일지 hoi4 개발일지 11 - 지도와 그래픽

[그녀가가잖아-_-]

Hello!

Welcome to the art portion of Hearts of iron 4(HOI4) dev diary series. This diary will focus on the visual aesthetics of the game and sexy graphic-stuff.
My name is Joakim Larsen and Im a 3D artist working with the HOI4 team on giving players of HOI4 the most visual pleasure out of the game.

Today we are happy to show some of the work we have done on the graphic side of HOI4.

For this dev diary, please ignore borders and country colors. Focus instead on the visual look of the images we will show. Borders, country colors are not final and are subject for change (Podcat: I know he says that, but I also know you all can't resists ).


When we first started out working on HOI4 we knew that we wanted a realistic feel for the game (realistic in a way that its okay having a 5km tall man standing in your province).

We felt that a realistic style would match the game and setting, World war 2 isn't childsplay(right?). Therefore instead of going for example a more stylized handpainted look we have gone with a realistic rendered style meant to mimic reality.
For this we have improved our lighting and shading substantially. Instead of just having texture channel control the specular of the item, we now have both glossiness, reflectivity and metallness (yes thats an actual word). We also use HDR, all adding up to giving a more physically correct look, and adding to the feeling of realism.

We also knew that we wanted to do alot better than Hearts of Iron 3(HOI3).

Say what you want, sure it has its charm - but I hope I wont need to have this argument after this dev diary.

With doing a world map that allows the player to be at a lot of different distances and anywhere in the whole world comes a lot of challenges.
Main ones are: How do we make the game look and play fantastic everywhere and how do we make the game look and feel different and interesting in various areas of the world meanwhile staying true to the real worlds map and making sure gameplay works?

The map has been through a lot of iterations, changes, paintovers and hard work to get to this point and we are now very happy to show it in more detail.

Gradient borders
In all our games we have tried to make the game look as pretty as possible, this is what is shown in screenshot and trailers.
Unfortunately, this is not how players choose to play, the info you need is not clear enough in terrain map mode, so political map mode is the only choice.

So in HoI4 we finally had the opportunity to try a solution we have had in mind for a while. Have a terrain map mode, with large fading gradient borders. Along with having political map mode fade in as you zoom out.
This way we can have the cake and eat it. You can clearly see countries territories when you zoom out. And when you zoom in, you can still clearly see the country border, while at the same time clearly seeing the terrain.

We have built a system that enables us to control the lighting and mood depending on where you are in the world. Depending on what zoom distance you are at, and what season your looking at, what time of day it is and if you are far out on the sea.
In short the desert feels warm, Europe feels green and winter feels cold.
We think this will make the world more believable and varied and that its a really nice visual flavour.

Terrain types
In HOI4 each terrain-type will have different penalties or advantages therefore its vital that it is crystal clear to the player so that you can see what terrain type a area has.

Weather
Weather has a big impact on gameplay but was in HOI3 hidden away in a separate mapmode which you quite often did not look at. HOI4 now displays weather directly on the map depending on zoom distance, to make it instantly clear what is going on. We will have another diary later focused on all the gameplay aspects of weather, but we simulate rain/storms, snow/blizzard, mud as well as sand storms currently.

Day and night cycle
Hearts of Iron has always had day and night, and the time of day matters. This has however not been very clear. Very early on we added night and day cycle and loved it instantly.
This feature has meant trouble for art at every turn, but we still think it adds a lot to the game, both aesteaticlly and gameplay wise.
During the nights city's light up, and everything get a more night-look.

Fog of war
To show the player what's visible and not we have fog of war(FOW) so its visually clear for the player what's visible and not.
We have chosen to go with a foggy-cloud FOW that shows mountaintops, hills and trees rather than darkening like in EU4 so that it isnt confused with night/shade. This looks quite nice and fills its purpose.

Characters and tanks
With HOI4 we wanted to really make the characters and tanks be as good as possible since they are key gameplay markers on the map.
We start with making a high resolution polygon model of the character. When that model is as good as its get we start doing a low resolution model.
Then we use various methods of transferring the details from the high resolution model to the low resolution model, making them indistinguishable with the use of normalmaps.
That starts off the texturing process where we give each area texture and makes the model pretty.

Thats all for this time!

Hope you like what you see. We are proud of alot of things with the map and alot cant really be told or shown in screenshots - you have to see it for yourself to really enjoy it.

Feel free to leave any comments and I'll read them. (Podcat: Please be gentle he is only an artist).

별다른 내용은 없고 다만 밤에 도시불빛이 보이도록 만든건 신선하군요.(혹 hoi4 냉전DLC 나오면 참 끝내주겠군요.)

거기다 확대한 탱크 그래픽은 간지납니다! 해군함선도 확대하면 꽤 간지날거같다는 기대가~!

그나저나 이번작도 프로빈스가 너무 많은거같아요... 아무래도 DHR같은 수동전술조작은 힘들겠다는 생각이 ' _ '

아무튼 컴터사양이 hoi3보다는 더 좋아야한다는 것 하나는 확실해졌네요 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

ps. 그나저나 패러독스 새소식 담당하는 스텝분 어디 가셨나요? 개발일지 올려도 새소식란으로 이동 안 시켜주네요

      요 근래 몇 달째~

[백강아지]

와.. 엄청 낭만적이게 해놨네요.... 근데 현실적으로 만든다는 이유가.... 호이할 사람은 어차피 알만할테니 불만없겠지?

제가 호이 4로 입문하기는 더 어려워질것같네요...

[그녀가가잖아-_-]

그래도 막상 나오면 저절로 하시게 될 겁니다 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

[즐거움모드]

Dh처럼 최소 이집트 따로 떼어냈으면..

[그녀가가잖아-_-]

저건 알파판이라서 영국령으로 되어있는듯요!

[$ir Verowulf Wfw. di V. of the BVI]

어? 이거 웬지 호4 해보고 호3으로 회귀하는거 아닌지?
그렇담 호3 튜토리얼 동영상 찍어 볼까나? ㅎ

[Metternich]

저렇게 프로빈스가 많은데도 불구하게 호이3에 비해서 한 1000개정도줄인거라죠?
게다가 베네치아가 독립된 프로빈스네 ㅋㅋㅋㅋ 유로파도 아니고 ㅋㅋ

[$ir Verowulf Wfw. di V. of the BVI]

우오오 베네치아!
해병대... 필요? ㅎ

[황혼의기사]

CPU갈려나가는 소리가 들리는거 같다. ㅠㅠ
사양이 모자라!!

[그녀가가잖아-_-]

이젠 그래픽카드도 상향해야 ㅠㅠ

[공염]

사진 크기를 줄여줄 수 있나요?

[그녀가가잖아-_-]

작게 바꿨습니다!

[WWEWE]

졸~라 무거워 보이네요

[그녀가가잖아-_-]

그러게요 일단 hoi3 간신히 돌리던 컴으론 플레이 불가능할거같아요.

[그녀가가잖아-_-]

제 노트북도 위태위태합니다 ㄷㄷㄷ

[1코알라1]

............... 노트북 업그레이드 해야나.. 최신형도 간당간당할 것 같네..

[Argos]

그래픽 먹겠군요. 왠지 동대서 박살낸게 이거 냉전 dlc 팔아먹을 이유인가 보군요. 요새 역설사 dlc 내는거 보면 예측하기 어렵긴 한데 덕분에 빅토3 끝판왕급 퀄리티 확정

[세니]

크으 스샷찍어서 배경화면 하고싶을 정도로 그래픽은 좋아졌네요

그..그런데 이것보단 보급부분이 어떻게 바뀔지가 더 궁금하네요...

[세니]

http://durl.me/7kkoqh

흑 이미 시연 동영상이 있었다니... 1936년 독일로 폴란드 침공 시연을 해주네요

HOI3에서 보던 전쟁계획맵이 더 이상 참조용이 아니군요.. 전투기의 작전 할당도 더 쉬워지네요

생산에 할당되는 공장도 관련 시설에 따라서 육군, 해군 따로 설정되는군요

해군함정은 커스터 마이징도 가능하고, 비행기도 실제 존재했던 기종에 따른 연구 트리로 바뀌구요 ㅡㅇㅡ

얼릉 나와줬으면 좋겠어요

[Argos]

동대서에 포함되려는 개념이 거기에 있었군요. 껄껄 역설사야 호이4 냉전 워페어 dlc를 내놓거라

[cobo]

그래픽 좋네요... 최신작마다 눈에 띄게 발전하는게 보임

[무영]

사양은 딱히 신경안쓰이고(적당한 최적화정도?) 다만 hoi3꼴 안나기만 했으면 좋겠네요.. 냉전모드dlc내놓으면 대박일듯..

[1코알라1]

이거 시연 동영상 보니.. 미국이 실제 2차대전에서 항공모함을 막 조립해서 찍어내던 거를 게임에서 실현해 볼수 있겠네여.. 그동안 하면서 생산시간이랑 가격이 너무 고정되어 있어서 유연한 생산이 안 된다고 생각했는데.. 드디어 실현되는 군요... 다만 밸런스 맞추기가 쉬울런지.. 공군도 작전구역정하고 할 수 있게 쉬워젓는데.. 호이 4 기대되네여.