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HOI4 Dev Diary - Art and Music

Hello, and welcome back to another Dev Diary for the Man the Guns expansion. The dev team are all deep in testing and fixing at the moment so today we will be handing over the rains to the Art and Music teams so they get to show what they have been up to to fill MTG with both new music, 3d models and 2d art to ramp up its awesomeness ;)

3D Art
With the focus of Man the Guns being on Britain and the US as well as on naval combat, we decided that we wanted to give both countries some of their historical ships as 3d models.
us_ships.png


The US already had a modern battleship model from the Famous Battleship pack that was rolled into the base game with Waking the Tiger due to...reasons, so we decided to give you a model for your older battleships, represented here by USS New Mexico, joined by USS Pensacola for the Heavy Cruisers (owners of the Famous Heavy Cruiser Pack get that model at higher tech levels), USS Brooklyn for the Light Cruisers, and USS Fletcher for the Destroyers.

british_ships.png


The same basic consideration applies to Britain, which will have HMS Nelson representing early Battleships, as well as the County-Class Heavy Cruiser, Leander-Class Light Cruiser, and Tribal-Class Destroyer for its smaller ships.

amphib_tanks.png


Another big source of new 3d Art were the amphibious landing vehicles. We tried to have a good spread covering as many majors as possible with the Cromwell DD (never left the drawing board), the Schwimmpanzer II and the Type 2 Ka-Mi (a converted Ha-Go light tank) as well as the Soviet T-40 and the American LVT-1(A).

amtracs.png


Accompanying the amphibious tanks are the amphibious mechanized vehicles, with the British Terrapin cheekily shuffling in despite having wheels instead of tracks. Beside it are the American LVT-1 standing in as the generic amphibious tractor, the German Land-Wasser-Schlepper, the Japanese Type 4 Ka-Tsu (with its torpedoes removed for safety reasons) and finally the American LVT-2 as the unique American Amtrac.

mexico.png


Our new countries have also gotten the usual new 3d models. Mexico has its indigenously produced Zeus and Azcarate planes as well as the famous Mondragon self-loading rifle (the first semi-automatic combat rifle adopted as a universal service rifle...and also the first semi-automatic universal service rifle retired after very short service for cost reasons).

dutch.png


The Dutch are represented with the Fokker D.XXI and the Fokker T.V, the DAF truck and equipped with the M41 Johnson rifle and the MP28. Since a lot of the gameplay revolves around the colonies in the East Indies, they also have a model for colonial troops recruited there.


Music
Start by kicking off this clip with samples and art in it while you read:

With Man the Guns I wanted to try having more distinct music even within one nation and I felt USA with its possibilities for civil wars would be perfect to test this. The expansion will come with 4 new songs to help us enable that.

  • General Democratic song appropriate for UK/USA that is quite upbeat
  • A Communist America song that takes a lot of inspiration from soviet propaganda and folk music even to set the vibe. I personally love this one :)
  • A Confederate America song that tries to walk the line between a sombre military mood, southern nostalgia and american tunes.
  • A General Democratic song that is a lot darker and more ominous. Fitting either for a nation under a lot of pressure (we were thinking submarines here) or something like where UK’s monarchy has taken a turn towards… evil.
So for example we have set things up so the Confederate song plays as the players nation starts drifting from democracy. Likewise the communist tune plays as the player changes that direction. Of the above songs the absolute hardest to get right was the confederate song. We weren't quite sure how to get it to sound like we envisioned, but our composer tried a lot of different ways until we (I think on the 4th try) got something that really clicked. You can hear small parts of it in the video above.

2D Art
When it comes to 2d art we have been fleshing out each of the new nations with a ton of portraits. Here are some samples:
new_portraits_mtg (1).jpg


We have also been adding more generics for admirals across the world as many nations had a need of them.
Png all navy.png


Finally we have been updating the naval tech icons to get unique levels for each ship type. A pet peeve of mine since release :)
naval_new_devdiary.jpg


See you all next week for another update!

Rejected Titles
“Something-something-clickbait-release-date”
We finally got those Fokkers in the game
I had the Fokker in my sight, it was a Messerschmidt...
Can you say Fokker on a public stream
We didn't want to go 'overboard' with rejected titles
 
Agree that the viewports look incredibly big on those 3D models. Maybe it's because most of the time you'll be seeing them from afar, but it does make them look really small.
 
Agree that the viewports look incredibly big on those 3D models. Maybe it's because most of the time you'll be seeing them from afar, but it does make them look really small.
They are holes out of which canons fire. They are not for looking, these ships are a hybrid of 17th and 20th century technology....
 
By the way, I can't but wonder - will there be different icons for light and heavy cruiser types in production screen, just as for battlecruisers, battleships and super-heavy battleships. Unification of art for hulls in the tech tree is understandable - but will it be that convenient to have remember, what is what actually in all your projects for production?
 
A little sad at the locking of music behind nations and their paths. I find the music to be a high point of HOI IV, and locking it away means you will not always be garaunteed to hear the breath of this awe inspiring soundtrack. Regardless, I am excited

Is this priest the Pope? It would be fun to have Vatican City in game. ( I know that Pope should have white clothes, but he reminds me of Pious)
He is most likely the Cardinal of Mexico City, as we know the Catholics can seize control of the Mexican government. The vestments match. And it is Pius, not Pious.
 
Give us Gorch Fock class Barques. I want some tall ship action in HOI IV. The USS Eagle/Horst Wessel and the Gorch Fock are still in Commission to this day.
 
A little sad at the locking of music behind nations and their paths. I find the music to be a high point of HOI IV, and locking it away means you will not always be garaunteed to hear the breath of this awe inspiring soundtrack. Regardless, I am excited


He is most likely the Cardinal of Mexico City, as we know the Catholics can seize control of the Mexican government. The vestments match. And it is Pius, not Pious.

I mean, you can still play whatever music you like regardless of situation by opening the music player, it's the little musical note next to the speed controls.
 
Is it my imagination or does that guy on the top row, third from the left have an amazing resemblance to Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the CPGB during this period? He's got some kind of naval pin on though, strange.

Right now Rajani Palme Dutt is the leader of communist Britain. He only served as head of the CPGB between the start of WW2 and the beginning of Barbarossa. Pollitt was sacked for supporting the war against Germany after the MR Pact was signed. Wondering how this is going to be portrayed in game.

As stated before, this is Karel Doorman :)

Pollitt is indeed also in the game, and is the default ruler for Communist Britain. If the MR Pact is signed, he is replaced by Dutt, who then is replaced by Pollitt again if the MR Pact is broken (as historically happened).
 
As stated before, this is Karel Doorman :)

Pollitt is indeed also in the game, and is the default ruler for Communist Britain. If the MR Pact is signed, he is replaced by Dutt, who then is replaced by Pollitt again if the MR Pact is broken (as historically happened).

Thank you for the response!

It's really great to see little details like this included. I know it doesn't have a big impact on gameplay, but it really adds to the overall immersion.