Darkest Hour : Test dans le CPC du 15 avril

[Da-Soth]

J'ai lu les carnets de développement.

Ca m'a l'air assez alléchant. Un gros plus, c'est le nombre raisonnable de provinces tout en essayant d'être le plus fidèle possible à la géographie. Très bon choix. Car dans IC le nombre de provinces est tout simplement ridicule.

Et comme tu es le responsable de l'IA pour DH peux tu nous en dire plus ? Pour moi , c'est le gros problème des HoI en général.

Par contre, je trouve les malus pour Mussolini pas convaincant. Ok c'est historique, mais vous auriez du lui donné quand même quelques bonus. Parce que ma première idée est de me débarrasser au plus vite du Duce ce qui du coup n'est pas très historique. De même, le malus en dissent pourrait être retiré, s'il est devenu impopulaire c'est surtout à cause de ses défaites et non pour un manque de charisme ou autre.

Je trouve cette idée énorme (cmb) :
Q : s'il vous plaît, permettez d'établir un contrôle militaire par événements !

R : oui nous avons mis en place de telles commandes et les joueurs pourront prendre des décisions avec. Avec l'Allemagne, vous pourrez non seulement supporter le coup d'Etat fasciste en Espagne mais également contrôler directement l'armée espagnole. Le joueur américain pourra assumer le contrôle des armées chinoises et françaises par exemple, ce qui est particulièrement utile lors des sessions multi-joueurs. Nous pensons que cette fonctionnalité apportera beaucoup de plaisir !

[Fernando Torres]

Bonsoir, Oui je m'occupe (entre autres) des scripts notepad de l'IA du jeu. J'ai entièrement réécrit les scripts par rapport à HOI2. Ils prennent en compte la nouvelle période (j'ai un assistant qui bosse exclusivement sur le scénario 1914 par exemple). L'IA est également optimisée du point de vue de sa gestion de la production (beaucoup de petits bugs corrigés, une production plus "historico-plausible" et plus efficace - avec notamment expansion de la base industrielle durant les années de paix) et de ses manoeuvres militaires (certaines historiques : débarquements, "Blitzkrieg", etc et d'autres qui pourront surprendre le joueur). J'ajoute que j'ai écrit des scripts permettant à l'IA de s'adapter à des situations différentes et ahistoriques (une invasion de la Norvège par les Alliés pour couper la route du fer par exemple). Le travail sur l'IA n'est pas encore achevé et nous avons plusieurs mois pour en venir à bout mais il est clairement l'une des grandes priorités du jeu ! Enfin, notre base de données (qui comprend tant les ministres et compagnies que les events et décisions) est incomparable en qualité et en quantité avec celle d'HOI2. Il y a de l'historique et du plausible. Pour reprendre l'exemple cité, nous avons mis en place des conditions de reddition plausibles pour les Alliés. Il y a même une hypothèse de guerre froide germano-américaine...

[Da-Soth]

Merci pour ces précisions.

Tout ceci est très alléchant.

[Fernando Torres]

Bonsoir,

Cela vous intéresserait-il que je poste au fur et à mesure les carnets de développements en anglais (avec les images associées) ?

[Samara]

Et comment que ca m'intéresserait.

[Fernando Torres]

Hello,

We know you have been all eager to grab fresh information about the game. To be very honest with you, we initially planned to release the first development diary only next week. But you were very insisting, so let's start from the beginning : what is Darkest Hour, and who the developers are.

Darkest Hour Core (no relation to the mod), in its early stages still know as "The Project", can be viewed as a continuation of the 1.3 patch for Armageddon because it is based on it and is nearly 100% compatible with all existing 1.3 mods, and offers for the first time full moddir support.
What started as a small project to fix the remaining hard-coded bugs, after the last beta patch became much more over the last years.
Starting with initial bug fixes, a huge amount of code optimization to increase performance quickly followed. Hard-coded modifiers were then moved to moddable files, Hard-coded limitations removed, and then new features added.
Over the weeks, it became pretty obvious that we were no longer aiming for a patch to fix the last bugs, but for a new platform as standard for the HOI community. One that would offer modders what they have been asking for over the years and to keep our beloved mods alive and enjoyable for many years to come. For it has indeed been developed by fans and modders.


By fans, for the fans


MartinBG, who was the Lead programmer of HOI2 Armageddon Patch Project, and Gormadoc, Lead programmer on the Community Database Cleanup Project, started the whole thing more then two years ago.
Fernando Torres developer of World in Flames mod, who has been our most vocal Developer in the forum until now, joined up shortly after, initially aiming to create a new WIF mod for the new improved engine. But things went a bit different, and out of the idea to create an independent mod emerged Darkest Hour Full, the first "mod" for Darkest Hour using the full potential of the new code right from scratch.

Over time even more people joined the team, some as bug testers, others as active contributors.

As for myself, I actually joined the DH team pretty late in the progress, only 6 months ago, and I can't really offer any real recognition value for you guys as I have been not very active in the Paradox community and basically only enjoyed playing the games. But I think you will not hold that against me for long.


What do you guys do?


Although the borders are a bit blurry, as all of us work on the database from time to time (add the odd event, fix one thing or another), let me try to give you an idea of who is in charge in our development team:

MartinBG - Coding

Fernando Torres - AI and DB maintenance

Gormadoc - Tech tree

Ewphoenix123 - Map implementation, map related database maintenance



You mentioned contributors?


I think we now have more than 30 people who are helping out to a different degree, and listing all of them would just be too much for this diary.
This here is just a (not so) short list for a start with those who contributed the most over the last months in no specific order:

Mumia allowed as to use the E3 map as a base for our new map, and helped with most of the initial concepts.

Eginhard 38 from WIF did an incredible job when he finalized the designs for the new map, always standing on the edge balancing AI capabilities and geographic reality.

Arturius from the 1914 mod, well you can think for yourself where he contributes.

Bizon from the NWO mod made our game launcher, helped out with translations and the implementation of new minors.

^AC^ from Kaiserreich helped out adapting vanilla scenarios to the new map and translations.

Jaegerfeld of the canceled DMP Ragnaroek - Projekt 36 is developing the AI for our 1914 scenarios

Rhysaxiel from WIF is working on event chains for 1914 and coordinating the pre-WW2 scenarios.

tedescoo from Turning Point and BIP helped out with translations and as a tester.

Jrhindo from the Yugoslavian Wars helped with translations and ideas.

The famous sonofliberty has outdone himself in the last weeks as one of our main testers, and offered a lot input in many design aspects.

Inner Circle from GK Multilevel Sprite Pack and GK Atmospherical Improvement Mod is working on our interface graphics.

Cardus helped with new OOB for Italy and Abyssinia, making the Ethiopian war much more interesting..

TeutonburgerW from the Minor Graphics Mod has contributed ideas for new minors a bit of modding, graphics, beta-testing.

Miihkali from Anatolian Wars Mod has done some scenario and event design, and some graphical help. Ideas, suggestions and little historical research.

Cueball from EIR added floating event ideas, the first AI fixes for the new map, ideas to implement new minors, and help with initial map concepts.

WilhelmII from Gamerkollektiv helped with some graphics in addition to the obligatory beta-testing.

thewookie1 added the first concept for the inclusion of the Transsibirian Railroad.

And many more that haven't been that active in the last months, like Koenig from Mod33, 49h from WIF, GAGA Extreme from the GAGA Tech Mod, and a lot others I simply forgot... I elaborate further on their contributions in future development diaries.



This should give you a glimpse of who has been involved in this, how many familiar names to find, and how many of those are still actively developing mods out there. Thus you can draw your own conclusions about what you can expect for the future. Expect for instance some mods to be available for DH from day one..



Here are now a few words from our contributors.

Being a long time HOI player, there were several things I've always dreamed of if they would come true but I thought the engine was too old and it was better to adapt and start playing HOI3. That was, until Rayan (aka Fernando Torres) invited me to contribute to what is now called Darkest Hour. Most of the things I've ever wanted (a smarter AI, a better map, automated stuff and higher moddability plus a whole lot more) was there. I'm very pleased that the DH development team listened so much on us "modders" as well as long time players during the development phase; what we enjoyed, what we didn't enjoy and, of course what we wanted to make DH the best WW simulation out there!

When I was invited to the Team, i knew only little, until i got some screenshots from a Beta Build. I was really impressed and eventually agreed to help them.
My contributions are mostly graphics, beta testing and recruiting new contributors. Every new Beta is better than the last one and for the first time i have the feeling to play the HoI game I always wanted...

Darkest Hour is a dream come true for me. A game made by fans for the fans... or even better, made by modders for the modders. We have assembled such a good team, that worked together for months (years, some could say) with one objective in mind: to create a game enjoyable by the fans and loved by the modders! Being a part of this is an honor, even if for now my contributions have been limited to beta testing, suggestions and translation.

And maybe a word from Mumia, one of our map geeks (he usually does not communicate with us except to post with strange words and show awesome maps he just drawn but maybe he will make an exception for you..)

'Me no spiking Inglese'.

Right.
(Just kidding, I love you buddy )


Development philosophy


Our philosophy is to stay true to the community and provide the most fun for players as well as the best platform for modders.

We think it first starts with being honest with the fans. And there is one thing that has been claimed around that we wanted to correct. The game timeline is indeed set to span from 1914 to 1964, which means there will be small and large scenarios available throughout this period. What it does not mean is that there would be a giant scenario allowing to play straight from 1914 to 1964.
It is obviously unrealistic to think that a game like Darkest Hour could cover all (un)historical possibilities for such long period of time. (yet)

On the other hand, we focused on a few unhistorical and yet plausible outcomes, be it during or after the First war or during the Second. We shall not go into details for now but you can rest assured that Darkest Hour rejects the sandbox approach.

The other thing is, We are here to stay, even after two years we are still far from reaching the limits of the Europa engine, and we have all intentions to keep developing Darkest Hour further for a long time to come.


We are still looking for new contributors and testers, as this is basically a project from the community for the community. We will be looking forward to helping modders prepare their contribution even before the release date (we are aiming for November release). Feel free to contact us at darkest.hour.team(at)gmail(dot)com.
We are also going to answer a few general questions later today. But please don't expect too much details yet, as there is still some time left and we need to keep you curious!
Thus, in-depth explanations are left for the following development diaries.


Next week (Monday, 1pm), the second development diary will be dealing with maps!
So see you around folks, and take care.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...3&d=1284468765 (cliquer pour l'image)

[Raidhaennor]

Plus je lis les dev diaries sur le forum de Paradox, et plus ce jeu me fait envie. En voyant le rythme de publication sur la page d'accueil du forum j'ai cru que la sortie était proche mais apparemment il va falloir attendre mars prochain.

[Fernando Torres]

Oui nous préférons vraiment prendre le temps de peaufiner le jeu plutôt que de le sortir bâclé.
Nous l'avons bouclé à 90% mais comme nous ne sommes totalement indépendants de Paradox Interactive dans les choix développement, nous pouvons nous permettre de repousser la sortie (qui était prévue pour Noël 2010).

[francou008]

Même si ce thread est pas très actif, je suis activement le projet par le twitter et facebook, ça fait vraiment envie. Un peu déçu de la sortie en mars au lieu de Noël, mais bon, si ça permet d'éviter l'effet Iron Cross, tant mieux.

[Fernando Torres]

DEV DIARY II - WORLDMAP





It is Monday, and as promised, we are going to reveal a little more about Darkest Hour.
But let us start with a few words from Eric 'Eginhard' who defined most of the concepts of the main map (used in the grand campaigns).


The Holy Rule

The basic problem with game design is to find the best compromise between simplicity and realism. Knowing the community’s (and our own) fondness for historical realism, and at the same time the needs of the Europa engine to provide an enjoyable game, we had to resolve the same dilemma with the map.

The first issue that we dealt with was to establish specifications that would make sure that our map would not completely break the game balance, especially regarding artificial intelligence capabilities. After many discussions during the preliminary phases of map development, three major specifications were established.
First, in order to keep consistent with the massive improvements made by Martin with game speed, it was agreed to keep the overall number of provinces below 3,000. It was soon discovered that only the actual number of province IDs used had influence on game performance, which allowed us to put the province number limit to 10,000 (or even higher for future modders’ use) as well as to suppress all other limits regarding map modding.
Second, given that military artificial intelligence may have trouble with handling fronts with too many connections (that is, when attackers could come from too much sides), it was decided that no province would have more than six connections with its neighboring provinces. Each time where a province had borders with seven or more other provinces, we suppressed extra connections, either on geographical grounds (major obstacles such as mountains, escarpments, lakes…) or by redrawing it slightly to make the absence of connection “visually acceptable”. After some jokes among the team, this rule became known in our team as the Holy Rule. Nevertheless, this rule admits arbitrary exceptions for gameplay reasons. For instance to ensure fluidity in the Belgian front, Lille has seven connections instead of six.

The Holy Rule can be summed up in two articles:

1. A province shall not have more than six connections with other provinces;
2. If it proves impossible to comply with article 1 without breaking all you have done previously, skip article 1.

Third, we were asked to put emphasis on 1914-1945 era. This means that whenever eras borders would conflict, borders from the world wars era would prevail. It also means that some areas would have more attention than others, so you’ll find far more provinces in North Africa than in Sub-Saharan areas. This point has never been fully consensual in our team and has evolved along the overall concept of the game, but combined with the other two specifications it gives the map its current look. Map design is now frozen until release (to ensure a proper game balance and the implementation of other features), but this doesn’t mean that it won't change in the future.

All combined, these three major specifications brought us on the verge of insanity more than once, especially when you compare them with our methodology and our desire to achieve the best possible map in terms of geography, history and realism. At one point, I even felt schizophrenic, but now, we do feel better.


So what's new?

Now let us have a look at the things you can see.

Our map originally started as the E3 map, as many of you already realized from the screen-shots. But as beautiful as the E3 map was, it soon became clear that it had severe weaknesses and that was not exactly what we had in mind for our own game.
The biggest was that it was of course limited to 2607 provinces, which were just not enough.
Another one was that it took no account of what became the so-called "Holy rule" of map design.
Others were not real weaknesses but different design choices.

• Optical changes

We decided to switch back to English names for all provinces in order to keep things as user-friendly as possible for the majority of players.
We switched to a new font, Calluna, that is a lot clearer and better to read on higher zoom levels.
We also switched back to a dotted border concept which really brightened up the whole map.

• General concepts

We obviously kept the general guidelines of E3 to try to get as close as possible to historical borders when setting up provinces.
We removed mini-provinces that were too small to host counters, unless they were of key importance during the World Wars.

• Optical gimmicks

Every province can now have its own illustration. We can add unique capital icons for each province. We also no longer use the HOI2 beaches icons, as they didn't really fit on a map that uses realistic coastlines and we instead included a new small icon.

• Things you don't see at first glance

The terrain types and resource distribution is based on historical data and is a big change compared to HOI2. You will be pretty surprised and curse a lot at first when your old strategies lead you in a swamp or forest that wasn't there before.
Of course, the climate zones are as close to the real climate zones as we could get as well.
We also tried to adapt the design of the map to pay tribute to little details like the Trans-siberian Railroad or the Burma Road.

• The things you don't see at all

Let us start first with the obvious, all limits are gone.
There is no limits on province number. Well, to be really honest the current limit is set to 10000, but if you can come up with a map featuring more then 10000 provinces, I will get you a patch with a higher limit the next day.
There are no limits on connections.

• Gimmicks for modders

Everybody knows we love modders. Thus we have added extensive map related debug logs with warnings for misplaced map icons (grouped by icon), possible wrong climate zones, missing sea province definition in the province.csv file and suggestions for which sea province would be the best choices. There are also warnings for wrong or not ideal sea province definition in the province.csv and suggestions which sea province would be the best choices, as well as logs about resource/IC distribution by province or for whole countries.
Modders will also find analysis of connections per province in different variations (depending on what you are doing, you might prefer one presentation or the other, this is mostly interesting in regard of the Holy Rule that we introduced above).
And finally, analysis of distance between provinces are also available (I will explain in the next paragraph what this is about).

• A new heart

Here is the first of the really big new features to be revealed, and I am pretty excited about it.
HOI2 distance calculation was based on pixel coordinates defined in the province.csv file (the amount of pixels between one airbase coordinate and another to be exact).

The whole thing started like this.
One of the biggest problem with HOI2 maps was the size of the oceans.
It was a bit of a compromise, according to the range calculator for the game, the world was 10,000 km in circumference. While that might be fine per se, it created other (and worse) problems considering that large amounts of the Pacific have been shrunk.
It could therefore never be possible to really fix the naval combat system unless we had more reasonable ocean cartography. If the map had to be expanded, how about doing something to increase the relative size of the oceans, so that the Mediterranean is not half the size of the Atlantic?

What have we done about this?

In Darkest Hour, we replaced the old HOI2 system with a new distance calculation which is based on real geographic coordinates (the old engine can of course still be activated in the misc.txt file, as most new features, it is optional to use the new calculation).

Most of you are now asking: "Why should I care? What is so exciting about that?" :confused:

Well let us think about it.
You can now see real distances between one province and another, the distance between Berlin and Moscow is as far in the game as it is in reality.
While this is cool in itself, it becomes even cooler when it comes to sea provinces. With HOI2, all you got was wrong distances based on the way the map was morphed to display a 3D earth on a 2D map.
When you used to have, for instance, a giant Mediterranean sea, and a tiny Pacific ocean compared to reality, the game now features real distances.

The whole thing gets especially important when it comes to battle-scenarios, which use new and more detailed maps (that we will show you later ).
As in HOI2, all distances were based on pixel coordinates you ended up with provinces that were hundreds of kilometers far away in-game, although they were maybe 20kms away from each other, only because you had increased the scale of the map.
Even with massive workarounds and modified units speeds you couldn't get it completely right.

Still not excited?

Alright, what does it mean for the casual player who doesn't care about realistic distances? And why should you as a map modder go through the hassle of creating coordinate tables?

The simple answer is performance.

The following table shows the time that it takes with Darkest Hour compared to Hearts of Iron II to perform distance calculation (more than one calculation taken into account to get a nice average) :

HOI2  DH   
188   94    
187   109
203   109   
203   94     
219   94     
218   94    
218   109       
203   110     
203   110         
1842  923      Total
205   103      Average

That is a 45-50% reduction in calculation time for each distance check. The artificial intelligence does multiple of those for each division every tick to decide about unit movements, and even more for air units.
Of course a lot more things influence game performance, but this one is a good chunk and led to a noticeable performance boost.

The best thing about this improvement is that it actually has a higher impact when the game progresses as the amount of units increases and war breaks out. The more distance calculations the engine does, the higher the performance gain compared to vanilla.
Same goes for maps that have more provinces.

We do regular tests to check performance, the old Doomsday (fictional WW3) scenario shows the impact pretty well.
We compared the average cycle time of different game versions between 1936 (the world at peace) and the Doomsday scenario with fighting all over the place.

Switching to the new distance calculations increased game speed by up to 10-15% in scenarios with heavy fighting compared to the same Darkest Hour version that used the old calculation model. :eek:

    Game       1936    DD          1936/DD %
    Arm 1.2    25'       72'          34.7 %
    Arm 1.3b   25'       59'          42.4 %
    DH 0.32    24'       38'          63.2 %
    DH 0.36    24'       36'          66.7%
    DH current 24'      30-32'      80-75% (in 3 tests) This with the new distance calculation

In Armageddon 1.2, game speed in DD scenario was ~1/3 of the speed in 1936.
In Armageddon 1.3b it is increased by ~8 points to 42%.
In our current DH version, it is at 75-80%, or only 20-25% slower then in 1936


We of course included the necessary coordinate tables for our own map, and the old HOI2 map, so that all mods that are based on HOI2 can benefit from the new system.
I will not say that it is not intensive work to set up those coordinate tables, because it is! But it is definitely worth it to do so for your own mod maps, and once you get in a rhythm, it is not that bad.
We will support mods conversions from HOI2 to DH anyway.

You can get the coordinates straight out of Google Earth, and with the right settings and tools to copy the coordinates, it gets pretty fast (at least compared to the time involved to actually draw a new map).



And that's it for today guys, I hope you enjoyed it.
Of course this thread is open to topic related questions.
See you next Monday for a new development diary.



Björn 'Nathan' Winkler,

Darkest Hour Developer
- Map Implementation

[Fernando Torres]

P.S.:

As promised screenshots of the USA






And as an extra gimmick one of our ID maps of Europe 1936. (this is a big one)
http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/5199/europe1936.jpg

[Samara]

Intéressant tout ca, pourrait t-on avoir une map de l'europe centrale en 1914?

[Fernando Torres]

Il va y en avoir dans les prochains carnets.
Je poste le troisième ce soir.

[Fernando Torres]

‘Introduction: Some history’

Spying in DD/Arma 1.2 had many bugs: missions that do not work for the AI - including counter-intelligence, broken AI mission selection code, and incorrect messages to name just few. Once we fixed all known bugs in the code and ran some tests using advanced logging (logger is part of DH) we found that in a game AI countries do tens of thousands send and kill spy missions outperforming any player because of the micromanagement involved in the spying and very few real missions (about 10%). It was clear for us that the old system needed to be changed and after some brainstorming and few tries Martin and Chris came up with the spy system used in Arma 1.3.

Its main features are:
- Fixed spying AI - it can do any mission
- Send/kill spies missions removed and replaced with Spy network levels (0..20)
- increased game speed
- all modifiers exported to spy_cost.txt and AI files
- there are more here that are out of my mind after 2 years

These changes while to drastic for a patch and not welcomed by all modders at the time paved the road to the auto-spying system we implemented in DH.

Changes:
- merged AI and player auto-spying code
- cleared spy_cost.txt file and moved old and new spying modifiers to a new section in misc.txt


‘All warfare if based on deception’


That quote from Sun Tzu enlightens the prominent role played by intelligence operations in times of war. But while popular myths have been created around a few people like Mata Hari or Joseph Sorge, intelligence and counter-intelligence operations have truly been of a great importance in the events of two World Wars witnessed by the XXth century. Darkest Hour therefore intends to put a certain emphasis on this matter.

Darkest Hour spying system addresses two main issues which are the realism of the intelligence operations and their planning in the long-run as a Head of State.
The first thing that you need to know is that there two modes: manual and semi-automatic intelligence. While the manual mode has many similarities with Hearts of Iron II spying system, the semi-automatic is much more interesting. There you can allocate a certain part of the national income to intelligence operations. There are also others factors that you can play with such as spy activity or the minimum level of infiltration required prior to any foreign operation.

Furthermore, as the Head of your State, you can assign generic or specific priorities to your intelligence services. Playing the United Kingdom, you might for instance be willing to grab more informations about Nazi Germany. Specific country priorities can therefore be set in that regard.

But there are also missions specific priorities which allow you tell your intelligence services what specific mission to perform (either globally or in a certain country). You will for instance be able to perform only industry sabotage in one country or couple it with industrial espionage, provided that you need two times more sabotage missions.

That way, you have a relative control over the operations led by your intelligence agency. You are also encouraged to plan your spying strategy in the long run and check the reports on a regular basis when you used to be overwhelmed with micro management in Hearts of Iron II (where you had to send every spy and perform every operation manually). Hence Darkest Hour spying system is not a clicks contest but instead, a panel that lets you plan your policy in the long run.
This was also a matter of realism because as a Head of State, you obviously have a certain level of involvement, which sending all spies one by one should be excluded from.

Automation:
- Can be enabled or disabled
- Even when enable players still can do any mission to any country manually if they want
- auto-increase of spy levels to manually set Max level (0..20)
- set spy money threshold (use money above XXX)
- Min. spy level threshold before try to do any foreign missions (0..20)
- Spy activity
- Min chances for every spy mission - do no try a mission if chances are less
- Can add/remove countries from spying list
- Can set country priority for each country in the list
- Can set missions priority for each country in the list
- Can apply same priorities to all countries at once
- Can clear countries list at once

Spy reports, added:
- Transports/Escorts
- Resources
- Submarines, TPs


Moddability


We are also looking forward to making Darkest Hour as mod friendly as possible.
Thus, many parameters will be subject to changes in mods, such as:

AI priorities

    ###################################
    # Spying
    ###################################
    spyprefs =
    {
       percentage_on_spies       = 0.2
       percentage_foreign_mission    = 0.6

       # Used for Intell efficiency and for setting minimum chance to succeed for the AI to do that particular type of mission
       spyprefsdata =
       {
          NumberOfSpies = 10
          min_number_of_spies = 3
          steal_blueprint = 10
          minister_assassination = 5
          smear_campaign    = 10
          coup = 3
          sabotage_industry = 10
          nuclear_sabotage = 5
          found_partisans   = 10
          massmedia = 10
          disrupt_techteam = 10
          country = CHC
       }
       spyprefsdata = {
          country_priorities   = 4
          steal_blueprint    = 10
          minister_assassination          = 1
          smear_campaign       = 3
          coup             = 0
          sabotage_industry    = 5
          nuclear_sabotage    = 0
          found_partisans    = 2
          massmedia          = 1
          disrupt_techteam   = 5
          country          = CHI
       }
       spyprefsdata = {
          country_priorities   = 6
          steal_blueprint    = 10
          minister_assassination          = 1
          smear_campaign       = 3
          coup             = 0
          sabotage_industry    = 5
          nuclear_sabotage    = 0
          found_partisans    = 2
          massmedia          = 1
          disrupt_techteam   = 5
          country          = JAP
       }
    }

General parameters

    intelligence = {
    # Days between spy missions in a country. Do not use fractions
       20 #8
    # Days between increase intelligence levels. Do not use fractions
       180
    # Chance to detect the initiator of a spy mission; Values = [0 - 100]; 0 = never detected, Do not use fractions
       20 #50
    # Relationships hit for detected missions
       5 #10
    # Distance modifier: -1000 = No distance modifier; else: Higher value = Distance has smaller effect = Higher Chances
       20
    # Distance modifier for neighbours; Values = [0.0 - 1.0]; 0.0 = No neighbour distance bonus.
       0.25
    # Spy lvl bonus on Distance modifier: 0 = No bonus from Spy lvl's; else: Higher value = Higher bonus from spy lvl = Higher Chances.
       2
    # Distance modifier for Spy lvl's above 10: 0 = all levels use same distance bonus; else: X = bonus for levels 11-20th
       30
    # Spy information accuracy modifier. Values = [-10 - 10]; 10 = Full info
       0
    # IC modifier on Cost; 0: Cost = base cost; 1: cost = base cost * base IC in target; 2 or more: cost = base cost * ( 1 + base IC in target / this )
       1
    # Min IC on cost modifier; If base IC in target < this use this, else use base IC
       30
    # Max IC on cost modifier; If base IC in target > this use this, else use base IC
       80
    # Extra Basic Daily maintenance cost for Spy lvl's above 10th; 0 = no extra cost; X = extra cost for levels 11-20th
       0.5
    # Basic Cost for Increasing Spy lvl's above 10th; 0 = Normal Basic cost; else: Basic cost for each lvl = X
       500
    # Show 3rd country spy reports: 0 = no reports; 1 = only detected; 2 = detected + all successful; 3 = all reports
       1
    # percentage_on_spies to money modifier
       100.0
    }

And mission basic costs and chances

    intelligence = {


    #   _HOID_SPY_STEAL_TECH_,
    0.8
    #   _HOID_SPY_MINISTER_ASSASSINATION_,
    2.0
    #   _HOID_SPY_SMEAR_CAMPAIGN_,
    1.6
    #   _HOID_SPY_COUP_,
    12.0
    #   _HOID_SPY_SABOTAGE_INDUSTRY_,
    0.8
    #   _HOID_SPY_NUCLEAR_SABOTAGE_,
    2.0
    #   _HOID_SPY_FOUND_PARTISANS_,
    0.8
    #   _HOID_SPY_MASSMEDIA_,
    1.2
    #   _HOID_SPY_DISRUPT_TECHTEAM_,
    0.8
    #   -Base Cost for Increasing Spy lvl.
    0.5
    #   -Base Cost for decreasing Spy lvl.
    0
    #   -Base Daily maintenance cost per Spy lvl for 1-10th lvl. 11-20th levels may cost more.
    0.001


    #   _HOID_SPY_STEAL_TECH_CHANCE,
    35
    #   _HOID_SPY_MINISTER_ASSASSINATION_CHANCE,
    10
    #   _HOID_SPY_SMEAR_CAMPAIGN_CHANCE,
    35
    #   _HOID_SPY_COUP_CHANCE,
    2
    #   _HOID_SPY_SABOTAGE_INDUSTRY_CHANCE,
    35
    #   _HOID_SPY_NUCLEAR_SABOTAGE_CHANCE,
    8
    #   _HOID_SPY_FOUND_PARTISANS_CHANCE,
    50
    #   _HOID_SPY_MASSMEDIA_CHANCE,
    40
    #   _HOID_SPY_DISRUPT_TECHTEAM_CHANCE,
    30
    #   NOT USED
    100
    #   NOT USED
    100
    #   -Dissent modifier on base coup chance: 0 = No dissent modifier; else: Higher value = Higher dissent needed in target country.
    5
    }

And here are the two screen-shots of this week.





We have also posted exclusive screen-shots on our Facebook page and I am pretty sure you would be very interested.
See you next week for a new development diary.
Take care.

[Da-Soth]

Par pitié, Fernando, faites des scripts de réditions intéressants. Avec Aod et l'URSS, je viens d'écraser l'Allemagne en 42. La Bulgarie s'est libérée et pupétisé avec moi sans que j'ai le choix. J'occupe la France (gagné à l'Allemagne qui n'a pas créé Vichy) et je n'ai aucun moyen de la rendre à son propriétaire. Du coup les USA me déclarent la guerre 1 mois après l'annexion de l'Allemagne et la création de la DDR.

Comme avec l'Allemagne où j'ai du poursuivre les alliés dans le monde entier pour obtenir la paix.

PS : Et un Japon livré avec des cojones svp ! Quelque soit la partie, à part stagner dans le Nord de la Chine, il ne fait rien du tout. Jamais la guerre du pacifique a lieu.

[francou008]

Ah oui ça rendrait vraiment les parties plus intéressantes et dynamiques. Quand l'empire Anglais ne peut pas être annexée parce qu'ils ont encore une île paumée dans le Pacifique et que la France fait pareil en possédant Nouméa, c'est à la fois fortement frustrant et (je suppose) irréaliste. Il faudrait soit revoir l'attribution des points de victoire soit permettre une annexion après l'occupation pendant 1 ou 2 ans des principaux points du pays (5 et +).

[Da-Soth]

En fait tu as des scripts de réditions pour les Alliés qui existent où il faut occuper certaines provinces clés pour forcer la paix. Un peu comme la bitter peace pour l'URSS MAIS il faut que ses alliés ne soient plus en guerre. Exemple : si tu veux déclencher ce script contre la France, il faut que l'Angleterre et les USA ne soient pas en guerre. Avec les USA ? Il faut que la France et l'Angleterre ne soient pas en guerre ... C'est très con et ça n'arrive jamais. Et quand tu obtiens la paix avec la France en prenant Nouméa c'est qu'il reste plus grand chose de l'Empire britannique et/ou des USA ...

Et les scripts de paix qui redécoupent l'Europe communiste sont mal fait. Tu n'as pas le choix et à part la DDR qui est puppétisé, tout les autres (Pologne, Roumanie, etc...) sont staliniste mais non allié/puppétisé... Et il est strictement impossible de rendre la France.

[Fernando Torres]

Playermade Modifications

Hello again,
It is monday noon, and that means it is time for another Development Diary.
As you should have already seen in the last weeks, one of our main goals was to keep it extremly easy to use your favorite HOI 2 mod with Darkest Hour.

And this week I gonna talk about how this actually gonna work for you, be it as a Modder for one of the Big Projects, someone who would like to play an old mod that is nolonger developed, or just as someone who likes to modify his own game a bit.



The first thing you gonna start to love is that Darkest Hour finally offers full MODDIR support, you no longer need jsgme or individual installations for each mod you use.

You only need one Darkest Hour installation!
Copy the mod you fancy in a subfolder the Mod folder.
Pick the mod you like to play the next time you start the game with the launcher.





This works of course only when the mod is adapted to Darkest Hour, some bugfixes and new features were not possible without modification that affect basic files, there are few things that need to be changed for a mod to start properly. Don't worry It's not much, and you don't even need real modding experience to do it yourself.

Depending on mod's complexity this could take from 1-2 minutes (Confederate Armageddon) to about 15 minutes (CORE as this mod already use moddir and some paths in its DB files have to be edited and many dummy pictures to be skipped).


In one of our latest version we included a Darkest Hour Mods Pack (located in the Modding documentation folder of your installation ) that can be used for easy Armageddon 1.3 to DH mod conversion.
It contains the following files:

    \config\Buttons.txt
    \config\mods.csv
    \db\difficulty.csv
    \db\diplo_costs.txt
    \db\leaders.txt
    \db\ministers.txt
    \db\misc.txt
    \db\spy_costs.txt
    \db\teams.txt
    \gfx\interface\ill_prov_overlay.bmp
    \gfx\interface\map_circle.bmp
    \gfx\interface\plate_division.bmp
    \gfx\interface\tc_icons.bmp

These are the files that need to be in the new DH format in order for the game to work and are the only files that modders should worry about when porting their mods to DH.

• \config\Buttons.txt - new button definition *we changed certain interface elements for new features, and of course those need new buttons*
  
• \config\mods.csv - the file where all modders should put mod specific texts to ensure compatibility with further game patches. This file will never be modified by any patch.
  
• \db\difficulty.csv - new difficulty settings *some of our new features are influenced by the difficult settings and got their own entry here*
  
• \db\diplo_costs.txt - only one change here from 1.3: removed "-" sign from all costs
  
• \db\spy_costs.txt - some changes from 1.3 as most spy system modifiers are moved to misc.txt now. Only cost and chances are left here.
  
• \db\misc.txt - tons of new modifiers here, but all are set to Armageddon 1.3 defaults, so you have only to edit those values you changed for your mod for 1.3
  
• \db\teams.txt - list of all tech team files that should be loaded by the game. These files could be either in MODDIR or in main game folder. By default it is populated with all 1.3 file names so you just need to add your new file names and (optionally) remove those you don't see need to be loaded by your mod
• \db\leaders.txt - list of all leader files that should be loaded by the game. These files could be either in MODDIR or in main game folder. By default it is populated with all 1.3 file names so you just need to add your new file names and (optionally) remove those you don't see need to be loaded by your mod
• \db\ministers.txt - list of all minister files that should be loaded by the game. These files could be either in MODDIR or in main game folder. By default it is populated with all 1.3 file names so you just need to add your new file names and (optionally) remove those you don't see need to be loaded by your mod
  
• \gfx\interface\ill_prov_overlay.bmp - changed file.
• \gfx\interface\map_circle.bmp - changed file.
• \gfx\interface\plate_division.bmp - changed file.
• \gfx\interface\tc_icons.bm - changed file.

Notes:
1. This pack is supposed to be Merged with the mod.
2. Only files that were actually changed by the mod, which are included in this pack should actually be updated/replaced by files from the pack. The rest (except 3 - see next) can be skipped as they are identical to DH Core files already installed in the game's main folders.
3. The only files that must be included into mod's folder are \db\ministers.txt, \db\leaders.txt and \db\teams.txt

Usual 1.3 Mod porting steps:


1. Create a new folder for your mod in Mods folder
2. Extract all mod files into that folder preserving original game folders tree
3. Using a program like WinMerge compare mod's folder with Darkest Hour Mods Pack folder and update files as required:


- Copy db\ministers.txt, \db\leaders.txt and \db\teams.txt and add any mod specific file names there
- Copy and update \config\Buttons.txt, \db\difficulty.csv, \db\diplo_costs.txt, \db\misc.txt, \db\spy_costs.txt ONLY if these are changed by your mod from vanilla 1.3 values.
- Copy \gfx\interface\ill_prov_overlay.bmp, \gfx\interface\map_circle.bmp, \gfx\interface\plate_division.bmp and \gfx\interface\tc_icons.bm ) ONLY if these are changed by your mod.
4. Create an empty "save games" folder in your mod's scenarios folder.
5. Select your mod from DH game Launcher
6. Play


It really is that straight forward and easy to convert a mod to Darkest Hour, we are testing it often enough to be sure.


Some feedback on the topic from AC of the Kaiserreich team:

Well, as I said the conversion was very simple, basically because the Kaiserreich Team never messed with misc.txt and other configuration files (as far as I know). So, conversion is actually not the best word to describe this, as the process didn't involve much more then copying the files to the Mod folder.
The real conversion of the Kaiserreich for DH will use the new map and all the new features offered by DH. This is a simple "adaptation" of the KR mod from Armageddon to Darkest Hour.

However, as soon as a new game starts, it is possible to see how the Mod benefitted from this adaptation. At the start of the game, a reminder tells me that I can move my political slider: very useful to avoid missing this opportunity at the beginning of each year!
After unpausing the game, the performance increase is immediately noticeable and the game flows quickly without problems or CTDs. In my opinion, this is the biggest benefit for a casual player, but there is much more: the automated spying system, ... * peep* *peep* *peep* ..., the many useful tooltips (for example in the research tab), the colorscale of the unit and the pictures close to the units name, the * peep* for the air and naval missions and other smaller, simpler, but nonetheless useful things.

If you want, you can add that I've been using Kaiserreich over DH since May and I've developed current version 1.2 of the KR Arma Mod using DH! This was very useful especially because thanks to the debug log we could fix many (40 maybe) wrong minister traits, some problems with leaders, mistakes in the Tech Teams (missing components) and a bunch of other. So, from a certain point of view, you could say that the current version of Kaiserreich Mod for Armageddon already benefitted from DH.

I've written about many things still undisclosed, feel free to change my words as you like.

I did. *g* White & Sea as always guys.

But you can Sea even when using DH without most of its new features there are quite a lot of improvements to talk about, even if we won't talk about them yet.


Here's a list of mods that already officially announced porting to DH:

• Confederate Armageddon
• Fallout's Doomsday Mod
• Kaiserreich
• New World Order
• Whites & Reds
  
• And let's not forget that the Iron Cross expansion for HOI2Arma and AoD will be available for DH too!

I hope you enjoyed those new informations at least a bit.
See you next week for a new development diary.
Take care.

P.S.: I think we didn't show you Asia yet.

http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/151/aisa.png

[francou008]

[Groomy]

C'est beau.... HoI 1, HoI 2, HoI 2 Doomsday, HoI 3, Arsenal of Democracy, Darkest Hour s'il tient ses promesses. En fait Hearts of Iron ça devient mon jeu culte

[Fernando Torres]

Hello again, it is Monday and that means it is time for another Dev Diary. Well actually we have more for you today. As things were a bit hectic over the weekend i didn't have time to write the Diary as long as i would have liked to we will give you a small one first. And finish up later in about 3 or 4 hours with another one.

Claims

We're here today to talk about one of the new concepts introduced by Darkest Hour: Claims!
What are claims? And what is the difference between claims and cores? Here are the answers to these questions!

Claims are basically used for diplomatic purposes and are useful to assert the desire of a country to own and control a province. There are no economic benefits of claiming provinces: they are counted as non-national when it comes to IC/MP/Resources or revolt risk and there will be no way to transform those claims into cores. However, claimed provinces are counted as national when it comes to diplomacy or country release. That means that a claimed province appears in the "Have claims against..." section and can be asked with the "Demand Territory" mission in the Diplomatic tab. The AI won't secede provinces it has claims on to allies/puppets even if those provinces are cores to that ally. In most cases claims will be used by players just to "redraw" the map in the way they wanted it to be after a successful war, especially in case of partition. Think about the partitioning of Greece for example: Italy, Germany and Bulgaria can claim different provinces and they won't secede them to their allies (even if those allies have cores on them).

So, how does claiming provinces work? Via the right-click menu it is possible to add and remove claims to single provinces, areas or regions. Claiming non-owned province increases belligerence and removing claims from such provinces decreases it (both values are set in misc.txt). Claimed provinces can be seen best on the Diplomacy map mode - they use lighter green than cores and also a black dot as opposed to the red one used for cores.

However, there are some limitations to avoid exploiting this new mechanism: it is not always possible to claim provinces of another country. New claims can be freely set to war enemies, but can be set to neutral countries only if policy allows that (interventionism must be high enough). Moreover claims cannot be demanded from countries that you are guaranteeing at the same time: for example Germany cannot ask for provinces from Poland if it is guaranteeing its independence!

Another new useful feature is that peace negotiations now take into account cores and claims:
- Insist on Demands automatically adds all claims and cores the initiating country has to the demanded provinces list;
- Beg for Peace automatically adds all claims and cores the receiving country has to the demanded provinces list;

Automatic Release of Nations

Another very interesting new feature introduced by Darkest Hour is the Automatic Release of Nations. First of all, claims are taken into account when a new nation is released and are considered like extra provinces. Moreover, Darkest Hour reviewed the automatic release of countries done by the AI, which suffered many limitations: the AI could release a country in its release = { } list only if it was a democracy, it was at peace and there were no more Axis powers. These limitations were removed and now even Germany or the Soviet Union can release countries during the war.
Moreover, if it no more necessary to control all the provinces in the minimum list in revolt.txt: minimum, extra and claimed provinces are all taken into account and if enough of them are already under the control of the AI nation, it will release that country.

Yeah, but what does that mean in terms of gameplay? Well, we know that after the end of WWII the Allies released West Germany and South Korea whereas the Comintern released East Germany and North Korea. But what if things went differently? What could have happened if the Allies had recovered part of Poland? Couldn't this situation lead to a Democratic Poland and a Communist Poland? Or had the Soviet Union conquered all of Germany and half of Netherlands, wouldn't they have created a East Netherlands opposed to the West Netherlands freed by the Allies? Or maybe even a North Communist Italy opposed to a South Democratic Italy!

With these new mechanism (and with new "communist" countries implemented of course) it is possible to recreate a dynamic situation after the Victory in Europe. No more bundled by fixed events, the AI will be able to release nations as soon as possible and the outcome of the war will be different every time. The Rush for Berlin will be even faster now and with greater consequences!


So, to conclude this Dev Dairy, here are the changes to the code regarding claims:

- manual claims can be enabled or disabled from misc.txt (diplomacy section : Allow manual claims change in-game for players: 1 - Enabled, 0 – Disabled );
- there is a new provinces list named "claimedprovinces" available for countries which can be set in scenario (INC) files and in revolt.txt (claims = { } list);
- there are new event commands to add or remove claims: type = addclaim which = [prov id] / type = removeclaim which = [prov id];
- there is a trigger to check for claims: claims = { province = a [data = tag ] } # check if that province is claimed by TAG (or country in question if not specified);
- it is possible to set in misc.txt the increase and decrease of belligerence for adding and removing claims (does not apply for owned by enemies or claimed province via event command);
- there is a new policy modifier in policy_effects.csv that regulates claiming new provinces of neutral countries;

And here are the changes to the code regarding the release of nations:

New misc.txt parameters (“ai” section):
* Use new AI release rules – all countries can release puppets even when at war. 1 – Yes, 0 – No
* Masters become master of new puppet’s puppets too. 1 – Yes, 0 –No
New parameters for country creation (revol.txt):
* claims = { PROV_ID …} – populates claimedprovinces list
* min = X - allows release if at least X provinces of minimum list are controlled by releaser country. By default (no min_prov entry or min_prov = -1) it is equal to provinces in minimum list.
* min_extra = X - allows release if at least X provinces of extra list are controlled by releaser country. By default (no min_ extra entry) it is 0.
* value = X.X (0.0 – 1.25) – used by the old release model (when no min or min_extra are defined). When “score” is above that value the country will be available for release. By default (no value) it is 0.51.

More to come in a few hours.


http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...5&d=1286800867
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...6&d=1286800888

[Da-Soth]

Très bon ça !

Et as tu des infos sur les conditions de victoire de l'Axe ? Sont ils obligés de conquérir le monde ? Ou peuvent ils accélérer la décolonisation ?

[Fernando Torres]

Il y a des déroulements spécifiques pour les redditions et négociations de paix mais je ne veux pas en dire trop pour l'instant.

[Da-Soth]

J'ai confiance en vous. J'avais beaucoup apprécié WiF en son temps. Je sais que vous allez nous livrer un Wargame confectionné avec amour et avec soin.

Maintenant c'est l'attente qui devient insupportable...

[Fernando Torres]

"Hitler learns about Darkest Hour" :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx5hK...layer_embedded

[Groomy]

858ème détournement de cette séquence de La Chute

[Fernando Torres]

Hello again, this time it's actually me.
We promised you a big one today, and here it is even when it is a bit late.


Chancellor Otto von Clausewitz wrote:

“Politics is the womb into which war develops”.

State policies and ideologies indeed play a central role in the process, of going to war and how to wage it.
Isn’t the Second World War often called a « war of ideologies »?

On the other hand, international relations and diplomacies never ceased to get more complex during the XIXth and XXth centuries.
We always felt that the impression to lead, not only the armed forces, but a whole nation, was missing in Hearts of Iron games.
We were therefore looking forward to making players actually feel they embodied a Head of State. This is one of the major philosophical design choices that has defined Darkest Hour development.

We believe it will provide an unprecedented experience for those who will get the chance to play our game.


Being a Head of State first starts with taking policy decisions.

In Darkest Hour, you will have the opportunity to dictate a decisive policy change every two years that will have in influence in the years to come, beginning with the ministers that you will appoint. We have also implemented an auto-reminder notification system that can be turned on/off that lets you know when such change is possible.


We all know characters that had a considerable influence for the history of their country.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill was often described by British war propaganda as a bulldog ready for duty and fight. Such figure is alleged to have inspired courage to the British people.
Darkest Hour reproduces this through a unique minister’s personalities system that is entirely modifiable by users.
Most prominent State figures have already their own personality that in turn affects their country, but there is nothing stopping you from creating indivdual personalities for each minister in the world.







But being a Head of State is also a matter of decisive and even sometimes impulsive policy decisions.

There are two other ways to influence the course of history from a diplomatic perspective in Darkest Hour. Historical events are one of them.
We have entirely rewritten the events using our new syntax which opened up much more possibilities for ourselves and modders.
There will now be tons of new diplomatic events simulating for instance the United States foreign policy, from the decision to send destroyers to the British Navy to the passing and the enforcement of the Lend-Lease Act.

There will also be situations when you will be able to take immediate decisions when certain conditions are met.
We have indeed implemented a unique “Policy decisions” concept in Darkest Hour that allows players to take a specific decision when they think the time is right (provided that they match all requirements).
As an example, when playing the 1936 Grand campaign as Germany, a “Reoccupation of Rhineland” decision will be available with specific requirements to be activated. As soon as the player activates the decision, a newspaper notification appears, offering him a little bit of historical background.






Lastly, the course of events has been made more dynamic.

As players now actually have an influence on when and how certain events occur, they will influence the timeline. As Germany, you can obviously lead your country to war as fast as possible. But be aware that your army or your industrial base may be left unprepared for a long conflict.
Of course the artificial intelligence will always try to surprise you and take decisions when you are not ready for them. For example, playing as China, the Japanese Army will not always invade your country at the same time and the same place so you can just wait for them and push them back when they come.

We truly believe that as a Grand Strategy game, Darkest Hour needed an in-depth diplomatic model.
While we are still polishing it and adding new parts with every build, especially to provide even more user modifiability, this development diary should have given you another glimpse at the very basics of our philosophy and we hope you will appreciate it.

[Groomy]

C'est pas un peu décalé les "Parano Megalo" "Bouffon impérialiste" "Idéaliste" ? C'est pas très...neutre.

[Fernando Torres]

Here we are again for our usual Monday appointment. Today, we're gonna talk about Missions, Interface and Leader Traits.

First of all, let's talk a bit about Missions: we have introduced a new interface for Air and Naval Missions.
As you can see in the picture below, in the new Air Mission interface it is possible to select infinite mission time and to choose between province, area and region (for most of the missions). It is really a neat feature, as you will learn: you will be able to instruct your CAS to focus on a single province and your Naval Bombers to Attack Convoys over a great sea region. Obviously, this is always limited by the range of your aeroplanes: if you assign them to perform a mission over a whole region, they will be able to do it only in the provinces of that region that they are effectively able to reach.
In the Naval Mission Interface, you can see that for some missions (like Naval Interdiction and Naval Combat Patrol) it will be possible to instruct the fleet to attack enemy convoys even if they are not in an hunting mission. This adds a touch of realism: a fleet in a Naval Interdiction mission that encounters an enemy convoy would surely fire a couple of rounds at them instead of waving their hands and passing by. :D

Moreover, settings for every mission are saved and restored when ordering the same mission again during the current game session (on game start are reset to mission defaults).

But this is just the beginning! We've introduced four new missions:
- Planned Defense (for land units): units with Planned Defense missions will automatically retreat to the pre-selected adjacent province when under enemy attack and their remaining Str/Org is below the given threshold;
- Air Scramble (for air units): Air Scramble missions are given to interceptor and fighter units; they will scramble to protect adjacent provinces from enemy planes;
- Sneak Move (for naval units): Ships on a Sneak Move mission move to the target trying to avoid being detected. Because sneaking forces fleets to use longer routes, it takes more time to reach the target, but also reduces the chance to be detected by the enemy;
- Naval Scramble (for naval units): Naval Scramble missions assigns your fleets to stay in home port and engage any enemy ships detected in adjacent sea provinces;
The new Naval Scramble mission gets really interesting when you take a look at the new map, you will notice that we added a line of coastal seaprovinces. In combination with the new distance model we introduced (see DD2 for more details) this means you can have a very nasty surprise when you move too close to hostile harbors. On the other hand, this is an effective tool to defend against amphibious landings.

EDIT:
Another important feature that I somehow forgot is that for Sea Transport and Amphibious Assault missions there is a special checkbox for the auto-return to base: it is now possible to enable or disable for a specific mission!

Sorry guys, sometimes it is hard to remember all the new things introduced by DH! I haven't played HOI2Arma in months!

Obviously the new interface is optional and can be enabled or disabled from misc.txt. Moreover, all the modifier for mission (new and old alike) are now exported to misc.txt and be tweaked as you please! As always, we've struggled and succeeded not only in improving the game, but also in making it as moddable as possible, so that you can have full control and modify it as it pleases you. We're looking forward to seeing the new mods that the community will create for Darkest Hour! Don't disappoint us!

Another useful addition is the Leader Traits filter:

As you can see in the picture above, it is possible to filter the leaders by trait and by rank (the four checkboxes next to "Available Replacements"). No more wasted time looking for a specific leader, you can find a Field Marshal with Panzer Leader traits with only two clicks!
Please note also that latest filter settings used for each branch (army/air/navy) are saved and restored in the current game session too.

To close this Development Diary, here are the mission modifiers from misc.txt!

# Convoy interception by naval units on Interdiction, Combat Patrol, Shore Bomb. and ASW missions: 0 disabled for all, 1 - optional for players only (disabled by default), 2 - optional for players (enabled by default) and enabled for AI
       2 #0
    # Auto-return transport fleets to base on Amphibious assault and Sea transport missions (players only): 0 - enabled, 1 - enabled by default, optional, 2 - disabled by default, optional
       1 #0
    # Allow single province and region targeting for air and naval units (players only): 0 - disabled, 1 - enabled
       1 #0

mission = {
# _MISSION_ATTACK_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    1.0    # Speed bonus: (Move time * This / mission_efficiency). Lower the better
# _MISSION_REBASE_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    1.0    # Chance to be detected (Chance * This / mission_efficiency). Lower the better. Naval only!
# _MISSION_STRAT_REDEPLOY_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# Land Missions
# _MISSION_SUPPORT_ATTACK_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    1.0    # Speed bonus: (Move time * This / mission_efficiency). Lower the better
# _MISSION_SUPPORT_DEFENSE_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    0.5    # Speed bonus: (Move time * This / mission_efficiency). Lower the better
# _MISSION_RESERVES_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    0.5    # Speed bonus: (Move time * This / mission_efficiency). Lower the better
# _MISSION_ANTI_PARTISAN_DUTY_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    2.0    # Multiplier on suppresion (This * mission_efficiency)
# _MISSION_PLANNED_DEFENSE_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# Air Missions
# _MISSION_AIR_SUPERIORITY_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    0.0    # Modifier on detection ( This * mission_efficiency ). Higher it is, more often incoming enemy planes will be detected
    2.0    # Min. Air attack for at least one plane in the wing required for this mission to be available
# _MISSION_GROUND_ATTACK_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    0.0    # Air vs. Land - Org dmg - Increasing this will increase ORG dmg land units takes from Air unit on this mission
    1.0    # Air vs. Land - Str dmg - Increasing this will increase STR dmg land units takes from Air unit on this mission
# _MISSION_INTERDICTION_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    1.0    # Air vs. Land - Org dmg - Increasing this will increase ORG dmg land units takes from Air unit on this mission
    0.0    # Air vs. Land - Str dmg - Increasing this will increase STR dmg land units takes from Air unit on this mission
# _MISSION_STRATEGIC_BOMBARDMENT_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_LOGISTICAL_STRIKE_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_RUNWAY_CRATERING_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_INSTALLATION_STRIKE_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_NAVAL_STRIKE_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_PORT_STRIKE_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_CONVOY_AIR_RAIDING_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_AIR_SUPPLY_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_AIRBORNE_ASSAULT_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.25    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_NUKE_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_AIR_SCRAMBLE_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    0.0    # Modifier on detection ( This * mission_efficiency ). Higher it is, more often incoming enemy planes will be detected
    2.0    # Min. Air attack for at least one plane in the wing required for this mission to be available
# Naval Missions
# _MISSION_CONVOY_RAIDING_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    2.0    # Fleet range modifier
    1.0    # Chance to be detected (Chance * This / mission_efficiency). Lower the better
# _MISSION_ASW_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_NAVAL_INTERDICTION_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_SHORE_BOMBARDMENT_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    0.002    # Combat Modifier: Shore Bombardment Multiplier (Applies to the SB value of ships for org damage)
# _MISSION_AMPHIBOUS_ASSAULT_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_SEA_TRANSPORT_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    3.0    # Fleet range modifier
    1.0    # Chance to be detected (Chance * This / mission_efficiency). Lower the better
# _MISSION_NAVAL_COMBAT_PATROL_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_NAVAL_PORT_STRIKE_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_NAVAL_AIRBASE_STRIKE_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    0.5    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
# _MISSION_SNEAK_MOVE_
    1     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    0.75    # Fleet range modifier
    0.75    # Chance to be detected (Chance * This / mission_efficiency). Lower the better
# _MISSION_NAVAL_SCRAMBLE_
    0     # 0 = disabled by default, 1 = enabled by default
    1.0    # Starting missions efficiency. Valid values: 0.05 to 10.0
    0.5    # Speed bonus: (Move time * This / mission_efficiency). Lower the better
}

Come back next week for a new shiny Development Diary!

[Da-Soth]

C'est pas un peu décalé les "Parano Megalo" "Bouffon impérialiste" "Idéaliste" ? C'est pas très...neutre.

Perso c'est les malus de Mussolini qui me paraissent bizarre. Déjà que l'Italie n'est pas à la fête... Ma première idée si je joues l'Italie c'est de me débarrasser de ce boulet.

Mais bon, pas grave ! Apparemment c'est facilement moddable.