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Pic 1
Pic 2

Looks pretty good. The zoomed province view is nice and clear, and it looks like it should scale to different resolutions unlike HoI2.

Interesting.

There's no intelligence tab, which is good.
They got rid of those big, stupid bits of text on the zoomed out map.

What game is this?

The Vortex Empire wrote:What game is this?

It's Hearts of Iron 3 by Paradox software.

Hearts of Iron 3. Latest in a series of massive in depth World War II strategy games. Now with extra massiveness.

Edit: Also, looking again, I do like that interface. It's nice and discreet, not all intrusive and screen hogging, and has all your information quite close together.

Now if they can make the game not bog down my computer.

Holy shit it's so fucking ugly! Hopefully they'll improve the quality of the base map image.

Otherwise, the reduction in UI is good, but knowing Paradox they've just shuffled it into another four thousand menus you need to use instead. This is just the most base UI after all; having a sector or unit selected is immediately going to use other elements. It confuses me why they waste such a relatively large amount of screen area on the resource types (even with a cute little worthless icon) and the time-flow controls look fiddly as hell. Still, there is nowhere near enough detail or separate UI elements to make any real judgement beyond 'maybe they grew the fuck up and decided to clean up their horrible UI'.

But really, I'm stunned that a game IN PRODUCTION in 2008 probably to be released 2009 looks so fucking horrible. Paradox, you crazy guys! Hire a goddamn artist.

Pic 1[/quit]
First impression: Soft colours are soft
Second impression: AARGH! MEINE AUGEN BRENNEN!
Pic 2

Yay, small provinces! It's almost a hex map now, which is awesome. It should totally allow for more finesse in both attack and defense.

There are also other screen shots available at Strategy Informer.
It would appear that counters are in (yay!) and that sometimes rivers run through provinces rather than between them.

Stark wrote:Holy shit it's so fucking ugly! Hopefully they'll improve the quality of the base map image.

Firstly, I think it looks both a) good, and b) thematically appropiate. Assuming you mean the second picture, the soft colours of the first picture make my eyes bleed. Secondly, Paradox has never been known for pretty graphics, so don't get your hopes up.

'Paradox has a history of bad art' doesn't mean the game is anything but ugly. It's almost Settlers of Catan ugly with it's harsh outlined low-res map image, and Catan is designed to be abstract! They could get someone in a forum to make a better map for free, for crying out loud; the only possible excuse is that the provinces will have heaps of overlay information iconography, and the map is intentionally dull so as to make that stuff easier to read.

You're right, they could hire someone on their forum to do a better map. There's already at least 2 out there for EU2 that are incredibly detailed, in comparison with the vanilla map (MyMap and WATK), with at least two more on the way.

Paradox has been slowly improving their world map since they decided to go 3D with EU3. From barely presentable blobs to slightly accurate geography. Actually, it might be safe to say that they don't ever bother to improve or fix their games (not without an expansion pack, at least), they have the community do it for them.

I and quite a few forum members were dissapointed by this announcement. Just as many wanted a Victoria II or Crusader Kings II as did HoI 3. Frankly, their games have been terrible since they changed graphics.

Stark wrote:'Paradox has a history of bad art' doesn't mean the game is anything but ugly.

I already told you I like it, the reason I brought-up Paradox's history is to remind you that hoping for an improvement is the first step on a road to disappointment.

TC Pilot wrote:Frankly, their games have been terrible since they changed graphics.

They pretty much had to change their graphics. The 2D engine has the entire game being handled by CPU, which means that 1936 HoI campaigns are often nigh unplayable by 1943 or '44, because there is just that much shit (giant armies) accumulated by then. A 3D engine makes it possible to put some of the processing load on the GPU, and as a bonus the game map is easier to edit.

Adrian Laguna wrote:They pretty much had to change their graphics. The 2D engine has the entire game being handled by CPU, which means that 1936 HoI campaigns are often nigh unplayable by 1943 or '44, because there is just that much shit (giant armies) accumulated by then. A 3D engine makes it possible to put some of the processing load on the GPU, and as a bonus the game map is easier to edit.

Perhaps. I know ballooning save file sizes have been around since the first HoI, so I wouldn't say there was any urgent need to switch over. EU3 and Rome are already barely playable on my laptop, compared to only slight hiccups in Victoria and month-end lag in Crusader Kings, so I wouldn't have expected that being the case, considering both seem vastly more complex and demanding than EU3.

TC Pilot wrote:

Adrian Laguna wrote:They pretty much had to change their graphics. The 2D engine has the entire game being handled by CPU, which means that 1936 HoI campaigns are often nigh unplayable by 1943 or '44, because there is just that much shit (giant armies) accumulated by then. A 3D engine makes it possible to put some of the processing load on the GPU, and as a bonus the game map is easier to edit.

Perhaps. I know ballooning save file sizes have been around since the first HoI, so I wouldn't say there was any urgent need to switch over. EU3 and Rome are already barely playable on my laptop, compared to only slight hiccups in Victoria and month-end lag in Crusader Kings, so I wouldn't have expected that being the case, considering both seem vastly more complex and demanding than EU3.

HoI2 Is unplayable on my computer after two game years. My computer should be able to easily handle this game instead is choking on it. HoI2:DD is even worse. I barely can get passed the first two months before the computer chugs to a halt. I haven't had much trouble with EU3 and Victoria other than a slight slowdown after a couple of centuries in EU3 and after several decades in Victoria. I don't remember having any trouble with the older games.