Hello to the last Dev Diary on 1.6! A little of a mash up between 1.6, Sphere of Influence and the Train Pack!

It is I, Pelly, here to be the voice of Victoria! (Read in the voice of the mysterons voice, old 1960’s references are always relevant)

We released a hotfix (1.6.1) this morning addressing the Mac crash related to sea nodes, one of the issues mentioned in the 1.6 Known Issues post.

Otherwise for 1.6, we are looking to address a number of issues in upcoming patches including, but not limited to:

• A crash in the Census panel
• The Radicals and Loyalists in the Census Panel being reversed
• Embargo not being allowed below Poor Relations
• Script errors that may cause large error logs

We are looking into addressing these issues as soon as we can and will update people further when we have more information, within the next week.

There are also reports of performance being affected on certain machines, for example on AMD CPUs. This is unconfirmed by us as of writing but being investigated. If you are currently experiencing stability or performance issues with version 1.6.1, as always we ask you ensure all your mods are turned off (even mods marked by their authors as compatible with 1.6) and that you aren't loading a save from an old build (such as 1.5.13).

As for the surprise announcements yesterday, first up on Sphere of Influence!

It has been very nice to see the response to Sphere of Influence, including the fun people are having with the trailer (Read, people joking around in R’lyehian and how the octopuses in the trailer are actually Old Ones. Which they aren’t, we promise.). The nice comments about the trailer have been passed on to our lovely Creative Producer!

Otherwise, I have been looking at all the threads, comments, posts and all the interest in how features could work! Particularly, how everyone is analyzing the screenshots on Steam and speculation on them! We’ll have more information on said features over the upcoming dev diaries, starting next week (as mentioned in the announcement post of Sphere of Influence).

Then, we have the surprise release of the Train Bonus Pack!

I have been looking forward to this being released ever since we first started talking about it internally, seeing them actually come into being (I was so happy seeing them clatter along and have smoke coming out of them) and then doing the cool video discussion with Mike - Mike is a professional doing videos in one take.

The work the art and audio team have done is so, so cool and I am so happy to see other people also like them.

Speaking of Mike, behold the prophet of steam, the maniacal mechanic himself!

Talking about the background of making the pack!

---

THEY ASKED ME ABOUT TRAINS! THE FOOLS ACTUALLY ASKED ME ABOUT TRAINS!

Hello, yes, I'm Mike, and I am partial to railroading history and trains and suchlike. I've been working on Victoria 3 for years now, and way back in the early days I compiled a matrix of locomotives that would fit in the game, based on historical period and country so I could pitch some number of appropriate locomotives whenever the opportunity presented itself. That matrix looked a little something like this:



So when I got approached a little while back and asked if I could recommend any trains that the art team on V3 could add to the game, I cackled like a goddamn maniac, opened up the matrix, and sort of just gestured at the screen as I continued to laugh for a few more minutes.

…then I got a little nervous. Trains are serious business. Train People have serious opinions on trains. We had to pick only one locomotive per country per period, and there were so many trains. In some cases, there are also so many countries. The German trains are supposed to cover all the Germanies—would a Prussian locomotive be appropriate for Baden? Would a Bavarian engine work for Hanover? I am sure everyone has their own opinions about which locomotives are most emblematic of German locomotive design in the Victorian era. Ultimately I picked an Austrian locomotive because I once visited a museum near Vienna that actually had one around and that was a neat museum, you should go visit the Eisenbahnmuseum "Das Heizhaus", it's cool and fun.


This is my picture! I also went to the museum and really enjoyed seeing the trains! I have over 100 pictures just of trains from that visit. - Pelly

The majority of my work was on this front—I got to pick out designs, supply references to art, and then sit back and opine at length about why these trains were neat while the art team did the real work of modeling them and getting them working in the game. I got to tell you folks, being asked to give opinions about trains and have that count as work felt amazing.

A fun one to baffle the artists with was the John Bull. It's explained a lot more in the video (Pelly Note: It is a fun video, go watch it!) for the pack, but the John Bull is such an awful mess of a locomotive. Originally it was a nice and tidy British export, an early 1830s engine designed and built by the distinguished Robert Stephenson & Company, a classic 0-4-0 design.

It did not last long in this state.

Turns out, American tracks in the 1830s sucked! They sucked a lot! The routes were windy, the rail quality was awful, quality was just awful. In order to operate under such conditions, the locomotive's crew began making modifications, and then more modifications, and then more modifications. By the time it fully left service, it looked nothing like the original machine.

So, then, what should it look like in Victoria 3? Its recorded appearance changed several times over the years, but one of the biggest considerations here was to make the trains distinctive from each other, so you can easily see that an American train isn't a German one, and a British train isn't a French one. That led to the choice to use the current form that the locomotive's found in, preserved at the Smithsonian. There's enough modifications to make it weird, but not so many that it looks like it did in its sordid state at retirement. It makes it look distinct—that's the key consideration here.


God, what a weird little machine.

Ultimately though, it's been fun and terrifying work putting together the basics for this pack. It's been fun, because oh boy trains! It's also been terrifying, because I could only pick two trains for these nations and their hangers-on, to represent all their rich railway heritage over much of the Victorian era. What we have is but an introduction to all the real-life locomotives and railroading history of the 19th century. Learning more is a cinch—there's a plethora of books available in your local libraries, bookstores, and points online, and museums are all over the place.

Trains!

----

Thanks Mike! Very informative and engaging! It is always a joy talking about trains with you, and finally seeing some more trains in the game!


Now is the correct train sound Choo Choo or Chugga Chugga? I’m on team Choo Choo.

Stay tuned into radio Victoria, as next week (March 14th), we join Martin! With an overview of Sphere of Influence, its accompanying free update, thoughts behind the Expansion and the dev diaries to come between now until release!

See you there Victorians!