Have you ever wanted to play a strategy game set in Strangereal, the fictional universe
of Ace Combat series?
I mean think about it, you could develop your fighters, build them and attack your neighboring
countries and then say you did nothing wrong afterwards - all while using super weapons
like Excalibur, Stonehenge and the occasional flying aircraft carrier!
This is the whole concept of the newest Ace Combat mod for Hearts of Iron 4 and to better
explain this project I’ve invited the members of Project Ulysses to demonstrate their work
and what they want to accomplish.
Thank you Ace Combat Fan!
Hello everyone, I’m Rocketcan, along with JakeR2000 [Hello], and Air Ixiom [Hey], and we are members
of the dev team for Project Ulysses, a mod for Hearts of Iron 4.
Hearts of Iron 4 is a grand strategy game by Paradox Interactive set during World War 2.
Paradox games have a reputation of being great games for modding, and Hearts of Iron 4 is
no different, which is why it is a perfect platform for the strangereal universe.
This is the first dev diary for this project, and we have a lot to talk about, like the
unique map of strangereal and graphics to represent the modern equipment of the Ace Combat series.
So now I'm going to had it over to Jake, who is the lead developer of Project Ulysses.
Hello! I’m Jake, the lead developer of Project Ulysses.
Before we get looking into the map and graphics, I just wanted to give a basic overview of
the mod, our ideas, what will be featured, and answer a few common questions.
The mod starts in 1991 and will, on release, primarily feature the Belkan War.
Alternate outcomes to the wars are possible, so your constant dreams of Belkan conquest
can finally be realized!
We are also experimenting with ways to expand the amount of time a Hearts of Iron game can
last, and we’re hoping we can get the game to last all the way to the events of Ace Combat 5
or maybe even 6.
Also, superweapons will be in game, and we plan on using Hearts of Iron’s scripted
GUI effects to represent them.
If you have any other questions about the mod, feel free to comment on the video or
ask in our Discord.
With that said let's get showing off the map.
Let's! So for the map we have Ixiom here who is the expert on the subject.
He's the guy who has done a lot of work along with others, but he was elected as the spokesperson for the map group.
And so I will basically ask some questions to Ixiom about the map and the graphics.
So first off, how did you make the map? Because it is an entirely different map compared to Hearts of Iron 4.
Yeah, so that is quite a challenging process.
Rather than hand-drawing it, we used a series of procedural generators
one of which the output was given to us by Reddit user NomDeCompte.
Unfortunately with this one the capabilities were somewhat limited on our end.
All 33,371 provinces' borders had to be hand-drawn and since then the modding community has certainly evolved in the past year.
In V2 of the procedurally generated map we have much more control over the terrain, the height of the map,
density, rivers, lakes - all of that thanks to Jamestom999.
Best of all, the province borders can be dictated before they are generated, allowing a high degree of accuracy
and representing the world of Streangereal in the Hearts of Iron engine.
So speaking about the new map and how it relates to Hearts of Iron,
compare the vanilla map of Hearts of Iron 4 to the map you guys have generated.
While creating it our first emphasis was making air combat much more relevant to the player than ground combat.
There are 157 strategic regions in the first prototype compared to vanilla's 201,
but the strategic regions are much smaller giving players more control on where they are allocating their resources.
There are much fewer supply regions than there are in vanilla Hearts of Iron, only 66 compared to 357.
Compared to the political world of 1936 Earth, Strangereal only has about 26 countries that are canonically represented in the Ace Combat games.
But there's also plenty of room for creative liberty for our part.
Okay, so you talked about creative liberties, but how accurate is Project Ulysses going to be to Ace Combat?
Things like landmarks, terrain, superweapons, things like that. How are those going to be represented in the game, if at all?
We strive to be as faithful to the source material as possible.
Not only in representing the same terrain features you see in the Ace Combat games within the mod,
but also in keeping the spirit in gameplay.
For example, we want the players in a grand strategy game to consider the same challenges faced by the canonical nations
in how they attack and how they defend, where they attack, where they defend, naval invasions and so on.
We intend to represent the superweapons of Strangereal like Excalibur and Stonehenge on the map as well
side by side with modern vehicles and aircraft, including a lot of the aircraft that you would see in an Ace Combat game.
Thank you Ixion and thank you Jake, and thank YOU out there for watching.
I hope you are all as excited as we are for this project and tune in with us next month for the next dev diary.
Now if you want to learn mode about this project be sure to leave your questions in the comments
because Jake, who is the head developer of the project, will be answering them there.
Also important to point out that if you have some expertise in modding Hearts of Iron 4 or you want to get involved,
Project Ulysses is accepting applications and all the information will be in the description
including the link to the application form and also their Discord server.
With that said I hope you guys have enjoyed these Ace Combat community news and
next month there will be another dev diary talking about the progress and other aspects of the Strangereal mod
in Hearts of Iron 4. Hope you have enjoyed this video and see you next time!