Hearts of Iron IV News

Joint Focus Tree Dev Diary

Hej hei folks! Carlo here, and I’m super excited to present this new feature, probably the first to be made with multiplayer in mind. Just remember that this is all work in progress so you’ll definitely see stuff that will change for release.

Let me start with a hypothetical scenario:

You and your friends decide to play a co-op campaign of Hearts of Iron. You get your healthy snacks and drinks, jump into a voice chat and load the game, hoping to play as Monarchist Poland. There’s one problem though, one of your friends wants to play as monarchist Lithuania, and hopes to annex Poland and the other Baltic nations. If this has happened to you, then you’ll love the Joint Focus Tree. Actually I’m sure you’ll love it even if it hasn’t.

As nations that start the game disadvantaged against the big majors, a lot of minors rely on absorbing the countries around them to be able to compete. This happens with the Baltics, China, South America and importantly for us, the Nordic countries. We’re hoping the Joint Focus Tree will solve this by giving you and your friends the opportunity to collaborate with your neighbors and make your faction be more powerful than the sum of its parts, so you can take the fight to the Majors and win, TOGETHER!


But what is it? Well it’s a shared focus tree that Nordics will have in addition to the country’s normal focus tree, but when you start it you create a special faction where anyone can complete focuses in it, and they will complete in every relevant country, giving effects to all Nordic members of the faction.


Let’s take “Joint Military Exercises" as a very basic example. If Norway completes it, it’ll get 80 Army Experience and 2 75% Land Doctrine bonuses, but because it’s a Joint Focus, it will give 60 Army Experience and 2 50% Land Doctrine bonuses to every other Nordic in the faction.


The best part is that then another country, say, Denmark, can complete any focus that requires it while Norway does another focus, Joint or otherwise. You’re all working together and strengthening each other.


Other focuses give the Originator (The player that completed the focus) a special National Spirit that makes it the leader in that certain area, and because the requirements are pretty high, you will have to coordinate with your friends so each country specializes in one area to continue spreading the benefits around.


Now that I’ve explained the basic concept, let me describe how Arms Against Tyranny’s Joint Focus Tree will work:

If you’re playing as any of the Nordic countries and you’re not a puppet, you’ll eventually have the option of forming one of the three factions planned for this:

The Nordic Council: The Nordic democracies have joined forces to defend their political systems and to eradicate autocracy and oppression abroad (There’s currently an actual Nordic Council in real life, though with a different aim). They will use their resources and expertise to focus on quality over quantity, and manufacturing technologically advanced equipment, while still providing for their people.


The Northern People’s Union: The peoples of the North united against fascism and capitalism in Europe and beyond. Every worker that’s not making the tools of communism at home must take up arms and fight abroad. Expect superior numbers in both personnel and materiel


And finally, the Kalmar League: A mirror of the historical Kalmar Union, the monarchies and dictatorships of Scandinavia and Finland call upon their shared past to bring forth their common goal of domination, through armed conflict and conquest. By any means necessary.


As you can see, many of the icons, names and effects will change depending on which one fits your country’s current politics. Credit goes to Marie for her excellent art, there was a lot of back and forth to establish a unique visual identity for each faction, and they are some of my favorite focus icons in Hearts of Iron. Here’s some highlights


And you probably noticed the title background for these is different from normal ones, so stay tuned and we’ll talk about them and how you can change them yourself through modding.


Let us continue then. The JFT has 7 different branches: Airforce, Navy, Army, Civilian Production, Research, Military Production and, right in the middle, a political branch that will let you unlock institutions that improve and further customize your faction.


For example, in the Communist faction, after establishing the Northern Federation, the faction’s National Spirit improves, and then you get something I call Capstone Selectors.



When someone completes it, it will unlock 4 extra focuses at the end of the relevant branch. The first choice in the NPU is between the Army and Civilian Industry, and if we choose the Army one, 4 new focuses will appear at the end of the army branch, giving you an extra advantage on that area, and letting you adapt to the situation.


After that you can upgrade your faction again, and then you get another capstone choice, this time between Research and military production. Every one of these factions has 4 different configurations, depending on what you need, and how involved you want to be with it.



Before we finish, I want to show you what are those focuses before the one that lets you form the Joint Alliance. These are simple old shared focuses that all Nordics will have access to. They are meant to represent how they all helped each other in the period, while avoiding all out war with their neighbor’s aggressors. The best examples are Sweden, Norway and Denmark secretly sending volunteers and equipment to Finland to fend off the Soviet Union, and Sweden’s surreptitious support for Norwegian and Danish liberation against Germany. Of course with these focuses and decisions you’ll be able to go further than that and join them in their struggle, or even join their enemies and gain territory yourself.


Let’s dive in.

Reaching Out to Our Neighbors starts the decision category, and from the get go gives the option to promote Nordic Unity, letting you improve their opinion of you, especially handy if you want to form the Joint Faction with the AI.


Then you can go for Industrial Cooperation, which unlocks decisions to improve your economy and the economy of a neighbor in equal terms, if you go the other route, Leverage Nordic Investments, you can invest in other Nordics and ask them to invest in your, always with better terms for the initiator, but they’ll still get something out of it.


Mutual Guarantees is… Well… Mutual Guarantees. But Strengthen Ties is another useful one if you want to do the Joint Focus Tree, it not only makes your countries like each other more, but you’ll trade some party popularity, so if you’re communist, and they’re democratic, they will get some communism, and you’ll get some democracy, as a treat.


It concludes in the focus to form the alliance, but I want to draw your attention to the focuses on the sides. One has the name of the expansion (Mostly) and the other one is the Nordic March. They both let you send volunteers more easily and give you bonuses for combat but their goals are very different.

The TAAT focus unlocks several decisions that let you expand volunteer capacity, make it easier to send lend lease and even join the war, provided you’ve been involved in it enough participation in it. Every time you or any other Nordic helps them, the conflict scale increases, and the higher it is, the more likely your participation will go up, until your neighbor’s enemy sees you as a threat and attacks you too! It will be a balancing act for you to help your neighbors and not get invaded in the process.


And that’s it! This is how we plan to make the nations in this expansion work together more than ever, and introduce a new vessel for cool alt history. Obviously there’s tons more details that I didn’t include, but you can always ask me and I’ll try to answer where and when possible. Don’t forget to stay tuned for the next one of these, where Arheo will show you some diverse cool things!

Generals! New intel has arrived from Turbolarp about the upcoming Hearts of Iron IV Grandest Lan!

Check it out below in the Infographic we created.
For more information beyond this, check out the event website: HERE

[h3]Limited Tickets Available: Get yours Now![/h3]

Hello there, it's me C0RAX.

This week we are going to talk about some of the small features coming with Arms Against Tyranny, these are small things that add or change the game to increase the QoL or add to the game.

So this week we have 3 main groupings;

• Division Structure
  
• Economy
  
• Presets
  

[h3]Division Structure[/h3]
First up we have division structure changes. The way you make a division has been fairly static for quite some time. With this update there are some new changes that increase the challenge and compromises you will have to make when designing your divisions.

First up we have some changes to the categories for each brigade that you choose when you pick the first battalion for each vertical column. Previously we had both artillery, AA and AT in the same category as maneuver units like infantry and tanks. This is no longer the case; artillery, AA, and AT are now in their own category meaning you need to choose how many support brigades you have and how many maneuver brigades you have. This extends to mobile battalion and armored battalion categories.


Previously there was never any real scarcity when it came to a division's battalion slots, you could generally always have whatever number of battalions you wanted in generally any mixture. Now your brigade also starts with the bottom slot locked making a 5x4 grid.this is the default state of divisions and you can unlock this 5th slot by unlocking doctrines giving you a 5x5 grid. When this is combined with the category changes you will need to think about how much combat support battalions you can bring vs vs how many maneuver battalions you you need if you want to make that large division with lots of tank and infantry you will be significantly restricting just how much Artillery, AA and AT you bring to boost your unit.


[h3]Economy[/h3]

Now we are onto something many of you have seen in the focus tree dev diaries is the new modifier “Consumer Goods Factories Factor” . This new modifier exists because the Consumer goods calculation and its associated modifiers have changed.

Previously the calculation of consumer goods was calculated by adding all the consumer goods modifiers to get a percentage; it then worked out the number of factories that percentage represented against your total factory count. So if you had 5 civs and 5 mils for 10 total factories and your consumer goods modifiers total was 10% you had to pay 1 civ for consumer goods. You were then “taxed” that number of civilian factories.

This had a nasty problem in that it was very easy to first reach 0% consumer goods which was a considerable balance consideration due to it allowing faster snowballing of the economy. This easiness of reaching 0% consumer goods was then a problem because once you reached 0% other parts of the game where the reward was a further reduction of consumer goods were rendered useless since you cannot go below 0% consumer goods.

This is now done a little differently, firstly there are now 2 steps to the calculation of the percentage. First we have the base value(expected consumer goods), this works the same as the old percentage calculation; it's a simple percent value that is added up together. This generally is only set by laws so it acts as a base value that everything else modifies. We then have the consumer goods factor (the new modifier) which multiplies this value and if there are multiple factor modifiers they are multiplied together meaning that you will generally never actually reach 0% consumer goods from just the factor alone and the effect of each additional consumer good factor modifier has diminishing returns.


We have also as part of this made the consumer goods calculation round down consumer goods factories which should help minors a bit while not really being highly noticeable for majors.

For those who want a detailed copy of the calculations it's like this:

ConsumerGoodsPercent = (Base1 + Base2 + ….) *((1+Factor1) * (1+Factor2) * ….)

ConsumerGoods = Max(ConsumerGoodsPercent , MINIMUM_NUMBER_OF_FACTORIES_TAKEN_BY_CONSUMER_GOODS_PERCENT ) (ConsumerGoods * Total factories).RoundedDown


[h3]Presets[/h3]
And finally I kept the most exciting one till last, and that is presets for your equipment designers. Ever since the introduction of the equipment designers we have known that some players don't want to or struggle to interact with the complexity of them especially when they are new to the features or game. This was for many off putting and something they would shy away from or be continuously frustrated with, Since the game didn’t really teach you how to make a well rounded design for each role. This was doubly true if they wanted to recreate a historical vehicle that they know from their own knowledge of WW2 but didn’t understand how to translate that into the game with the designer.

What these are are premade designs for your equipment designers that are stored in the game files. When you create a new variant from a blank chassis you can press the presets button and will get a list of all the presets made for that chassis/hull/airframe. So should you open up the improved heavy tank chassis presets you will find an entry called Tiger I and you will see the picture of the Tiger I tank and if you click it all the modules and roles and values will be set for you. Should you be missing modules or upgrades the preset entry will tell you what you are missing in order to make it, then all you have to do is research those modules and then create the variant.

So now if you don't understand or want to understand the deeper workings of equipment design you can still make good use of the equipment designers just pick the tank you want and the game will make it for you. Of course if you want to try out tweaking the designs to edge your way into the world of equipment design you can do that too. Once the preset is loaded you can adjust any part of the design as normal, and if you feel lost at any point you can just load the preset back in.


Some of you may wonder why we’re not allowing you to add your own presets or saved templates. In short, this is something we’d like to do and are not ruling out for the future - historical presets are an important step towards making custom presets a possibility.

However, this feature is entirely moddable so if you want your MP mods to have all the latest meta builds there as presets you can do that, or if you want even more templates for your super in depth history mod or maybe a totally different world you can do that. These presets are defined by the templates you make normally for the AI with some new additional fields, you can now define the art and the name of the template.

That's everything for this dev diary, I hope you will enjoy these changes as much as we have. As always feel free to let us know your favorite parts.

Next week we will be bringing you more information on a new system for content along with how it will be tied into the stories you can tell with this expansion and beyond. See you next week.

[h3]Generals![/h3]

Not only do we have a Developer Diary this week for you, but we also have some intel from the Development team about some of the features coming to Arms Against Tyranny! This is the first video fo a few that we have planned for you all, so we hope you enjoy!

Make sure to check it out The Video

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hello everyone!

My name is John and I’m the 3D artist for Hearts of Iron IV here at Paradox! For this week's Dev Diary, I will be giving you all a behind-the-scenes look at my role in the team and our process for making the 3D art for Hearts of Iron IV.

My role is to create and manage all the 3D art in the game! Not all 3D art is created by a single individual, however. To save time we also have help from various talented outsourcing partners to make sure we can have as much juicy art ready for release as possible!

During this diary, there may be some terminology that may or may not be familiar to you but I will try and make sure that everyone can enjoy reading this and get a glimpse into the 3D art for Hearts of Iron 4.

Creating, tweaking, and managing all this 3D art is a lot of work but it is also a fun and rewarding process so let’s not waste any more time and get right into it!


[h3]Receiving art requests[/h3]

First of all, I will receive a bunch of 3D art requests from our awesome content designers that will provide me with some general information as well as some reference images and useful links to help explain what they want to be added to the game. Doing research and finding material is time-consuming work so this is very useful to get things started.

You never know what can end up being requested. There were a lot of interesting vehicles and uniforms during World War 2 so this helps keep things interesting!

To manage all of these requests we use Miro which is a useful tool to manage a lot of images and text. These requests will be added to my 3D art board in Miro where I will sort them by things like priority and country. From here I will decide which units to work on. I will place the assets that I want to outsource on a separate board where they can be gradually reviewed along each step of the creation process. I will usually provide them with more technical feedback when it comes to the 3D art and our content designers will give input on how the asset looks from a more historical standpoint.


[h3]Finding references[/h3]
These are the types of images that I look at when I’m making a 3D model!


For 3D art, you generally want to have as much reference material as possible so I will usually try to add some additional reference images from the information I have been provided if needed. To understand things like angles, scale, and movement better, watching videos can also be incredibly helpful. If there are any vehicles or uniforms that still exist to this day, then this will provide greater image quality and it can also be good for color reference. It’s important to be aware of re-created paint jobs and modifications that may have been added after the war. Finding good references can be hard at times, we always try our best to stay faithful to the reference material but time is always limited so it can be easy to make mistakes. Being very meticulous and delivering a lot of assets in a short amount of time is definitely a balancing act!

[h3]Blockout[/h3]
The process of creating 3D art can differ a bit from artist to artist or depending on what it is that you are creating but usually, I will begin blocking out the most important shapes for whatever I’m creating. During this phase, I won’t need to care too much about the typical rules of 3D modeling. Things like that will become more important later on. The most important part here is to create the basic shape and also get a good understanding of how all the pieces will fall into place. At the end of this phase, you can use the basic building blocks that you have created to make a high-detail and a low-detail version of your 3D model. This helps save a lot of time and it will ensure that the high and low-detail versions are not too different from each other.
A block out using simple shapes.


A common trick to make sure that you have the right base shape is to disable the lights in the viewport of your 3D modeling software, this leaves you with only the silhouette. If the silhouette looks good you know that you are on the right track!
Can you guess the names of all of these vehicles?


[h3]High Poly - Making a detailed version of our tank![/h3]
Now we will use the block-out model as a base to start working on a version with a lot more fun details. This is the part where you can truly let loose in terms of geometry, no polygon limits are needed here! We will use this model and bake it down to our low poly version later. In short, this means that a highly detailed version of the model will be projected onto the lower detailed version to simulate detail. This will make the end product look less blocky and detailed without using a lot of polygons that can impact performance. In other words, we will get the best of both worlds!

The thing I will need to keep in mind here is to add detail to make the model interesting and accurate to the source material but at the same time, it is important to not add too much detail that will make the model hard to read from a distance. Adding too many tiny details will make it hard for the brain to distinguish between different parts of the model.


Some extra details like tools or holes will be added! These aren’t present in the low-detail version of our model. I will use colors to mask out various parts that will help me later on when adding textures to our model.
Here is the high-detail version of our tank!


It’s fun to be able to view these models up close with this level of detail so here are a few other examples of high poly models for your viewing pleasure!
Here are some high-poly models that are used for Arms Against Tyranny.


[h3]Low Poly - Making an optimized low-detail version of our tank![/h3]
Now that we have added all that sweet-looking detail to our high poly 3D model, we can go back to the block-out version of our model to make ourselves a low-detail version that will be the version that is used in-game!
I will go through the model and make the adjustments like this!


Most of the work here is spent on removing unnecessary polygons in various ways to ensure that the model is optimized. We have a polygon limit for each type of asset. We want to stay within these limits as much as possible without sacrificing too much visual quality!
Here is the low poly version for now!


I have kept some polygons on parts that will help speed things up later on when we will prepare it for animation! It’s important to remember how the model will move, so you will also have to be careful not to remove geometry on parts that will bend. This is especially important for objects with more organic properties such as the limbs of a character for example.

[h3]UV-mapping - Preparing the model for a paint job![/h3]

Before we can start adding textures to our model we need to go through a process known as UV mapping. This is where you create a 2D map of your model so that you have something to paint on. It’s sort of like cutting a paper model into different sheets of paper that you fold out so that you can paint on them.

Once you have cut your model into all of these pieces we will need to put them into a 2x2 square that will end up being our UV-map. This process is very much like a puzzle game. The actual size of the texture image that will be used in-game is quite small so different shells will be mirrored and stacked on top of each other. This is a technique that’s commonly used in games when you want to cram as much resolution out of your texture map as possible. There are limitations to doing this, it can make camouflage or dirt look repetitive in ways that are not so appealing so we will need to be conscious of how the model will be viewed in the game. Not all artists enjoy this part but I find it to be pretty fun in its own right!
This is what our UV map looks once we have sorted everything!


[h3]Texturing[/h3]

If you have ever painted a miniature model in real life then this is the part where we grab our brush and start painting our model! This is honestly one of the most satisfying parts of being a 3D artist because you are no longer looking at a model without realistic materials and well.. texture!

To create our textures I will use a program called Substance Painter. I will prepare the high and low-detail models, sort the different parts by name and separate some parts from the rest of the model. After this, we will import our low-detail model into our texturing software. Once that’s done we will take our high-detail model and project it onto the low-detail model. Once this is done we get a lot of these maps with different properties that we can use for various effects when we start painting our model.

From here, it’s all about listening to your favorite music tracks (low-fi HoI anyone?!) as you add color and detail to your model. When you are texturing you will make adjustments to different values that will affect how different materials are perceived. It’s good to start with a base color and from there, add color variation as well as other properties such as how shiny or metallic the different parts should be. Working in Substance Painter is all about working with layers and masking out different parts using various methods. Thanks to the colors that we added to our high-detail model earlier we can quickly add color to things such as tiny holes as well as materials to other details such as small pickaxes and other tools. I will add some ambient occlusion to add some dark color to the nooks and crannies. This will also help separate some of the details from each other. Camouflage will be made a bit larger than in real life to make the texture appear less cluttered from a distance. Last but not least, let’s add a tiny amount of highlights to the edges to make the details pop!
A timelapse of the texturing process!


[h3]Rigging and Animating[/h3]
We can’t have our model be completely static in the game so let’s make it come to life with some animations! Like many things, animation and rigging is a science in itself so there are artists that specialize in this process alone. But in most cases, I will be able to create my animations from scratch or reuse older ones if needed.

Before our model can move we will need to add “bones” or “joints” that will be placed into the model. These can then be moved around to create our animation. We will place our bones in a manner that lets us manipulate how we want the model to move. Once the bones are in place we can move on to a process called weight painting which lets us tell the game exactly what part of the model should move together with a specific joint.


Now we will animate it by moving the skeleton we have created and pinning certain key poses. It’s important to get certain timings right to sell the weight and gravity that’s being applied to the vehicle as it moves. This can be trickier than it sounds but with some patience and minor adjustments, we will hopefully get the result we are looking for!
It’s alive!


Finally, It’s time to put our model, textures, and animation into the game! Once added we will make some minor adjustments to the textures and that’s that!
Tadaa!


While we are on the subject of animated assets, here is a bonus one for you! You may have gotten a peak of it if you read the Historical Finland Developer diary!
Look at them go!

And with that, our tank is ready to wreak havoc on the battlefield! Things are still under development so changes may happen here and there but I hope I was able to give you some interesting insight into the 3D art for Hearts of Iron!


This is just a small taste of all the 3D art we will have in the upcoming DLC so I hope some of you will zoom in every now and then as you play, even if it's just for a moment!

Best regards, John