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podcat

Studio Manager, Game Director <unannounced>
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Jul 23, 2007
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Hi everyone, we are still working on 1.4.1. The initial plan was to release it today, but we are currently chasing a multiplayer bug. Its looking likely for a release tomorrow though and an update on the beta version today.

So this diary will be a little brief as we focus on the patch work, and if you want to help test 1.4.1 you can find out how to here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...eta-patch-checksum-73d8-updated-26-6.1031090/.

Our game reports useful data to us, and I'd figured I'd share some of it with you as well.
Here is a list of the new countries in DoD and their relative popularity last week:
1. Hungary
2. Romania
3. Yugoslavia
4. Czechoslovakia

its roughly how I expect it, but what sticks out is that Hungary is almost twice as popular as Romania. In fact right now the only nations more popular to play is Germany, Soviet, USA and Italy. I suspect part of this is because its new stuff (my check doesnt care if you own DoD or not btw) but clearly Austria-Hungary formation is a big draw. We'll keep our eyes on it and see how it develops long term :)

Another interesting data point is when people start. Seems only 4% of games are started on 1939 bookmark. This is something we have noticed across games in the company. People prefer the earliest start point with a large margin. This means that with its a pretty bad idea for us to focus on new start points over improving the popular option and that it probably would have been a good idea to skip the 1939 start for HOI4. I feel that its likely in hindsight that a '41 start could have been more popular.

As a side note we broke both our daily active players count and monthly active record during the DoD release and it seems to be going strong, so thanks everyone for enjoying the game :)

I also want to take the opportunity in this dev diary to present 3 people who just joined the team (art team had to give up lebensraum to fit the new ppl ;)). I'll let them introduce themselves:

Hi! I am @shultays , I am a new programmer at the team and I just joined Paradox a of couple weeks ago. I studied C.S. and then started working with embedded systems for a while (*yuck*) but I have been professionally developing games for the last couple years now. I am excited to work at Paradox and to work on such a complex game! I will be working mostly on the A.I., trying to make game more challenging and fun for you people. Get ready because soon you will be also fighting against me when you fight against the A.I.! Feel free to report anything or contact me so I can improve things around.

@JohanLerstrom here, I'm a senior programmer here at PDS and have worked on pretty much every game we have released since CK2. I even had a brief attempt at leading the CK2 team ( where you might have seen me in some streams ) but programming is my passion so I left the manager hat on the shelf and I've been moving between projects helping out for some time now. My very first contact with Paradox was playing Hearts of Iron 1 with my friends at a LAN party back in what feels like a million years ago so it feels fitting to be working on HoI4 now. My spare time is almost 100% Factorio these days, except an hour per week of Twin Peaks. (Podcat's note: not quite true, we also spend some work lunches discussing Twin peaks)

Yo people! I'm @Bratyn , a bit of the 'wild card' content designer at PDS (been on quite a few projects in a short span of time). I'm excited to be on HOI4 again (had a brief stint on it helping out for DoD), and this time I'll be here for a lot longer, working on some more cool content for HOI4 that I think is going to make the game even more fun to play. I'm Dutch, studied English and History in Norway (don't ask...), and wrote my Master's thesis on WWII while Paradox was developing HOI4. I love my strategy games, so you can imagine how excited I was to finally get to play HOI4 when it released, about a month after I had finished researching the period for nearly two years. Some interests of mine include history, sci-fi, astronomy (and science in general), and a nascent fascination with big WWII-era warships (WoWs!). Just gotta talk Podcat into adding more of the latter (and making them more fun to use) in HOI4...

See you all next week for a final diary before summer vacation whisks us off for much needed rest and relaxation :)
 
Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone!

Team size is increasing. :) As @podcat said, we recently required more lebensraum to fit all of the team, so we implemented Fall Gold and invaded the artist quarter at the office. We now have a beachhead here consisting of three team-members (one of whom is an artist spy)!
 
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Release tomorrow? Multiplayer bug? You do realize that the 1.4.1. beta update from 26/6 has introduced a significant amount of new bugs in SP. Just check the bug report forum.

afaik we have fixed all stuff introduced (you might not have gotten the fix yet). but feel free to list stuff to me so I can see if we missed something. Most reports are about old stuff still

Can you expand on what that is? Is it the one causing resysncs in late game?
Yea. well it seems to happen late game only. multithreading related
 
@podcat Hi, will we get a new BETA update this evening or?
sorry no. our servers seem to have exploded or something so I was not able to make a new build for you :'(
 
@Bratyn - am curious what you did your thesis on and (far more importantly) what's your favourite WW2 naval vessel? :)

The thesis title was Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Second World War, so it dealt more with the interwar and WWII political aspects of British, Dutch, American, and (to a lesser extent) Dominion relations, as well as their high-level wartime cooperation and pre-war planning.

Favorite WW2 naval vessel? I'm gonna have to go full Kriegsmarine and say Bismarck-class... :D But I have to admit that that is mainly based on looks. The Germans sure knew to make some damn sexy-looking ships... Admiral Hipper-class was also a looker.
 
I forgot about Scharnhorst, and might consider it even more awesome than Bismarck, in looks.

But let's make this the last post on that topic... We can always make a BB discussion thread for this stuff.

And thanks again for the warm welcome! :)
 
I forgot about Scharnhorst

It's my sad duty to inform you that Bratyn has had to leave the team due to an unfortunate work related accident in about two minutes.

Edit: Bratyn has provisionally been readmitted to the team, on the condition that he achieves rank 1 in the next WoWs season.
 
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Lol? That's thousands of players.

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Symbols are only useful if you can relate to them.

Icons are more relateable for most of our players as they visually represent the unit. Soldiers for infantry, cannons for artillery, tanks for armored etc. Players without a lot of military experience (virtually or real life) will find them easier to understand at a first glance.

NATO symbols are designed to be easier understood and less ambiguous for those with training. A player who has experience with NATO symbols will often find them easier to understand and distinguish on the map. Many of our fans prefer NATO symbols for this particular reason, or because it feels more immersive to them.

If you don't like counters or icons, that's fine. You have the option to not play with them. Please don't disrespect people who do though. :)