Well, I think multiple months between releases is the new normal. Though I was out of town twice during this time and had plenty of personal stuff going on. There are lots of changes this time around. But first, due to the changes in Paradox's rules, I've created a Patreon for the converters. The team plans to use any funds to provide DLC for the team members. If we somehow end up with funds beyond that, we might pay for some useful tools or even introduce bug bounties. If you'd like to support, the Patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/ParadoxGameConverters or you can directly donate at Paypal using the email address ParadoxGameConverters@gmail.com.
If you're interested in joining the team, I have now fully removed the old parser, so getting set up is considerably easier. And debugging is easier, too.
In map-related changes:
Many more building types are placed, though I still recommend using the nudger to validate everything. Forts and coastal forts are created. State capitals are better placed in a few extreme cases. Some province mappings have been improved. Vic2 mods with changed province mappings are better supported. Just create a copy of the province mappings called _province_mappings.txt, and the converter will look for it whenever the mod is used.
In country-related changes:
War support is now based on war-like things, while stability is not converted. A bunch of ideas have been added that reflect the country's Vic2 culture. These are intended to tie into some decisions, including country-formation decisions. Tech mappings have been updated. Some portraits have been added. Country mappings have been updated. And the ideological conversion decisions and events should be fixed.
In text/localisation-related changes:
Names should convert better, surnames should convert better, country names should convert better, text that got garbled should convert better. Some ministers localisations should be fixed. And if localisations are missing, the English ones are grabbed so there's something at least.
In national focus-related changes:
Many focuses now pull from data files (either HoI4 itself or one with the converter) to fill most of themselves out. There have been a handful of other fixes as well.
In military-related changes:
Individual armies and navies now convert. The force multiplier works again. The unit mappings file now actually works. Some unit types can be substituted for others when converting armies. You now get multiple aircraft types. There's a quick-n-dirty conversion of generals and admirals.
There are many other changes: faction formation is optional, secondary powers will appear on the bookmark, flickering flags should be fixed, the default HoI4 version is 1.5.4, fascists should now take land during peace deals, some Vic2 save names should work instead of crashing, the the faction formed news event is back.
How you can help
Any help should be on the development thread on the forums.
First, we can use more portraits. It would help a great deal if you could create new portraits and update cultureGroupToGraphics.txt to point at them correctly. As the name implies, culture groups are mapped to sets of portraits (also, ideologies). I'd like to stick with HoI4's existing art style if possible. However, if you add a truly large number of portraits, I'll not object to you changing the overall style. Bears and Equine portraits are an exception. Feel free to not match the existing style with them, as they're already just in there for fun.
With the military mappings now working, please play around with them and try and make them better. Let us know what you find. Also, if you have any ideas for how divisions should be named, let me know. It's not the best right now.
We can use help with female names, callsigns, and company names. Some might be able to be pulled from HoI4. They go in names.txt. Create a debug mod to get a list of missing ones.
We can use help with translations. We have a bunch more localisations in, but they're either translated with google translate or semi-educated edits of default localisations. Either way, they probably need review.
Province mappings are pretty good now, but please double-check and fix anything you notice may be off.
If you know C++ or would like to learn, we can always use more people programming. I’m focused on country internals right now, but you could work on whatever part strikes your fancy, or I could give specific direction. Either way, that’s the biggest aspect of working on the converter. If you're learning, this is a good project to improve your skills. If you know a lot, I would love to have your feedback so I can improve my skills.
If you can test, that would be helpful. Catching bugs and oddities earlier means they get fixed earlier. I try to release test versions of the converter on the forum for testing, so running those and looking things over is helpful. With CI now running, I could probably even set up test builds to be automatic. And if you have professional experience in testing, well, I'm sure we could be doing things far better. Tell me how!
We can always use help figuring out how things work, and how we can do them better. If you know how to mod HoI4, we can use your help figuring it out. As well, there's always more room for flavor events, decisions, and the like.
We can always handle more discussion on how things are converted over on the development thread. As well, I try to document implemented items over on the project wiki. And your encouragement helps more than you know.
If you're curious about how conversion works, you can check the tool's [wiki page](http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Victoria_2_to_Hearts_of_Iron_IV_converter) for all kinds of details. If any of it is unclear, feel free to ask us to clarify (and even suggest how we can be more clear).
Changes
Overall
- Make faction formation optional
- Give secondary powers focus trees so they appear on the bookmark
- Fixing flickering flags
- Change default HoI4 version to 1.5.4
- Fix a major problem with the AI peaces that prevents fascists from taking land
- Some on_actions fixes
- Fix Filename error
- Restoring some News events (faction formed)
Map related
- Update province mappings with corrected city locations
- Update to debug output of VPs
- Place coastal bunkers.
- Output bunkers that match known positions.
- Fix typos in province mappings
- Prepare for more extensive HoI4 map data
- Handle missing bunkers
- Place airports, using existing airport locations where possible.
- Place dockyards
- Refactor building placement a little
- Place synthetic refineries and nuclear reactors.
- Place anti-air buildings
- Place arms factories and industrial complexes
- Update OnActions.cpp (province renaming on start)
- Handle province mappings for mods
- Support for HoI forts
- Support for coastal forts
- Record Vic2 state capitals
- When state capital can't be determined, use the most populous province.
- Eliminate some false-positive warnings
- Internally record province names
Country internals
- War support now based on war related matters
- don't convert stability
- Cultural ideas for HoI4
- Output culture ideas
- Adding back absolutist icons
- Create army_portraits.txt
- New tech mappings & converted units have equipment factor 0.7
- Correct the army portraits file
- Update HoI4Country.cpp
- Better artwork for some cultures
- New decisions and related files for HoI4
- Link 'hold the referendum' decision to the necessary events
- Update culture_ideas.gfx
- Flag updates
- Adding some more slave cultures
- Provide transport technology
- Aromanian culture
- Parse prestige (but still unused)
- More HoI4 portraits
- Update country_mappings.txt
Text/localisation improvements
- Override country localisation with the proper one.
- Update how names are handled
- Update names import to work on Linux
- Ministers' localisations
- Fix surname output
- Slight localisation fix
- Handle missing localisations from Vic2 by using the English ones
- Fix correction of bad characters to actually do it.
- Add capability to translate from Win1252 to UTF-8
- Add capability to convert into win1252
- Convert Vic2 localisations from WIn1252 instead of ISO 8859-15.
National focuses
- communist focus branches now use data files
- Code changes to addAbsolutistEmpireNationalFocuses
- Add localisations for Absolutist focuses
- improved alliance event
- changes to addAbsolutistEmpire focuses and localisation
- Make the influence_ focus in the communist coup tree have all ideologies
- Update HoI4FocusTree.cpp
- changes to Fascist focuses & War Creator
- changes to addGPWarBranch and Fascist fixes
Military
- Convert individual armies
- Convert armies as a whole, not just individual brigades
- Make the force multiplier work again
- Convert individual navies
- Quick-n-dirty conversion of generals
- Quick-n-dirty conversion of admirals
- Improvements to naval positions
- Mobilised regiment detection
- Artillery substitutes
- Airplane types
- Military mapping from files
- Various minor bugfixes to military mappings and related tests
- Allow substitutes to be imported from file.
- Pass all military mappings to functions that use all the sub-items
- Get brigade substitutes from military mapping file.
Code cleanup
- Remove last references to the old parser in V2World
- Make configuration use the new parser
- Clean up HoI4 Army code
- Refactor Vic2 state definitions
- Clean up state categories
- Remove the unused Vic2 reforms
- Clean up the province mapper
- Improve the paser helpers for strings
- Remove references to some old unused functions
- Update inventions to use the new parser
- Support for removing the old dead leader functions
- Make impassable provinces use new parser
- Update graphics mapper
- Refactor government mapper
- Make Vic2 culture groups use new parser
- Make country mapper use new parser
- Update import of ideological ideas
- Only read the default HoI4 states once (and use the new parser)
- Remove some unused references to the old parser
- change supply zones to use new parser
- Make strategic regions use the new parser
- Remove some dead code
- Move tech mappings (and research bonuses) into their own file
- Move resources into their own class
- Add a parser helper for making a group of items a group of strings
- Import leader traits using the new parser.
- Add a helper for when you only care about the names of some items
- Use new parser to read ideology files
- Add some std::
- Remove references to the conversions between new and old parsers
- Remove final references to old parser stuff
- Strip references to Boost
- Add a debug configuration now that it can work in a decent amount of time
- Move military templates into their own class
- Split army items into their own files.
- Split the military mapping items into separate files.
- Move HoI4 armies into their own file for easier testing
- Remove a test file that's not currently used
- Improve a parser error case.
Debugging
- Fix for linux build
- Fix include for linux build
- A slight fix to string lists
- Fixes to country mapper change
- Correction to traits file formatting
- A fix to the String of Items parser helper
- Fix the broken EU4 build
- Clean up from static analysis
- Fix linux build
- Fix a building placement bug.
- Fix some building positioning errors
- Protect nations that become landless from crashing during army conversion.
- Fix some merge errors
- Linux fixes
- Fix merge error
- Add a missing header change
- Fix copying of debug data files
Tests
- Add unit tests for Vic2::Agreement
- Add tests for the military mappings
- Add tests for division types
- Clean up some existing tests for better clarity and speed
- An initial set of tests for HoI4 Army stuff.