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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
 
What is the Type III submarine supposed to be?

They are all chimeras, put together by taking the armament from one referenc epicture and merge it with the superstructure of another etc.

Alternatively: It is a supposed to be a submarine, Sir.

What models will coastal defence ships use?

Heavy Cruiser
 
They are all chimeras, put together by taking the armament from one referenc epicture and merge it with the superstructure of another etc.

Alternatively: It is a supposed to be a submarine, Sir.



Heavy Cruiser
I had a question, hope it isn't a problem if I ask it again ;), will the new 2d ship art replace all current ship art? (and does that mean all majors will have the same shipart, or is this ship art just for the nations without their own art)?
 
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.
 
Alternatively: It is a supposed to be a submarine, Sir.

And you call yourselves artists*! It looks far too close to a submarine in that case. Picasso would have come up with something far less submarine-y :p

More seriously, it looks like it's inspired by Japanese and US subs (there may have been others, but they're all I can remember right now) that mounted two 5" (or so - the Japanese used 5.5" guns), one fore and aft of the conning tower. Probably looks closer to the Japanese than the US, but some of this type below, the Japanese B2 Type (not as per this pic, but it's late and I have to get to bed and don't have time to look up something more appropriate) mounted two 5.5" guns. Keeping in mind that the sub itself is longer than the pic (the stern continues below the waterline) and it's not far off**. Just imagine a deck gun fore and aft of the conning tower, and imagine what looks to be a Kaiten mounted aft isn't there :).

jap_ss85.gif



* I know you're a content designer, but I'd classify all people that make video games artists, and I'd also argue strongly there's a good degree of art to content design, and the comment's more in relation to the art.

** The biggest difference looks to be where the periscopes are placed in relation to the rest of the conning tower, and this could just be a trick of the eye, given the relatively low resolution for the pics (which is no criticism, higher res wouldn't make sense in the context).
 
I had a question, hope it isn't a problem if I ask it again ;), will the new 2d ship art replace all current ship art? (and does that mean all majors will have the same shipart, or is this ship art just for the nations without their own art)?

Just the countries without specific art.
 
for godsake offer a SLIDER for every unit type to SCALE them how we like it in the option settings !

some want bigger tanks, others smaller airplanes ... but how it is in the vanilla version is a joke !

That childish 1 km tall infantry units make me sick :)
 
for godsake offer a SLIDER for every unit type to SCALE them how we like it in the option settings !

some want bigger tanks, others smaller airplanes ... but how it is in the vanilla version is a joke !

That childish 1 km tall infantry units make me sick :)

Check the mods 'Realistic Size' ;)
 
Check the mods 'Realistic Size' ;)

Thanks, but have they improved ? Last game I played with such mods, was when the last ADDOn was released, but at that time some units have been large, others to small etc. and I think we will have to wait some long time, after they updated to the new AddOn ... as you could imagine, couldn't wait , have to play after the addon release :)

Anyway will have a look, thanks
 
mfw freaking Mexico gets all these art assets before Greece, a country that actually fought in World War II (against Italy, Albania, Germany and Bulgaria), that fought during World War II (in the Middle East, North Africa and Italy) and fought immediately after World War II (civil war/against Soviet Union).

Don't worry much. I'm sure Greece will get its own focus tree soon.
 
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.
It's Karel Doorman, Dutch admiral who commanded the Allied fleet during the battle of the Java Sea (during which he died). A true Dutch hero!
 
Lord Mountbatten was appointed Viceroy of India on 20 February 1947.

Last Viceroy of India and first Governor-General[edit]
His experience in the region and in particular his perceived Labour sympathies at that time led to Clement Attlee appointing him Viceroy of India on 20 February 1947[47][48] charged with overseeing the transition of British India to independence no later than 30 June 1948. Mountbatten's instructions were to avoid partition and preserve a united India as a result of the transference of power but authorised him to adapt to a changing situation in order to get Britain out promptly with minimal reputational damage.[49][50] Soon after he arrived, Mountbatten concluded that the situation was too volatile to wait even a year before granting independence to India. Although his advisers favoured a gradual transfer of independence, Mountbatten decided the only way forward was a quick and orderly transfer of independence before 1947 was out.
-- Wikipedia

I suppose it depends how much time traveling the Paradox design team wishes to introduce into a WW2 game (as opposed to a post-WW2 game set in the Cold War period).

But you might have a point...Paradox has demonstrated that it is open to the idea of putting 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s elements into the game.

(case in point, many of the focus tree resource boosts reflect production values seen decades after WW2, using post-war technologies).

As the events and techs of Hoi4 go until 1948, Lord Louis time in India falls within the scope of the game.
 
As the events and techs of Hoi4 go until 1948, Lord Louis time in India falls within the scope of the game.

I'll agree with that.

Admittedly, I cried "out of [time] boundaries" a bit too soon.