East vs West : A Hearts of Iron Game Exclusive Interview

Atlantis · le 8 octobre 2012

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INTERVIEW

1°) Hi. Please take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers and tell us what is your part in BL-Logic ?

My name is Lennart Berg and I’m the founder of bl-logic. In East Vs West: A hearts of Iron Game, I am the project manager and lead designer... though i dabble in coding from time to time to help out

2°) Can you talk in short about the game plot, and the story behind the game ?

Well there are many of us who still remember the fall of the wall.
We where glued to the TV, seeing Germans climb and break down the wall.
People being reunited and crying.

An era had ended.
It was some of the most tense decades of human history, never before where humans all over the world involved, dare i say as hostages?, in a seemingly race to their own extinction and mutually assured destruction.
One misstep and It would all have been over.
At the same time we had the end of colonialism, a liberation of countries... and yet a steady rise of instability, civil wars, insurgencies and coups.
A lot of history has been lost, and people mostly just remember Vietnam, the hippies and one big oil crisis....
Now isn't that a good basis for a good historical game?

We thought so

As for the story of the game... well wait for the DD's or see some documentaries

http://en.wikipedia...._War_(TV_series)

3°) HOI/Arsenal of Democracy created a huge fan base and a lot of people are awaiting for its sequel. Tell us what are the biggest changes brought in East vs. West ?

East vs West is a stand alone war strategy game.
There will be plenty of differences.
As I said before the cold war is quite a special time-period.

The wars where smaller in scale, but more frequent, and strangely enough the bigger faction didn't necessarily win.
Just look at the world map of WW2, and compare it to our current ones... a LOT has happened during these 45 years..
So in East vs. West, we will have lots of independent wars, intrigues, espionage and attempts at economic domination going on.
We have several global continuing plotlines like Nato vs Warsaw (this is probably what people remember the most), end of colonialism, pan Arabism etc...
And no matter what country you play the goal is as to guide your nation through this turbulent time period and do better than history.
So the general aim is quite different from a pretty much pure war simulator like AOD.
There was just no way that you can model more than 40 years of economic growth and military buildup as only industrial capacity.
Resources matters, trade matters - and money became king.
We have some nice features mixed in here, like population pyramids - so we know how many people of specific ages there are... this is used to determine your workforce, you military potential.. social spending for pension, schools etc.
and a totally revamped spy system... using game cards

4°) Why have you chosen the "Cold War" for your next product ?

As i said before its a very interesting.. and actually quite demanding timeline.
Its not just war, its not just politics, its not just economy - but a healthy mix of all three.
When we talked about it, it also felt as a very natural step.
The previous games from Paradox Development Studios covers pretty much the entire time-frame from Rome rise to the end of world war 2. So if we are to find our own time-line, why not start with our own favorite time-period of the cold war?

Thats the timeline of james bond, lasers .. doomday devices and a lot of cool special weapons and alternative history storylines (mods?) that really just couldn’t fit properly into a ww2 based game.
I mean lets just take the modding possibilities:
It doesn't take much to imagine leading your small surviving (ghoul?) faction to glory in a post nuclear war scenario, grand alien attacks Or what would have happened if the alien scout hadn't crashed in Roswell new Mexico, but called in the main fleet.. hehe

5°) How does the combat system works in East vs. West ? What developments for the Navy and Air Force? What will happen if there is a nuclear war ?

Well, we naturally based combat on Hearts of Iron III, because it is a great base to build upon - Then we tweaked it, and gave it some more flavor..
But of course we took it up another notch

For example we have differentiate between manpower loss and equipment loss.
This was one of the lessons learned from Arsenal of Democracy - that you cannot model quantity based armies well, unless you do that distinction.
Also the base combat simulation is changed drastically... But that´s too early to reveal, sorry!

6°) How would you describe economical, political, spying and diplomatic aspects of East vs. West ?

Extensive , but I don’t want to spill all the beans on this

But I can tell you that... Fish... and electricity.. will be in the game

7°) Is there going to be scenarios for the crisis in Cuba and Berlin ?
Is it be possible to crush the Prague Spring and will enter the race to the Moon ?
We currently aim for 5 scenarios, so if you want to play the closest one to the missile crisis - that would be the Vietnam war in 1961... And yes, you have free hands – so you will see if you can do better

8°) What are the major differences between NATO and the Warsaw Pact ?
I'll make one example with the tech tree - being a member of a faction unlocks its specific doctrines and tech trees which represent the ideology of the faction. There is a big difference in how they thought - just think about naval combat.
USSR was focused on big bang for the buck - NOW.... NATO went the opposite way and opted for more expensive, less efficient, but instead easily changeable / upgradable systems - things that are compatible with each other.
It gives quite a different way of long term planning, and thus how you play the game..

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C.D.O exclusive screenshot of West Berlin

9°) Can you tell us a little about the research and development aspect of the game ? How does technical progress work ? Will units be auto-upgraded when a new tech is available ?

We will not have any fixing limitation like the tech slots anymore.
So the only real limit is how much you ( your country) can / wants to invest into research in East vs. West.

10°) What kind of specs can you tell us in comparison to the old graphics engine of HOI 2/Arsenal of Democracy ? What can you tell us about the graphical features ?

East vs. West is based on the Clausewitz engine, so the game is based on a 3d engine, and not 2d like Arsenal of Democracy was. Which of course means we have much more CPU resources free to handle real game code. It will also be quite a bit nicer on the eyes

We will have new 3d models for the big players and we also have some nice looking counters under development.

11°) Could you also tell us about the mutli-player aspect of East vs. West ?

Battle against your friends in multiplayer for up to 32 players and don't
miss the chance to nuke your friends into oblivion.. OR of course you could take the chance to ally with them to change history in your image.

12°) What about mod-freaks ? Will they be able to edit more maps or even campaigns of their own ? New system of events ?

Most of us started by modding our own games, and it started to grow from there.
So of course when we now have the option to implement things as we want, we are always had moddability in mind.
You can edit the game extensively, we even ported several important algorithms directly to LUA so its totally moddable.
The most advanced tools you will need is notepad and paint, as its all plain text files - so everyone with an interest can join.

13°) Are we going to see an improved AI in the East vs. West ?

The goal is of course to have a good challenging AI opponent.
But what IS going to change drastically compared to both Hearts of iron and Arsenal of Democracy is how you USE the AI to help you.
But how that is achieved, well, I could tell you, but then... No, you´ll have to wait for that one.

14°) What has been the hardest part of development so far ?

Definitely the economics.
Within economics you have several balance issues... how deep do you want to make it?
The deeper you make it the more realistic it can become, but it also means the less players will have control over it - or if he has control, the results of his actions cannot be completely predicted by hiim.
In the end you could have the perfect economy simulation, fully automatic and tuned.... but so boring that also means the player would never look at it - and this would make it even worse than not having the economy in the first place

So finding the right balance between realism, game play and historical accuracy was a tough one.

15°) What are the system requirements for East vs. West ? The same as for HOI III ?

Pretty much, yes. The only big difference is that the graphic card will need shader model 3 support, but any card that supports Hearts of Iron III should have it anyway, rest assure.

16°) What is the release date planned ?

We are now aiming to release the game in Q2 2013 *knock on wood*

17°) Thanks for your time. Any last words to our readers ?

I hope you have enjoyed this small interview.
Feel free to join the forum to express your ideas or what you would like in the game.
We are always looking for valuable feedback. - especially after game release

Besides that, just look forward to it.
Playing with nukes can only be fun XD

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