Victoria 2

[kris4o1993]

Съвсем скоро на пазара ще се появи втората част към видеоиграта Victoria. Тя отново ще спада към стратегическия жанр и ще ви отведе назад във времето – в 19 век, векът на колонизацията. Геймърите ще бъдат натоварени със задачата да управляват умело страната си, да прокарват нови икономически и политически реформи, да извлекат най-доброто за себе си от започналата индустриализация. Към всичко това добавете и ожесточени масови битки, от които ще станете част.

Във Victoria 2 вие ще имате избора за това коя страна да поведете напред към икономическа и военна победа. Предлаганите ви опции са над двеста. В играта са засегнати с изключителна точност и историческа достоверност събития от периода 1835 година до тези на бруталната Втора световна война.

Издатели на Victoria 2 ще бъдат Paradox Interactive. Те ще започнат разпространяването й във версия за РС през второто тримесечие на идната 2010 година.

Features
• Deep engrossing political simulation, with dozens of different types of governments.
• Detailed economy with over fifty different type of goods and factories.
• Historical game-play on a large map covering the entire world.
• Over 200 different countries can be played, from 1835 to the start of world war 2.
• Advanced Technological system with thousands of inventions to be discovered.
• Possibility to export a save game at the end of the game into HoI3.
• A streamlined interface, which makes the game easily accessible.
• Automation of various tasks, including trade and population promotion.
• Advanced spheres of influences system, where the great powers battle over the control of the world.
• New types of pops, including bureaucrats and artisans.
• Cottage production simulating pre-industrial economies.
• Gunboat Diplomacy, no need for negotiate as a fleet outside a port may be a more persuasive argument.
• Overhaul of education, where clergy educates people of the same religion, and each pops have their own literacy levels.
• More reform categories with more options to select from in each.
• New election system with coalition governments and an upper house/senate.
• Historical and Dynamic missions guiding your country through the history.
• Thousands of historical events and decisions.

The map is based on the Hearts of Iron 3 map so it will roughly the same size.. However provinces will be moved about as regions that we considered less important in Hearts of Iron 3 become more important in Victoria 2 and vice versa.

Само се надявам да не я осе*ат както направиха с HoI3...

[messire Woland]

Possibility to export a save game at the end of the game into HoI3.

Това сигурно означава, че двигателят на играта е същият като на HoI 3. Така че най-вероятно и проблемите ще бъдат много сходни. Макар че като се сетя, колко по-сложна беше Викторията, май и проблемите ще са доста по-комплексни

[kris4o1993]

Все си мисля че още 2-3 пача и HoI3 ще бъде пооправена откъм проблемите свързани със забавена игра и т.н., което ще рече че и във Вики 2 ще са оправени. Все пак има време до април-май да си оправят енджина

[han asd]

Първата част беше много добра още си ми седи на ПЦ-то

Само дано да се сетят да въведат коректно населението на провинциите и малцинствата. Не че не могат да се сменят но се губи доста време. Както и да вземат да понапишат малко event-и а не да оставят хората във форума да се занимават.

Въпреки че като се замисля ако има преход към HOI3 би било доста забавно (хихихи спомням си колко се обезсмисляше играта(HOI2) ако се развиеш с европейска или американска нация като хората - имах няколко сейва с България, с Гърция и с Мексико, където бях достоен конкурент на германия, англия и щатите (при успешно мое развитие) по индустриална мощ, а tech_team-ожете ми бяха все 9-ки).
Иначе да балансираш бюджета си беше предизвикателство да не говорим колко се тормозех че скапаните ми капиталисти нещат да стоят, и вдигат бунтове щото са комунисти .

Би било интересно също да може да се пренесе сценарии от ЕУ3 (по добре би било от двойка ма карай), но да видим.

P.S. Аз лично чакам Crusaders King 2

[kris4o1993]

Developer Diary Number 1 – Why?

Well this is it, the first developer diary for Victoria 2. You’ll be seeing a lot more of these over the coming weeks; we aim for one a week but we know now that this won’t always happen. Either there will be things like holidays (I know what you are thinking: ‘but this is communist Sweden and we do get those kinds of things here’) or major games shows will interrupt this weekly schedule. However, most weeks until gold you’ll see a diary from me.

Well first up, those of you with a keen eye for detail will have seen that this is not Johan posting, so who the hell am I? I am Chris King and I am the designer for Victoria 2. I joined Paradox three and half years ago and my first project was Victoria Revolutions. Victoria has always had a special place in my heart because of that. In a fit of honesty I must say that although I am credited designer, it does not logically follow that everything you see in the game is my idea. Game design is very much a collaborative work and the whole team pitches in at various points. Still the joy of the credit for game design means you end up being the poor guy who has to write everything down. So that’s why it has fallen to me to write the developer diaries.

So the first question you must all be wondering, why Victoria 2? It is probably no secret that Victoria was not Paradox’s most commercially successful title. Which did make it less likely to become a sequel that some of our more popular titles. However, here we are doing a sequel.

There are two main reasons for this, first up was Victoria Revolutions. Now it itself it wasn’t a blockbuster, those of you who follow game sales charts will notice it wasn’t quite able to shift games like World of Warcraft or the Sims of the top of the charts, but as an expansion it had its following. So one idea bounced around was a second expansion to Victoria and ideas were generated. All this came to nought because as a company we decided to not work with the old engine again, but the ideas remained.

Meanwhile the new engine is cranking out games and the code base for the new engine is steadily expanding. With this foundation projects that we did not consider possible a few years ago suddenly became doable. So when it came to decide which game to do after Hearts of Iron 3, there were these ideas sitting around for an expansion to Victoria. These ideas looked pretty cool but more was going to be needed. However, here was the kernel of what we believe is a great game. The rest is history.

Traditionally dev diaries usually include screenshots, but this one sadly doesn’t. For those of you who can’t be bothered to read long developer ego stroking posts and just want to look at the pictures here are some sprites. These are just a small selection of the final in game sprites; we will unveil more as we go through development.

[kris4o1993]

Developer Diary 2 – The Map

Well time for instalment number 2 of the developer diary process. In order to inject some much needed controversy we decided to go for something everyone can disagree about, the map.

The map it is one of the most important parts of a Paradox game. Therefore we do put a lot of thought into the map. We do this for two reasons. Firstly you are going to spend a lot of time staring at it so it was to feel right and secondly it is the canvas on which the game is played so it has a game play function to fulfil as well.

Well you’ve seen a mock up of the map and we also have a handy map screenshot from the real game (see bottom of the developer diary) to see what we were thinking. As you can see the map is far brighter than the Hearts of Iron 3 map. World War II was a pretty bleak era with terrible global warfare taking death and destruction across the globe, but we felt that this look did not fit the 19th century. The 19th century was a more optimistic era where the belief in the unlimited potential of scientific and moral progress was taken for granted. To reflect this we went for a much brighter look for the map.

Then we are left with the ever so simple task of how do we divide up the world into provinces. When we first began this process we started from the angle that, well, we already have a perfectly good map for Hearts of Iron 3. We felt that if we moved a few provinces from places that were important in the Hearts of Iron 3 era to places that were important in the Victoria era we would have a perfectly serviceable game map.

However this idea was ditched even before the map began to be created. Basically, the Hearts of Iron 3 map was built for war; for armies moving around, for sweeping encirclements and massed battles, but that is not Victoria. Victoria is about the rise of new nations and the break up of old empires, painting Africa your colour, of empires, nationalism and imperialism. Essentially, the Hearts of Iron 3 map just did not fit the bill. So we had to go back to square one.

We are back to a blank map of the world with no provinces at all; we need province boundaries for political rather than military purposes. We felt that to capture the essence of the Victoria era we need to capture the shifts in country borders very specifically. We needed the countries to look good and be able to shift in an historical manner. Just where could we find a map that looked like that?

Fortunately for us there was a perfectly good map buried in the scenario and modifications forum for Victoria, going under the title CLIO. So we sought permission to use the map and the people agreed (we felt it was a bit rude to just take it), and began from there. Here was a perfectly good map of the Victoria era, with the added benefit that the community made it so no one is going to need to complain about the province boundaries.

Here is a screenshot of Scandinavia. I sense a certain amount of bias to that region amongst my co-workers. However that aside we had one clear objective with provinces in Victoria 2, that the terrain type should be clear. So we have tried to make the provinces a single terrain texture for clarity. Now those of you with a keen eye for detail will notice a shortage of rivers and province names on the map, this because we haven’t added those yet.