PDXMidgeman

Hello everyone, it's your favourite (and only) tech lead, The French Paradox!

In this diary I'll tell you more about our tech, give some insights into the programmer's job, what we've been up to for the past year (and some change) and offer you a chance to ask any question you may have about tech.

Saying old platforms goodbye

First, with the upcoming 1.11 patch we will be retiring some old Linux and Mac platforms that aren't maintained by their own developers anymore.
This means that starting next update the minimum OS version to run HoI will be Ubuntu 18.04 (on Linux) and macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) on Mac.
There shouldn't be much to worry about though, as the previous versions are older than HoI itself at this point and our telemetry shows almost all of you have upgraded long ago.
For those on Windows who l... Read more

Greetings, HoI fans.

I'm not much of a forum goer, so most of you probably never heard of me, but I am the Art Lead on Hearts of Iron 4.

Today I bring you a rather special Dev Diary. This was prepared for you all by our 2D artist on HoI4 and should give you a glimpse into the work that goes into each new loading screen. We hope that you will all find this to be an interesting and enjoyable read.

Without further ado, I now hand over to the artist.


The loading screen for The Krojanty Battle - An artist's journey
So where does an artist start?

First and foremost, to have a tool to gather the most crucial thing to build an epic looking loading screen is a reference board. The tool that our artist uses is called PureRef. It keeps track of your images and is easy to organize and customize.

... Read more

From the womb of Mother Russia, Machines are born - But it is in the blood of the People the Union survives!

Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back will release November 23rd, 2021

Do your duty Comrades, And preorder now!
{LINK REMOVED}https://pdxint.at/3be5rXn

Hello, and welcome back to another Dev Diary for No Step back and 1.11 Barbarossa. Today we will be pulling back the veil a bit and show you how modders can affect and use the new features coming in 1.11.

For those of you who do not get unreasonably excited by hearing about new script commands and changes to databases, the long and short of it is this: We made some fundamental changes to the way the game handles some things, which will probably require your favorite mods to spend some time updating. On the flip side, those changes also allow for some exciting possibilities down the line. If you came here hoping for a release date, we must ask you for just a little more patience. We promise the announcement is very close - but not today.

Characters
Probably the biggest change is in how we handle people on the backend (or ... Read more

Hi all, and welcome back to today’s developer diary!

It can be very easy to get super-focused on details when looking at individual systems or parts of features - something we often tend to do when writing developer diaries. Each week, we’re going to give you an overview of a core system that we’ve so far introduced in parts, and will include all of the changes we’ve made to that system over the course of development, since we first looked at it.

In addition to this, we’ll also take a look at some changes coming to the AI in No Step Back, so if that’s more your jam, feel free to skip to the end ;D
We’ll begin with an overview of the Officer Corps:
This image represents a near-f... Read more

Welcome to this AAR dev diary!
Join me as I take on the task of surviving as Poland against both the Soviets and the Germans in the upcoming No Step Back expansion. This diary will function as a sort of compilation of the new features. Normal caveat is that there might be bugs here, and balance are prone to change. It's also a pretty screenshot heavy diary.

Without further ado, let's start.

1936 - The year of housekeeping​ First off let's start with some housekeeping and strategy. I know that Germany will attack first and I can’t properly defend against both the USSR and Germany. My plan is to give up eastern Poland when the USSR demands it to buy myself time and take out Germany, then swing around and take back my lost land.

Therefore I’ll focus my industry buildup on western Poland since I plan on losing eastern ... Read more

Greetings all,
Today we have two important topics to cover, for which we have reinstated @podcat with a battlefield commission, in order to detail our latest efforts to combat the width meta. In addition, Comrades @Bratyn and @Wrongwraith return for a dive into changes to the Soviet Exiles branch of the focus tree, based partly on community feedback.

Combat Meta
Hi everyone, @podcat here for a little guest appearance to tell you some more about the combat changes coming with Barbarossa. Back in the Combat and Stats Changes diary we outlined our quest to break down the 40 width meta and try to combat an “overall best division”.
In there we outlined several changes such as varying terrain width without easy multipliers to exploit (meaning you can still make optimums for particular terrains but not all), as well as reduce... Read more

Greetings all!

Today’s dev diary contains the details of a few smaller features coming to the table in No Step Back. In addition, I’ll get ahead of the curve here and point out that there will be no diary next week - we’ll be back the week after with more to see.

Scorched Earth
One of the enduring tactical practices of the Soviet defense during the German invasion, was the use of scorched earth. In No Step Back, you’ll be able to spend Command Power on ordering the strategic disabling of railways in the event of a tactical retreat.


(All visuals WIP!)

Enacted on a state level, every railway present receives full damage, and is immediately flagged, making sure that... Read more

Hello there, C0RAX again.

It’s time again to reveal some more secret information that was hinted at in the last dev diary. Specifically this week will be revolving around the final part of railways and trains. So without any more need for introduction here are our stars of the show today.

The railway guns.

So to start off I'll go through how you get a railway gun on the map because it’s a little different to normal land units. First of all you are going to want to research railway guns which comes after armored trains



Then you can find it in your production tab just like building normal equipment. But unlike other equipment you build, these production lines are limited to 5 factories and the railway gun won't be added to your stockpile.

... Read more

Greetings all, and welcome back for a slightly less content-focused dev diary than our latter soviet efforts. Today we’ll be covering a couple of smaller additions to be added in NSB, some of which have been hinted at before, followed by a small announcement from project management.

Weather 2.0
One of our long-standing goals with the new supply system, was to introduce some changes to the way weather affects the gameplay experience. To give some strategic relevance to weather, we’ve slowed down the system to modulate between potential weather effects on a less frequent basis. This gives a player some time to react to potentially advantageous/disadvantageous conditions, as well as being somewhat more predictable on a larger scale.

In addition to this, we’ve taken a broad look at the combination of stat effects on ground ... Read more

“Comrade Bratyn, you have been found guilty of counter-WW2 activity. You have been seen consorting with citizens and even figurehead ideologues of the Imperator team. Undeniable proof of work -by your hand- can be seen in publications by this group of dissidents made over the course of the past year. You do not fool us. We know “Drikus” is just another alias you use.

“Your attempts at shirking your duties to the Team will not be tolerated. Discussion of the Classical Period is wholly unacceptable behaviour for a HoI4 citizen; publication of treasonous material is a crime far, far worse. You are hereby stripped of your rank and sentenced to the mines in HoI-beria. Perhaps a year’s hard labor working on good, proper WW2 material will enable you to see the errors of your ways, and rehabilitate you sufficiently to regain your previous liberties.

“Comrade Bratyn, I will not welcome you back. You were foolish to think you could ever leave, in the first place.”
... Read more

Hello comrades, and welcome back to another DevDiary for No Step Back. After Comrade @ManoDeZombi (as chairman of the People's Commitee for Focus Tree Production) introduced you to the historical and shared branches of the Soviet tree last week, today we will be talking about the Opposition against Stalin.



The opposition to Stalin during the 30’s was diverse and divided. Thus I guess it is fitting that the work on the various paths for the Soviet Union has been divided between several CDs unlike normally, when one tree is designed by one CD. Thus the creation of the CD Soviet.

I got the honor of writing this diary, so I shall do my best at covering all the options available for th... Read more

Greetings Comrades & Generals!
We know you're ever watchful for more No Step Back information, and we'll deliver with this weeks dev diary, but for now we wanted to take a moment to talk to you about Operation Zoomer.

As of 14:00 BST, August 9th our landing craft invaded our latest Social Media platform - Instagram. Magenta Beach is open. We're under heavy fire and we need reinforcements!

Join the Hearts of Iron community team for a whole host of new, community content on our latest platform. We've got bundles of planned content, including special video content, sneak peaks, history bites and behind the scenes info! Who knows, there might be a dev diary tease later today too!

Join the fight: {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

Added server visibility settings to Steam MP (Public, Private, Friends)
Update MS as well to keep version parity.

Здравствуйте товарищи! - Greetings comrades! And welcome to a new Hearts of Iron 4 Dev Diary! I hope that you are all having a great summer, and that you are prepared for a little reading, because today we’ll be talking about the last country left to show for the upcoming expansion, a country that, in the direst of times, did take No Step Back.

As you all know, the Soviet Union is huge, and we’ve had to form our own Content Design Soviet to properly implement all the cool stuff we wanted to represent. So today I’ll be talking about my main responsibility, which has been the historical and the common branches for what is one of the most interesting countries in HOI.

I’d just like to mention a couple of things before we start:
First of all, yes, everything we’ll be talking about today will be coming for free with the Barbarossa update, although some content might vary if you don’t own some of the previous DLCs.
Secondly, our beloved Motherland is still WIP so yo... Read more

Take a seat at the table, General. It’s time to fight.
Paradox Interactive has helped build one heck of a tactical bundle! Starting with Hearts of Iron IV: Cadet Edition at its lowest price ever (just $1!), enjoy the full Hearts of Iron IV experience with expansions like Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus, Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns, and Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger. Plus, your purchase helps support a Charity: Water and One Tree Planted!



Get the bundle here: {LINK REMOVED}Humble

Greetings all, and welcome to today’s dev diary on the huge supply system update coming with the barbarossa update. Before we begin, I’ll leave a heads up that this will be the last dev diary before we break for summer, so don’t expect anything new until some time in August at the earliest.

Since we last talked about supply, a few things have changed. We found that the way truck need could take off and spike was hard to deal with and that watching out so you didn't overload individual supply hubs was a bit too intensive. We also felt that the way the mapmode worked made it very difficult to project how well supply was flowing.

The iteration we have now aims at addressing these shortcomings. It's now possible for divisions to supply from multiple hubs. Trucks are now less of a strict necessity, rather something you can assign t... Read more

Greetings all, Arheo here!
For my first HoI dev diary, I’m here to introduce the Officer Corps: a collection of new features that will be included as part of No Step Back and the Barbarossa update.

For quite a while, we’ve wanted to allow for more direct specialization of military branches, as well as tying together various disparate systems such as the high command, generals, military-focused national spirits, and doctrines. To achieve step one of this process, we’re giving the Officer Corps and associated mechanics a unique national interface:


(WIP, as usual)

Here, the empty advisor portraits at the top of the window are where you can now find your High Command and Mili... Read more

Another Wednesday means time for another update! Today its time for a "bag of tricks" diary which means its an assortment of smaller features and improvements. Todays selection has several things you guys have asked for for a long time so I hope you will like it!

Decommissioned templates Its now possible to mark templates as old. Much like with equipment they will no longer show in the list.



Divisions can still use them but get a little warning, and you cant switch to one until it is recommissioned.



It is also possible to reorganize the list of templates using drag and drop, so you can make sure you keep your horsie boys on top where they belong.

... Read more

For five years, wargamers around the world have been challenged to outbuild and outfight history’s most terrible war machines in Hearts of Iron IV, a grand strategy wargame from Paradox Development Studio. Millions of tanks and planes have been built as players fought through an infinite variety of alternate histories set against the backdrop of humanity’s greatest struggle.

In honor of the fifth anniversary of Hearts of Iron IV, Paradox has announced a new bundle that will give players even more style as they prove that they are the master of modern total war.

The Hearts of Iron IV Anniversary Bundle Includes:

Eastern Front Planes Pack: Over 50 new airplane models for nations fighting in central and eastern Europe, including Germany, the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and Hungary.
... Read more