Hex of Steel News

WARNING : This update is NOT compatible with earlier versions for real time multiplayer.

[h3]Added[/h3]

• Events !! Yoohoo ! Finally xD
  You know how it is with me now, I work on stuff when I want to, and recently I had ideas about events and how to create them etc, so I just sat behind my computer and coded. I have made a few different events (categories let’s say). Receiving money, spawning a unit on a given tile, changing a country’s relationship (faction), and losing all your VPs (capitulation) when losing control of a certain VP. I hope those events will be enough for now, I couldn’t think of anything else while making it. You can add as many event as you’d like, it is very easy to use, events can be added / removed directly from the map editor and added to current scenarios. I also added another setting that I thought could be useful : Historical focus events only. When this is ON, the event will take place ONLY if the option “Historical focus” is turned ON in the settings (game settings). So, yeah, I hope you’ll like it ! I already implemented one event in one of the campaigns, the German one, first scenario in the eastern front. The USSR joined the war only on the 18th, so I created an event for the USSR to join the war on the 18th of September. That’s it ! Ah, I also added notifications to let you know when an event happens (like if the enemy got reinforcements, or if you got reinforcement, those will show up as a notification :)). Ah, actually I also edited Europe 1939 and added events there too, but they are all for Historical Focus = ON. Have a look at the events I added if you want :)
  
• When selecting a tile in the map editor, it will now display its coordinates (that will help when creating events for spawning units since this event requires you to enter the tile’s coordinates !).
  
• Pressing escape in the map editor will bring the scenario settings panel.
  
• Oh, did you think that was it ? Well, I have not one, but TWO gifts for you this year because you have been so kind :p I made a whole new map of the Afrika Corps, it doesn’t cover the entirety of it, feel free to edit it and add bits to the right and left if you really want to, it’s just the map I based it on didn’t include more than that. It is still at a scale of roughly 10km/hex, and is 166 x 65, it includes Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand ! I hope you will have fun with it ! And merry Christmas ! ( Map is named North Africa 1942 and happens right after El Alamein, november 1st)
  

[h3]Changes [/h3]

• Bombs and rockets were too powerful, nerfed those a bit (-5 hard for rockets and -5 hard for bombs).
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• You could place units even if “hide units” mode was ON and this lead to some unwanted results (inactive units etc).
  
• Operation Crusader fixes, Qattara Depression was mostly missing, and Tobruk was not British held which was .. shamingly for me the purpose of this scenario !
  
• Moving more than one tile with a gun and undoing the move would not give back the ability to attack to the gun.
  
• Soviet Union had major victory points on its side in the polish campaign that were needed in order to achieve victory. One issue though, since I changed the USSR from axis to neutral, they couldnt be called to the war because diplomacy isnt available in campaigns. This has been fixed by the new event feature I added as part of this update. USSR will now join the Axis mid game
  

I also looked into 2 other issues, AI stacking units issue around airfields and AI stacking issue with railway gun, couldn’t reproduce any of those. If you see this happening again, please do share a screenshot of the exact situation so I can reproduce it and hopefully fix the problem.
It’s not a super important bug since when this happen a reload will fix it, and the stacked unit is sent back to the unit pool for the AI, so nothing game breaking, just visually disturbing I agree :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, now that we talked about Hex of Steel, I thought I’d give you guys some news about my other game.
I did a lot of work on the AI for planes, you can see it at work here :
https://youtu.be/_ccJzd2nRhU
Let me tell you that if you have a plane that is less maneuverable than the AI, you are a dead man. I added auto MG defensive fire though, so if you are lucky enough to have a rear MG, it will automatically fire upon your enemies that are trying to shoot you down :)

I also did some work on the armour of vehicles and their slopes, you can see it here :
https://youtu.be/mQUBYdaHGk4
Basically it takes the mesh of the vehicle and calculates the normal vector when the projectile hits the mesh and then calculates the angle between the normal and the forward vector of the projectile which results in … the armour angle of the vehicle ! Awesome ! So, slope armour is working GREAT :D

I also added different ammo types, that you can see here :
https://youtu.be/n_b8YjCRJdw
It’s an old one, but I think I didn’t talk about it yet. So basically, there are a few ammo types so far:
AP, APCR, HE, HEAT, SMOKE. AP is simple armor piercing, APCR is armor piercing on steroids, but to use for special purposes since slope armour will make it bounce immediately, and its velocity though higher than AP drops VERY fast over distance. HE and HEAT are similar, High explosives shells, and smoke well smoke hehe

What else … Oh, maybe I could show you the vehicle collection that I have so far ? :)
One pic per country ! Let’s do that :D
Here are some planes that I currently rigged and that you can fly :


Some German tanks, from the very small Pz I B to the Sturmtiger (Not showing all tanks here I really don't have the room, there are way more):



Some Soviet ones :



American ones :



And British ones !



I will most likely add Japan as well, but I haven't started working on that yet.

The game is currently playable, there aren't any goals but all the basics are there. I tested it with 3 people, I'll try to test it with more people at the same time see how it behaves. So far, so good !

I will try to launch an open alpha soon, early 2022, probably before March, so if you guys are interested, you will be able to play test soon-ish ;)

I would like to wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a happy new year in advance since this is likely to be my last post of the year,

Thank you to all the new players that got the game during the sales, you have no idea what it means to me (the world, it means the world to me)

Hope you’re all gonna have fun and … see you on the battlefield !

[h3]Added[/h3]

• Possibility to rename ANY unit to whatever you’d like. This feature was not entirely complete before and limited to core units.
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Changes to the Campaign of Poland scenario, USSR will not start Axis on the first of September 39 but will remain neutral until the German player invites it to the war.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• USSR polish campaign. You do not start on the 1st of September anymore but on the 17th. Map has been modified to fit those changes.
  
• Syracuse has been renamed into Siracca on all maps where it appeared.
  
• Huge save files size (25MB for Europe for example).
  

Greetings, fellow HoS lovers!

I’m not sure everyone here knows who I am but for a change it won’t be Valentin writing this post but me, his brother! A pleasure to meet you.
I’ve been involved in HoS’s development since the very beginning and mostly focused of the visuals and the art side of the game. From the multiple iterations of the tiles to the wallpapers and UI.

Today I’ll take you through the thoughts and process that went behind the making of this new wallpaper.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[h3]The process[/h3]

Where to start from? I needed an idea. I knew I wanted to draw some snow for this one. Snow has always been a long time love for me, and where I currently live (West of France) there isn’t any during winter, so snow it was gonna be!

Next step is finding the right setting, obviously it had to be WWII related. At the time I was looking at the part that Finland played in the war, and how they have defended themselves successfully against the Soviets. I ended up reading more about the Winter War and felt really inspired so I decided to go with that.

So did I grab my pencil and tablet and started sketching some ideas? No, not yet at least. The first and crucial thing to do when tackling such project is gathering a whole bunch of references for nothing and everything. I’ve put them all on a board using a tool called PureRef. I’ll be keeping it close by at every stage of the painting process.


^ Probably the one that inspired me the most for the light color and mood of the final painting.


^ Some trees and rocks from the Finnish lands.


^ Few old photographs for trucks, tanks and poses/uniforms for historical accuracy.

I then started the process of doing small sketches called thumbnails. It has the goal of keeping me from drawing blindly for a few hours the first idea that comes out of my head, before finding out that the composition doesn’t work and I have to start again. That way I throw down multiple ideas and focus on the ones I like the most and eliminate those that don’t work or aren’t as aesthetically pleasing.

These are the ones I did:


Yes they might be rough and not necessarily pretty but that’s not what they are here for. It’s kinda more for me to steer the illustration in a certain direction. I ended up liking bottom right one and went for it.



I then worked detailing a bit more and placing some elements that I wanted present *Spoiler* they did not all make it in the final illustration. Keeping it all in black and white for simplicity and better decision making concerning the values.

Little did I know that I would be changing a lot when passing to color, which is our next step!


^ I started with pretty low saturated tones, cleared the trees I had on the right making more place for your eyes to rest when looking at it. Also got rid of the rocks and the Finnish soldier on the bottom left because I felt like it didn’t really match the perspective I went for.


^ I blocked in the T-26, added a few abandoned trucks (GAZ AA). Some pines in the foreground …


^ Here I brought back the trees on the right, the illustration felt too optimistic, like a visual representation of the saying « being out of the woods ». I wanted it to feel epic, more like a moment of peace and warmth before reentering in the cold shade of the pines, uncertain if there were gonna see the sun again on the other side.


^ And here goes the final details, an epic sky, light passing through the thick layer of clouds in the background. Detailing our most likely freezing cold soldiers. Some sharpening here and there, a little post processing and the illustration is done!

The whole process starting from researches to the final illustration took me about 2 weeks. One focused on finding what I wanted to, finding the references I needed and coming up with the composition. The other one was mostly painting, painting, painting and the last details.

I also have a time-lapse of the painting process starting at the color stage, here’s a link :
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well friends, that will be all for this little journey through my process to a completely new wallpaper. I really hope you like it! I had an extra fun time doing it. Thank you for reading and on Valentin’s behalf I wish you all an amazing end of year, have a great time!

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• You can now go in negative numbers and be in debt using the fixed income setting.
  
• AI finally takes into account the presence of enemy ships for landing crafts, and will try to find path around « hot areas » whenever possible. Meaning if you got a sub sinking a bunch of AI at one point on the map, the AI will be avoiding the area for a while, going around it if it can, if it cannot well it cannot.
  
• Small RAM usage optimization.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• AA seemed to retreat to planes in some cases.
  
• Sounds too loud, it will be quieter when you will play again so you might want to adjust your sound settings.
  
• When right clicking the supply line would not disappear.
  
• AI fighters going over subs it could not damage.
  
• In the damage breakdown if you had a fighter selected and would place your mouse over a destroyer or any ship it would say « Submerged » instead of showing « Armour ».
  
• Various city names fixes in the Op. Weserburung and Europe maps (Norwegian city names).
  

[h3]Additions[/h3]

• 5 new soundtracks ! "Operation Mars", "Cerberus", "Coral Sea", "Operation Oak", and "Arnheim" I’ve always felt like 5 tracks was too few for a game, unfortunately it wasn’t high in my priority list. Total of base tracks is now of 10, and you can get an extra 5 by getting the support pack DLC in exchange of 5$, that’s 1$ the track ! That’s a bargain :D
  
• 1 new achievement : (Supporter) for buying the support pack DLC.
  
• Mannerheim as a general for Finland.
  
• Multilingual support for online chat, not English only anymore ! :D
  
• New wallpaper ! Thanks to my brother Jules, a whole dedicated post will be coming soon where he will explain how he proceeds from the start to the end :)
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Made sure you could use negative fixed income in the map editor.
  
• Small changes on the Operation Weserburung scenario.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Disabled purchase of paratroopers for the AI when he doesn’t have the air superiority.
  
• Pe-3 could carry bombs.
  
• AI would spawn air units even at bombed airfields. Probably humans could too.
  
• Research bug where it would take generals into account and the game would tell you you need to research all previous tech before you can move to another one but generals were not researchable so you were stuck. Same for the AI.
  
• One instance of AI freeze on custom maps.
  
• If you were resizing a map that had VPs that were supposed to be held in order to achieve victory and those VPs were deleted by the resize of the map the map would be literally unplayable.
  
• You could not send messages in solo without being in an online room to chat with other players.
  
• Chat messages parent / holder not going down when receiving now messages, you had to scroll in order to see new messages.
  
• Messages UI in the main menu.
  
• Cross platform chat functionality was not properly (at all) working :(
  
• On mobile attacking a plane unit with an AA on mobile would move the AA to the plane’s tile.
  
• On mobile the end of scenario text could not be scrolled and often a lot of it was hidden.
  
• When hosting a big map (Europe) there would often be connexion time out.
  

[h3]Removals[/h3]

• Karl Donitz as a naval hero. He is already a general in the game. You could basically have 2 Karl Donitz !!
  

Ah, I wanted to share a screenshot of my Europe 1939 game, didn't go historical but it gave pretty interesting results, may I present you the Italiano - Greeko - Turkish alliance ! 7th May 1943, colorized, repelling hords of Soviet troops in the Balkans :)



Development of the second game is going well, I worked on a few more mechanics and it's starting to get in good shape.
Here are the last 2 dev blogs I posted on youtube :

https://youtu.be/fTTwKI00HiY

https://youtu.be/MdTftei0bNw

I am honestly starting to think to add to this a whole new dimension, like a hex map of europe for example where you would have your armies and the fights would be solved in first person against other players
So each player has its own career with its own progress and so you can either play career for yourself or have a list of ongoing games which are going to be other people's campaigns and join those
If some of you heard about Heroes and Generals WWII this might sound similar, but since the dev ruined the game I thought I could make something great in that spot and I love the concept on its own