a license or DMCA'ed the mod. fortunately HBO isn't disney.

Not quite as HBO does not own the source material on which the mod is based. They couldnt sue anymore than Disney could sue... Well anyone who remakes any generic fairytale I guess.

 

[aruon]

Not quite as HBO does not own the source material on which the mod is based. They couldnt sue anymore than Disney could sue... Well anyone who remakes any generic fairytale I guess.

they don't own the source material itself, the Song of Ice and Fire book series of which Game of Thrones is the first book (that belongs to GRRM alone). they DO hold the TV rights to the Game of Thrones series, of which anything within the context of GoT is considered derived from as the show is the dominant medium that people pay attention to.
so yes they can sue if they think anyone not licensed is profiting off the GoT IP. that's why they took notice of the AGOT mod, because if paradox was trying to make a direct profit off of the fact that there's a GoT mod for one of their games without having acquired a product license, that would be trademark infringement and require a DMCA takedown of the AGOT mod.

even when HBO was assured there was no under-the-table marketing and the heat died down, PI CEO Fredrik Wester considered just getting a license anyway with GoT being the behemoth that it is.

 

[blallo]

So I'm wondering about what's under the hood of the PDox games, why exactly PDox uses Clausewitz instead of some other engine. Could these games be made in a similar fashion in, say, Unity? What does the Clausewitz engine allow that makes it a better choice than other options.

I'm mainly asking out of sheer curiosity, as I've gotten increasingly interested in stuff like this.

i personally tried to implement clausewitz features in unity. the experience could be summarized in the following points:

• writing stuff on textures is usually slow, really slow, unless the engine was designed with the intention of doing that. as an example, unity forces you to load the texture on the graphic card to render it, and then load it back to the main memory to modify them, which lead to really slow operations since they all move in the system bus.
• writing nice nations names text is almost impossible. Yes the ottoman empire name is usually really missplaced in eu4 but most of the manes are not. i've look for articles and books about how to place names inside polygons but most of the do not use bent text, and they are usually about making sure they do not end up one on top of the other. Clausewitz engine does something different and i have no idea how.
• the standard model of game objects used in many engines does not really work all that well, since clausewitz has to manage 4k+ objects at the same time, and if you are zoomed out all the way they are all on screen.
• independent simulations multiplayer. the engine has to be designed to allow this features. it can't use platform dependent optimizations. yes you can work around that but it's usually better to develop the engine with that idea in mind.

This requirements are pretty much unique to paradox titles, and clausewitz is the only engine that supports all of them that i ever saw. i don't think is actually all that hard to develop another engine that does something similar with the help of a cartographer that knows the tricks of name placement.

 

[havenost]

Just curious OP were you ever part of a SC gaming clan with the WA? Your username seems familiar.

 

[blallo]

Just curious OP were you ever part of a SC gaming clan with the WA? Your username seems familiar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Atreides
i wouldn't bet on it

 

[havenost]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Atreides
i wouldn't bet on it

Ah okay, so just generic character name.

 

[paulatreides0]

i personally tried to implement clausewitz features in unity. the experience could be summarized in the following points:

• writing stuff on textures is usually slow, really slow, unless the engine was designed with the intention of doing that. as an example, unity forces you to load the texture on the graphic card to render it, and then load it back to the main memory to modify them, which lead to really slow operations since they all move in the system bus.
• writing nice nations names text is almost impossible. Yes the ottoman empire name is usually really missplaced in eu4 but most of the manes are not. i've look for articles and books about how to place names inside polygons but most of the do not use bent text, and they are usually about making sure they do not end up one on top of the other. Clausewitz engine does something different and i have no idea how.
• the standard model of game objects used in many engines does not really work all that well, since clausewitz has to manage 4k+ objects at the same time, and if you are zoomed out all the way they are all on screen.
• independent simulations multiplayer. the engine has to be designed to allow this features. it can't use platform dependent optimizations. yes you can work around that but it's usually better to develop the engine with that idea in mind.

This requirements are pretty much unique to paradox titles, and clausewitz is the only engine that supports all of them that i ever saw. i don't think is actually all that hard to develop another engine that does something similar with the help of a cartographer that knows the tricks of name placement.

There we go, that's the type of stuff I wanted to know! Thanks a lot!

 

[Cardus]

i personally tried to implement clausewitz features in unity. the experience could be summarized in the following points:

• writing stuff on textures is usually slow, really slow, unless the engine was designed with the intention of doing that. as an example, unity forces you to load the texture on the graphic card to render it, and then load it back to the main memory to modify them, which lead to really slow operations since they all move in the system bus.
• writing nice nations names text is almost impossible. Yes the ottoman empire name is usually really missplaced in eu4 but most of the manes are not. i've look for articles and books about how to place names inside polygons but most of the do not use bent text, and they are usually about making sure they do not end up one on top of the other. Clausewitz engine does something different and i have no idea how.
• the standard model of game objects used in many engines does not really work all that well, since clausewitz has to manage 4k+ objects at the same time, and if you are zoomed out all the way they are all on screen.
• independent simulations multiplayer. the engine has to be designed to allow this features. it can't use platform dependent optimizations. yes you can work around that but it's usually better to develop the engine with that idea in mind.

This requirements are pretty much unique to paradox titles, and clausewitz is the only engine that supports all of them that i ever saw. i don't think is actually all that hard to develop another engine that does something similar with the help of a cartographer that knows the tricks of name placement.

Really interesting, are you a developer?