[Benoît]

En version anglaise, j'ai résumé plus haut le débat sprites/pions: Les icônes sont plus adaptées que les pions OTAN (qui pourront être utilisés), des sprites et des pions pour donner plus d'informations.

Counters.

So there are a lot of feelings connected to this, so I will clarify our thoughts on this and what we are working with, because stuff is still under construction and always is until release. So grab a cuppa of something hot and snuggle up to your life sized Von Rundstedt doll and lets go.

NATO or icons?!
From a pure game design standpoint nato counters are insane. There is almost nothing about the symbols that indicates what they symbolize, so thats why they arent the standard symbol for stuff. However, in wargames they are pretty common so a lot of people have experience with them and so including them is a no brainer because plenty of players wont have to relearn a new icon set and feel at home. So we are giving players the choice between both NATO and regular symbols.

Sprites (models) or Counters?!
Why not both? See you can have the cake and eat it as well.
In hoi3 the choice was simple, the 3d models were frankly an atrocious interface and offered little information and made playing really hard. I hated them and just played with counters. In HOI2 the sprites were well done and clear so in that game there wasnt really an advantage to either, although counters could show a few things more if I recall.
So when designing hoi4 we decided we wanted both a pretty model that could show stuff a counter couldnt (stances, tech levels, maybe more) and a counter below it giving you as much information as quickly and completely as possible. HoI3 style counters stopped being useful when zooming out, or when stacks were too big, so our new counter system can summarize information for you in a much better way. They will stack by category so that you can see how much of a stack is made up of armor for example, as well as when zooming out instead of overlapping into a giant mess like in previous games they combine to show a summarized stack over areas. see example picture, here we zoomed out so much most of the german army is clumped up in one stack makign it super easy to see exactly how much of each you have and to select sub groups (click the 3 armored divisions just to select those to see more info for example):



A counters only view?!
I established in the above section that out new counters are better in every way as interfaces than the counters from HOI3, so the only reason would be that you don't like to see pretty 3d graphics and feel this is immersion breaking in your games if they dont look like an old boardgame. Since we know there are people who feel this way we still investigated the option of a counter only interface:
- You can either make a 2d overlay like we have currently, so the only difference would be to turn off the 3d models. I am not going to do something I feel adds nothing and just makes the game ugly, but I am sure someone will make a mod that does this.
- The other option is 3d counters that look like 2d, or boardgame chips (sort of what the hoi3 ones were, they were costlier to render than the 3d objects btw). The problem with these is that the shape isnt natural and when placed into a 3d map trying to represent the world will end up clipping into, falling off mountains and lots of other terribleness that is extremely hard to work around. we would also end up having to reimplement all the work we did with the 2d overlay counters in the previous section, but now in 3d. We are still a small core team of 3 programmers and I cant justify spending that much development time just to add a visual choice of the same thing, or we'll end up where hoi3 was with too much stuff, none of it balanced or working quite right.
- I also feel there is a large overlap between this crowd and people who only want a 2d map as well. These people I am sad to say we will never be able to make happy with the release of hoi4. A 2d game is possible to make, but its not a game anyone in the team wants to make, or that has a chance of selling as much as a nicer looking 3d one. If you are in this camp, get together and make a 2d mod. Its definitely possible, but its a lot of work we really cant justify doing if we want to keep making games and not starve on the streets.

I spent part of my precious weekend writing this because I care about what you, the fans and players, think about the game. Possibly a lot more than is healthy, so I hope people will give it time to read through and think about the points I raised before giving feedback and staying on the side of logic and politeness in the following discussion.

[Vilcoyote]

Un peu de trollage réaliste pour finir

[Aaltar]

Ils enlèvent les symboles OTAN ?

[Benoît]

Non, ils vont les ajouter.

[Aaltar]

J'ai eu peur qu'ils finissent de sceller le sort de leur prochain jeu...

[Benoît]

Les symboles OTAN ne sont clairement pas l'alpha et l'omega du jeu.

[Aaltar]

Si tu veux aborder les choses dans cet angle, la chaine de commandement non plus je suppose, tout comme ce sur quoi le jeu s'oriente comme faisant l'impasse pour convenir au plus grand nombre...

[Benoît]

La chaîne de commandement peut apporter quelque chose si elle ne devient pas une usine à gaz pour un rendu ridicule. Ma position sur le sujet est la même que celle que Zazou avait exprimé: J'adore le système du III pour l'ambiance qu'il procure mais je le trouve trop lourd pour le rendu de jeu qu'il propose.
Son évolution est actée, il faudra voir ce qu'elle sera (car nous avons juste les orientations) et donnera, et surtout donnera après être modifiée dans un patch ultérieur.

[Benoît]

Pas de DD vendredi pour cause de deadline à Noel.
Il faudra attendre probablement après les fêtes donc...

A la demande de la communauté, une image:

[astradeus]

c'est la corse derrière ?

[LeFoureur]

Je dirai Malte.

[astradeus]

ou la grande bretagne

[LeFoureur]

Houla ! Tu n'es jamais allé en GB par la mer toi.

[Commandant Soso]

J'hésite à le prendre si il est moins compliqué que le 3 je me l'offre.

[Vae Victis]

Graphiquement c'est assez jolie je trouve