PDX Katten

Hello there generals!

You might have already seen two forum posts made by our Game Director and Tech Lead, about how to assist you with common issues. I have made this post to cover all of that in one single place, and to also invite you all to our open beta!


Open Beta

For the open beta, all you have to do is to select the correct branch. You do this by right clicking the game in your library, going into properties, then beta versions and selecting open_beta as the beta branch that you would like to participate in. Then the game will simply update, and then you just launch the game like normal, and poof you are playing in the open beta!

Do remember that all encountered bugs and issues should be reported through the same bug reporting forum as always.

Why aren’t these fixes on the live version?

... Read more

Now Live!
{LINK REMOVED}Patch Notes Here!

The future of war hangs in the balance. Take to the skies and pen the annals of history in the latest expansion for Hearts of Iron IV - By Blood Alone

{LINK REMOVED}Buy it here!

If you missed any of our Developer Diaries or By Blood Alone Tutorials, then check this list down below!

Developer... Read more

Greetings all,

As is tradition, we’re releasing the upcoming patch notes for the Avalanche update along with By Blood Alone ahead of the time with release later today.

Undoubtedly there may be some missing items here, and we’ll keep a log of anything we missed in an edited spoiler below the main one.

{LINK REMOVED} Read the full Patch Notes Here!

EDIT

Hotfix

Checksum: 45c2
In-game version: Avalanche v1.12.1.a74e

Hello, and welcome to this week's Dev Diary!
I am HOI’s 2D artist and am the one who makes the little buttons, icons, and whatever gets thrown in my way for you to look at and push on, and today I have gotten the opportunity to talk about my work!
So let’s start at the beginning, how does a project start, and how and when do artists get involved?

Being an artist on a project such as Hearts of Iron is not an easy piece of work. You need to be on your toes and ready to adapt to whatever task your colleagues want help to solve. It usually involves a bit of text and a ton of reference material. And to gather all of these things we use a tool called Miro.


It’s essentially an online whiteboard that can be used however fits you and your team best. On our Miro, we separate the features into columns that give you a quick overview o... Read more

Bonjour friends, it’s your favourite Tech Lead again!
{LINK REMOVED}Last year already I wrote to you in the final weeks leading to the release of the Barbarossa patch, and we draw close to the go-live of the Avalanche patch, here I appear again.

Old Platforms Retirement Plan Like the future, technology is always in motion. As new platforms arise, olders need to be taken behind the barn and put down.

Don’t worry, we’re not talking about Windows 7 (yet 😉). Despite the release of Windows 11, we have not elected to make a push to Windows 10 since Microsoft’s support for new tech on older releases is still fairly good.

The same cannot be said for Mac and Linux, sadly. And so, starting the new 1.12.0 release, the minimum OS versions will be... Read more

Today we go to the drawing board and the planning table as we take a look at the
Divisional Command changes as well as the Plane designer with Peter Nicholson and
Gabriel Blum.

Click {LINK REMOVED}Here to watch the Features Highlights #3

Pre-Order By Blood Alone today: {LINK REMOVED}https://pdxint.at/ByBloodAloneSteam

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Follow us on social media:
Twitter - {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

Greetings all,

Today we have quite a number of items for the dev diary. We’ll be covering some new additions to the career profile system, followed by some new tools coming for modders in the Avalanche update.

To begin with, I’ll hand over to our designer on the career profile:



Hello!

Ingevar here with an update regarding new features coming to the Career Profile.
Since the release of Career Profile earlier this year we've been working on the next iteration that will bring more stats, non-ironman achievements, and some profile customization.

Let's look at it in detail.


Playthrough Overview
When BBA is released, every player will find the playthrough overview available in the ESC menu when playing the game.​


This familiar window will contain some numbers for ... Read more

Today we take a dive into the various alternative futures that can unfold in the coming expansion! Explore the focus trees for Italy, Switzerland and Ethiopia with Game Director Peter Nicolson & our Hearts of Iron IV development team.

Click {LINK REMOVED}Here to watch the Features Highlights #2

Pre-Order By Blood Alone today: {LINK REMOVED}https://pdxint.at/ByBloodAloneSteam

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Follow us on social media:
Twitter - {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

Greetings all,

Due to a misplaced carrier pigeon, today’s dev diary will not be on modding changes, but will instead focus on a variety of minor and QoL changes coming in the Avalanche patch accompanying By Blood Alone.

This list is by no means exhaustive: we’ll cover the more impactful changes here and still give you plenty of juicy items to discover in the patch notes.

Armor Piercing
Those of you who routinely peruse the forums may have noticed me discussing details on our change to the piercing formula, but it serves to draw attention to it here, in a more visible light.

In the Avalanche update, we’re reworking the binary nature of the piercing vs armor calculation to act in a somewhat more realistic way, as well as to make designing your divisions and equipment a little more nuanced.​


Prior to ... Read more

Coming September 27th 2022!

The future of war hangs in the balance. Take to the skies and pen the annals of history in the latest expansion for Hearts of Iron IV - By Blood Alone

{LINK REMOVED} Pre-Order Here!
Pre-Order Bonus Song

{LINK REMOVED}... Read more

Hello everyone!

We just released patch 1.11.13 for "Barbarossa" on Steam and Microsoft Store. The new checksum is d173.
This update introduces the possibility to play multiplayer games across stores (such as Steam and Microsoft Store) using the Nakama network solution already in use in other PDS titles. See the FAQ below for more details.

Saves made with 1.11.12 are expected to be fully compatible with 1.11.13 and you can continue your previous game.

If you discover any bugs in patch 1.11.13, first check the {LINK REMOVED}known issues list, and if necessary please report them in the {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

Hello all!
I join you to once again talk about peace conferences. This time we have more info on our changes and features that I was not able to go into last time. Most of these are coming as part of By Blood Alone.

Previously I talked about mostly the structure of the new Peace Conference system. If you have not read that Dev Diary, I recommend checking that out first. The short version is that we are reworking the old peace system into a new one that features simultaneous and blind turns, all conferences actions being contestable, and limited points to use in the conference.

Before we cover new stuff I also want to address some changes to the jargon we introduced last time. We considered changing “demands” to “bids” to fit with the new system. The previous dev diary talked at length about bids. We are instead now referring to all of these as “demands.”

Now for some new stuff! Firstly, I would like to show off our nearly complete UI with a comparison to... Read more

Greetings all!

Welcome back to today’s feature dev diary on a series of interconnected subsystems being added to the game in By Blood Alone.

One of the major points in my first roadmap dev diary was that I felt quite strongly about the inclusion of further roleplay and immersive elements in Hearts of Iron. What I’ll be showing off today is intended to fulfill a small part of this bullet point.

Those of you with keen memories will recall an early teaser I posted here. Some of you guessed correctly, and in BBA, we’ve introduced a dynamic system for naming battleplans. For many major nations, battleplan names can be provided through a list of locations, resulting in a historical series of operation tags which will be applied when plans are created:​
... Read more

Hello, and welcome back to another Dev Diary for the upcoming By Blood Alone DLC and accompanying Patch 1.12! The team has returned from the summer vacation, and we are now back fixing bugs and tweaking the balancing of the new features and focus trees.

Today, we are taking a look at the Plane Designer. As always, any number value that you are going to see in this DD is subject to change.

The Plane Designer became a subject of discussion, both inside the team and in the community, almost as soon as we announced that No Step Back would feature a Tank Designer. We felt that it would mesh well with the rework of the Italian focus tree, not least because the Italian aviation industry was very well developed and produced some of the best combat airplanes of the war - hampered mostly, as Italy so often was, by lacking productio... Read more

Hey, AveeBee here. This is my first time writing a development diary for you all, having only joined the Hearts of Iron team earlier this year. However, I’d just like to say that it’s a great honor to get to do this having been a fan of the series for literally decades at this point, (yeah, look it up, Hearts of Iron I came out in 2002, crazy right?) I’m really excited to be contributing to this awesome game. With that out of the way, let's once again dive into Ethiopia!

As explained in the {LINK REMOVED}last Ethiopian dev diary, Ethiopia starts in a dire situation with the Italian invasion of the country well under way and any hope of winning the war rapidly diminishing. Haile Selassie historically left the country to rally support through the League of Na... Read more

Join Game Director Peter Nicholson, UX Designer Peter Johannesson and Game Developers Robert Dotson & Bradley Faithfull-Wright as they detail the coming developments with the avalanche update that accompanies the By Blood Alone expansion.

In this video they will cover the changes to Peace Conferences and Naval Combat as well as discuss the reworks to the Air systems.

Click Here to watch the Features Highlights #1

Wishlist By Blood Alone today: {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

The year is 1944, the future (If you live in 1936), you may find yourself in the middle of a war against France, as the Alpine Confederation, with a beautiful flag, the sound of gunfire off in the distance​


You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large army, composed of regular troops, marching through mountains and plains. You may tell yourself, This is not my Guisan, this is not my neutral and democratic Switzerland. And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?​


Hey there, it’s Carlo again, to update you on the alt-history paths of the Swiss Focus Tree! Now let’s go back a bit. To the present, 1936. It all started with the focus Swiss Guiding Principles, which triggered a... Read more

Buongiorno! And welcome to not only my first post here on the forums, but also to Italy’s Alternative History Dev Diary! I know that a lot of you folks out there have been looking forward to Italy’s re-work, and I bet that a bunch of you have already read Mano de Zombi’s absolutely gigantic {LINK REMOVED}Dev Diary for Italy’s Historical path. (If you haven’t, it might be worthwhile to do so before continuing here, since he explains new features that will pop up here too.) Well, today it’s time to look at what could have been if only history had turned out slightly (or sometimes wildly) different.

And please remember that all of this is still very much a work in progress; a lot of things might and will change from here until we release i... Read more

Hey everyone! You probably don’t know me, but I’m Carlo, the Content Designer in charge of Switzerland for BBA. I’m very excited to present to you all, the Swiss Focus Tree, our first circular focus tree, allowing Switzerland to go back and forth between the Make Fondue and Stay Neutral focuses. Through the power of Fondue and Chill, plus all that Nazi gold, Switzerland will prevail over its rivals by completely staying out of the war in absolute comfort and safety.​


[Record Scratch Sound] If that’s how you imagine Swiss life during World War II, I got news for you buddy, that is far from how it went.

Yes, Switzerland is not a country most people associate with World War II game... Read more

Formazione Generali!
The wait is over. In this gigante developer diary we explore the majority of the Italy focus tree! Of course, we’ll save some secrets for later down the line.

Due to Steam post limitations and the length of this diary, we can only host the publication on our own forums.

To read the article, {LINK REMOVED}Click here


{LINK REMOVED}