Hello and welcome back to another monthly update video
from the team behind Victoria 3.
I'm Sanna and I'm part of the community team for Victoria
and in this month's video we're going to focus on some of the more visual
and information-packed aspects of the game.
Let's start by getting an overview of UX.
The UX stands for the user experience. It's how you interact with the game
and how you feel when you play the game.
It's everything almost.
Our goal with the UX in Victoria 3 is to make the game more approachable,
which enables us to make the game even deeper and more complex.
In order for us to do this, we have three UX pillars.
The first one is the right information at the right time,
the second one is clear feedback about cause and effect,
and the third one is clearly separate actions from information.
So how does it look in practice?
First off, we have nested tooltips, as made famous by Crusader Kings III.
By nesting tooltips, we can breakdown the information into smaller pieces
and show you contextual information at the right time.
Instead of having to explain every single detail and anecdote
in a single humongous tooltip,
we can focus on the most essential information
and let you deep dive whenever you want.
One of the more challenging areas is to clearly show
how values change over time.
One way we do it is by the use of line graphs.
One essential part of the game loop is to see values that change over time
and we use these line graphs to help keep track of what's going on.
We also have two types of charts: pie charts and area charts,
and we allow you to switch between them however you like.
If you don't feel like you want to delve into all this data,
in all the charts and all the graphs yourself,
we actually predict things for you.
For example, if you change the production method in a building,
we show you the predicted earnings even before you take that action,
so you know if it's good or not.
Our map is gorgeous and we want to put more emphasis on it,
we want you to interact with it.
One way we do it is by putting the events on the map itself.
Another thing that we do is whenever you hover over a state name,
the state actually highlights on the map.
This makes it easier to connect the names of things
with the representation on the map.
One of the coolest things we do on the map is map modes.
We have map modes connected to most information panels,
triggering whenever you open one.
In combination with icons and heat maps,
we can show you several layers of information without cluttering the map.
Another cool thing we do is that every action you take
you can take through our lens system,
and they all come with their own map mode.
It's basically like seeing the world from a specific point of view.
Or if you already know what entity you want to perform an action on,
you can just right-click it.
Lastly, I want to talk about the accessibility options in Victoria 3.
From a UX perspective, this is extremely important.
We want to enable everybody to play our game.
That's why we have included three different color blindness modes for text.
And we're looking into more ways to improve our accessibility.
A great overview on the topic. Thank you, Aron.
Now, let's take a look at UI
and get a sense of the look and feel of Victoria 3.
As is the case in all parts of the production of Victoria 3,
each discipline has a set of keywords or pillars that they adhere to
in order to make sure that we have a consistent theme.
The art direction of the game is driven by three of these terms.
The first one, which is prestigious,
which is meant to evoke the luxuries of the Victorian upper class.
The second one is vintage and idyllic,
which is meant to evoke the feeling of something from the past
that is of high quality.
We take inspiration from the Romanticism art movement of the 1800s.
The final one is detailed yet approachable.
We do want to give you a lot of the intricate designs and whatnot
of the various art movements that we're inspired by,
but we don't want to overwhelm or distract you
from the actual information that you need to play the game.
So how do these keywords relate to the user interface part of the game
and in fact what do we mean by user interface?
We mean the various panels, buttons and icons
that you use to interact with the game,
whether it is to get information from the game
or to act somehow and make changes to the game.
The first one of those are panels or windows, you might call them.
Here we take inspiration from the Art Nouveau movement
to provide a lot of flourish around the edges,
around the frame of the window,
not to overwhelm you with the information that is happening inside the window.
For the buttons, we've chosen to incorporate natural elements,
the texture wood, and the color of emerald green.
Now, in Victoria 3, there are two kinds of buttons:
There's navigational buttons that you just use to go to another panel,
another part of the user interface,
and there's buttons that you use to take an action.
We've chosen to avoid confirmation windows as much as possible,
which means that often when you click a button
the action happens right away,
which means you need to be able to tell the difference
between a navigational button and an action button.
We differentiate between these two types of buttons by playing with the frame,
so you can tell which is which.
If there's a particular option we would like to draw your attention to,
we use a special kind of frame with more intricate border details.
The final part of the user interface are icons,
which are omnipresent throughout the game and used to visualize certain states
or things that we want to draw your attention to
or just representations of game mechanics.
The level of detail used for these icons can vary for various reasons.
Buildings and goods are very intricate, very detailed.
They're like mini illustrations that are meant to set the mood for you,
and we can do this because they are representations of actual in-game objects.
Event types, on the other hand, are a lot more abstract.
So, for example, a protest type of event, we use a hand holding a megaphone.
Technology icons, on the other hand, can go either way.
They can either be very concrete, like a stick of dynamite,
or they can be more abstract, like the concept of academia.
In either case, of course,
we have to come up with a visual representation of this,
which is concrete to you, which can sometimes be a little tricky.
This is something we found out first hand when trying to figure out a way
to represent the professions that are in the game with icons.
What we ended up choosing there was to go with the tools of the trade.
So machinists, for example, we represent with an icon of a wrench,
while servicemen we represent by a pair of shiny boots.
Speaking of servicemen, one icon that appears in the game
in many different contexts and sizes is the icon for battalions.
This is one of many icons that we also have available as text icons,
such that they can appear in text and tooltips, for example.
However, they can also appear in much larger formats inside panels
or as indicators elsewhere in the UI, or even on the map.
To ensure these icons are recognizable and readable at many different sizes,
we work with simple parameters such as a few chosen colors
and very clean silhouettes.
We also color code these smaller icons
to make it clear if they denote, for example,
a positive or negative connotation.
Each interest group has a unique color to their icon.
That same color also appears in pie charts and line graphs
to make you recognize it not only by the icon but also by the color it uses.
Finally, one additional area where we use illustrations to convey meaning
is in the tutorial.
Here we found that, instead of trying to represent certain more complex concepts
with big paragraphs of text, it was better communicated visually.
However, the infographic format that's commonly used today
is very clean and modern-looking, and we didn't feel this fit for this game.
Instead, we've taken inspiration from Victorian newspapers
and blueprint illustrations to compose a new style
that is more suitable, that teaches you these concepts in an efficient way
without breaking your immersion.
The user interface is the part of the game
that you're going to be spending the most amount of time with,
so we wanted to take that opportunity to really let you immerse yourself
in the Victorian era.
Vintage and idyllic indeed. Now, our next topic is journal entries.
Journal entries are the primary vehicle
for delivering narrative content in Victoria 3.
They are very diverse
and can cover a wide variety of historical and period-inspired situations.
Journal entries present the player with a series of optional goals,
imminent disasters, and ongoing situations.
You can think of them as being items on the government's agenda.
For example, the Ottoman Empire finds itself in a series of journal entries
that we call "The Sick Man of Europe,"
and this can be quite beneficial if you pursue these goals.
But more importantly, if you fail to pursue them
and if you fail to transform the empire into a modern state,
then there can be potential disaster in the future.
For example, if France were to take over the Canadian colonies,
they can engage in this process as well, and end up with a very different Canada.
Many journal entries are broadcasted to the player in advance
through the system of having potential journal entries.
So you can tell what content you might want to engage with in the future
and what conditions you need to meet in order for it to activate.
It can also warn you of the conditions that you need to be aware of
in order to avoid a disaster.
Many journal entries appear as inactive so the player can see them ahead of time.
This means that you can see in advance what disasters you might want to avoid
and what content you might want to engage with.
So, for example, if you know that you want to engage in building new universities,
there might be a journal entry that will encourage you to do this
and give you a reward for completing this goal.
For example, the Confederation of Canada is not content exclusive to Britain.
Any country that fulfills the requirements can activate the journal entry
and confederate Canada on their own.
Our goal for the journal entry system
is to create content which is historically plausible, non-arbitrary
and visible, no matter what country you're playing as.
Journal entries can have a variety of mechanical aspects,
many of which are optional.
For example, there may be complete conditions, fail conditions,
timeouts, events contained within them and can fire when they're active.
Unlike in previous titles, there are very few pop-up events in Victoria 3.
Instead, when an event fires,
it pops up on the map and also in the outliner.
This means you can engage with events at your discretion.
Victoria 3 is a very open-ended game with a lot of dynamic possibilities.
Instead of the mission trees and focus trees of previous titles,
we've decided on a much more emergent experience.
We want to present historically plausible scenarios
without railroading history into being.
And that's it for this monthly update video.
But we'll be back again, as always, next month
with more insight into what our dev team has been up to lately.
Until then, follow us on Twitter and Facebook,
join the official Victoria Discord
and subscribe to the Victoria 3 newsletter to stay informed.