The Iron Workshop

With the release of Victoria 3 we can finally stop pretending that economics can be implemented properly in HOI4... Good riddence.

3 years ago | [YT] | 132

The Iron Workshop

The Iron Workshop is getting ready for the Victorian age, modding tutorials for Victoria 3 and the various resources associated with them are already in production.

This is a game which I am excited both to play and mod, what would be the first thing you will change in the game once it comes out?

3 years ago | [YT] | 30

The Iron Workshop

After watching the Victoria 3 trailer (a very poor quality one, compare this one to the epic trailers of Stellaris) and playing the leaked version of the game I am left with a sad feeling that Victoria 3 is not going to sell very well, the game has amazing potential but the developers have taken some odd choices that are going to really disappoint long time fans of Victoria 2.

That, and the fact that this massive management game screams "I was made for consoles" with huge icons everywhere which look they are made for a touch screen and joysticks rather than a PC mouse, the most detrimental effect of this is that the player never truly gets to see an overview of how their country is doing and constantly has to switch pages and screens to get a good overview.

Lack of control, understanding and clarity are the biggest hurdles to this game's success which is super complex while hiding all of that complexity under a very pretty but non functional interface.

I hope to be proven wrong.

3 years ago | [YT] | 34

The Iron Workshop

Next HOI4 DLC will finally add the ability to embargo other countries, if you want to do that before the DLC comes out you can use the Iron Workshop from the link below:
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=232…

3 years ago | [YT] | 40

The Iron Workshop

This is a rant!

Some of you know of my Cold War Mod which was released at the end of 2019. It's a small project of mine which I wanted to do for several reasons... First, to learn more about the time period, secondly, to see how far I can push HOI4 in terms of introducing new mechanics into the game.

Since release of the mod and with every release of a major DLC by Paradox it feels like Paradox are doing their best to kill total conversion projects such as these. The killing is made even easier when you don't have a team of 5-10 people to fix all the code changes introduced by the new DLC/patch.

This creates a bizarre situation where on the one hand Paradox are expanding the modding capabilities of their game and thus allow more interesting and extensive mods to be introduced into their game while at the same time they don't seem to care at all about introducing backwards compatibility in their scripting language (and no, changing game version to an older one is not a proper solution).

So on the one hand we modders are encouraged by Paradox to extend their games and extend the life cycle of their games but when it comes to maintaining our work (which is sometimes years worth of work) we have nowhere to turn to... Code that was working perfectly fine in 1.10 is now flagged as incompatible by the game in 1.11, and I do not mean code related to new mechanics but very basic stuff.

The end result is that besides fighting off user anger, mod devs also have to fight against the framework given to them by Paradox and redo months if not years of work... I can't say that this is unfair or that we "deserve" better because lets be honest Paradox is here to make money and sell Games, not mods, but it is just so frustrating and I believe that a lot of talented modders who are not part of a big teams are quitting when they see their work ruined time and time again.

3 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 87

The Iron Workshop

All is ready for the remake of the HOI4 "Creating New Ideologies" video which I hope to finish making over the weekend. The previous lesson relied heavily on 3rd party tools to get the job done and was missing some answers for some very common issues and I hope this time to get most (if not everything) covered in this new lesson.

So besides it being a more comprehensive lesson it will also no longer require 3rd party programs which may/may not work or who's links might get broken and over which I have no control, this time the whole process will be done with tools created by the Iron Workshop and both I and you can be sure that these tools will remain available for the future for good.

A big thanks to everyone who keeps supporting my effort and a special thanks to my Patrons, who seem to share my view that supporting community resources like the Iron Workshop ultimately benefits the entire modding community and eventually leads to all of us having better mods to play and enjoy.

3 years ago | [YT] | 45

The Iron Workshop

Version 1.3 of the Iron Workshop Flag Creator has been released. This version comes with a flag renaming tool which can be used to rename multiple flag files at once.

This is mostly useful when creating new ideologies and I will go in depth on how this can be used in the reworked "Creating New Ideologies" video, for those who might figure it out on their own, hope this makes life a bit easier on you :)

Get the flag creator here: github.com/PlayerHOI/IWFC/releases
(Download the file named Flag.Creator.Public)

3 years ago | [YT] | 69

The Iron Workshop

This Friday the Iron Workshop sums up the year 2021 with a special live stream with yours truly (PlayerHOI) and my co modder/arch rival RootinPutin. Besides us mumbling and talking about some of the events that took place during 2021 there will also be a special announcement of a new modding resource from the Iron Workshop.

So what's on the agenda:

YouTube/Iron Workshop:
- Removal of dislike button + what is the Iron Workshop's most disliked video in 2021 (because you have a right to know no matter what YouTube thinks)
- Iron Workshop watch statistics for those of you who take interest in such things
- A brief update about updating out of date modding videos

Hearts of Iron IV:
- A general discussion about the release of No Step Back

- A brief discussion about the new supply system
- A brief discussion about the Tank Designer
- A brief discussion about new focus trees
- A brief discussion about potential future DLC

Modding:
- Can Paradox prevent major mods breaking after the release of a major DLC?
- Why do we (possibly) lose interest in games we mod?
- Cold War Mod post No Step Back update
- Our favorite HOI4 mod

Special Announcement:
- ?


The whole thing will probably be around 40 minutes or an hour and while it seems planned and organized I doubt things will be as smooth once we go live so expect some chaos, either way it should be fun and you are welcome to join the Stream and put in your own two cents (precise timing will be posted on Thursday).

Also, I am considering doing some streams again at least once a week, if that is something you'd like to see on the channel please let me know if there is a specific game you would like to see me stream... I am torn between Victoria 2 and Crusader Kings 3 although Imperator Rome could also be an option.

3 years ago | [YT] | 26

The Iron Workshop

Would appreciate your input on an issue I am curious about (perhaps on a future video).
I assume most of those subscribed to the channel are modders, so my question to you is:

Do you lose interest in playing a game you have modded for a long period of time (3+ months)?

3 years ago | [YT] | 25

The Iron Workshop

The "Creating new characters" video lesson is finally finished and will be posted tomorrow. At 1 hour and 8 minutes I thought it was the longest lesson on the Iron Workshop but turns out that honor goes to the custom GUI video lesson.

Both lessons are broken up into chapters so you don't need to watch the whole thing and can focus on areas you are most interested in. The new video will replace the various old videos that are concerned with creating different type of characters so those will be taken down.

The video covers all aspects of creating a character, including the portraits, localization and description.

Next on the list is to remake the "Creating a new country" video, since it has some outdated information as well as others that could use a refresh.

3 years ago | [YT] | 69