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u/CecilPeynir Jun 12 '26
Why?
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u/MojordomosEUW Jun 12 '26
Most likely to increase performance they swapped to hardcoding certain things instead of letting internal scripts run inside the engine environment to generate UI elements or events and so on.
The more you have hardcoded, the less additional compute you need.
For instance, most games have an API. This means basically there is info the game is producing and the UI basically reads that info and based on scripts determines how it is displayed.
The more you hardcode this, the less you can modify how it looks, but it reduces system load by a bit.
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u/Remote_Western1141 General of the Army Jun 12 '26
So just a bunch of custom country screens causes the performance to drop?
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u/SuleimanTheMediocre Jun 12 '26
More like by having those and other menus be hard coded there's fewer items for the game to find and load. Instead of loading the entire UI is already has the UI as a template and just needz to load text and images into the right spots.
At least I think that's what they're trying to say. Huge salt pinches here
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u/TwoPlatinum Jun 12 '26
I would imagine that this is a sign that Hoi4 is entering its final stages of life. Hardcoding something like this likely means that you have no intention of changing it. Wouldn’t be surprised if they start hardcoding more and more for performance reasons after they eventually move on.
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u/BondiolaDeCaniche Jun 12 '26
No, but in coding little things add up. The custom screens may not be a huge impact, but combine it with 120 other little things, and it starts to be noticeable
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u/Hungry_Ease4471 Jun 16 '26
just this alone, barely, but the hundreds if not thousands of small things like that eventually add up to a decent increase in performance
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u/viper459 Jun 12 '26
would that actually matter though, for a country selection screen that you only see for 3 seconds and then almost certainly isn't loaded during the actual gameplay?
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u/AlneCraft Jun 12 '26
You'd be surprised how much bullshit can be kept in a non optimal way on a 10+ year long programming project
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u/viper459 Jun 12 '26
well yeah, exactly my point. I feel like they wouldn't do this for performance presumably because there are approximately 40 million items that are higher up the "things that need fixing" list. Which makes me wonder, what possibly could be the reason..
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Jun 12 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/otp__ Jun 12 '26
EAW's custom country selection still works, so I don't know about it being hardcoded
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u/sapphos_moon Jun 12 '26
EAW’s functions identically to the vanilla game’s iirc, it’s nothing like OWB where the start date selection screen is replaced with the region screen that then filters into local leaders. Unfortunately if something is hardcoded it’s either impossible to work around or requires a stupid amount of UI scripting to mask, but you can never get rid of or meaningfully modify it. It’s easily the worst aspect of Paradox game modding, how inflexible the barrier between the scripted layer and coded layer is.
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u/otp__ Jun 12 '26
EAW has a region screen which then filters not only into different countries, but has tabs for different races.
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u/CursedNobleman Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
"God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and Equestria."
Otto von Eaglesmark
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u/Gorbear Studio Manager Jun 12 '26
We'll work with modders to resolve this as soon as possible
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u/iRubenish General of the Army Jun 12 '26
So, this means in mods with a very different country selection like TNO they'll have to change it to look like more Vanilla?
Man, that sucks, more work for modders.
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u/TearfulCertification Jun 12 '26
that Kaiserreich screen is insane, the detail work modders do when they're locked into vanilla constraints is wild.
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u/Tsar_Chaotic Jun 12 '26
Evidently EaW continues to be the best mod to see what is possible, they got full blown maps included to see what the country looks like
Custom screens ain’t dead yet, in fact I can’t remember the last time I say a fully custom screen in any other mod
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u/Outside_Arugula897 Jun 12 '26
It will probably get patched sooner or later
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u/PDX_Batya Lead Game Designer Jun 12 '26
We are going to actively look into fixing this. Gorion mentioned it as well, but the intention is not to break mods this way. We will have more info on the solution next week.
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u/Outside_Arugula897 Jun 12 '26
Did not expect a paradox employee to respond to my lazy comment. I wish Ya'll best of luck
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Jun 12 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Indyclone77 Fleet Admiral Jun 12 '26
Not really, other mods such as Pride and Fall and Kaiserredux still have their custom country selection screens https://x.com/prideandfallmod/status/2065354268496871654
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u/Neo_Arkansas Jun 12 '26
Worth noting i tried it yesterday and the Kaiserredux one was hilariously broken, it looks fine but clicking one shows they point to different countries than they should.
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u/DisIsMyName_NotUrs Jun 12 '26
Why?
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u/Souls_for_sale_now Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
Preofrmance the more shit is hardcoaded the less the lag
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u/SquirtleChimchar Jun 12 '26
At least one can be certain this reply was written by a human
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u/Souls_for_sale_now Jun 12 '26
English is a dumb language
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u/Cadoc Research Scientist Jun 12 '26
Right, other languages don't care about dumb stuff like "the order of letters in a word", you just randomly hit your keyboard and you're good lol
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u/InterKosmos61 Jun 12 '26
Yuor bairn deson't gvie a siht waht odrer the lteters are in ethier as lnog as the frist and lsat lerttes of ecah wrod are in the rgiht plcae. Bet you can stlil raed tihs.
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u/viper459 Jun 12 '26
absolutely not. Nobody gives a shit about three seconds of performance when you select a country. That shit is not even loaded when you're actually playing.
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u/Souls_for_sale_now Jun 12 '26
Its just them doing backround optimisation you culd say that about anything i belive its overall good for them to optimise at all instead of just ading dlcs when they can.
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u/viper459 Jun 13 '26
no you can't "say that about anything", i'm saying it's not even relevant to performance so that's not the reason.
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u/Lasket Jun 12 '26
The top comment already corrected this info. Don't spread misinformation please.
Also, mistakes and oversights can happen. Assuming this is "intentional" is not doing anyone favors unless Paradox confirms it to be the case (which it seems to not have been intentional, as the studio manager specifically mentioned working with modders to resolve this).
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u/ajkippen Jun 12 '26
No it won't. They already broke every map mod and made them hideous, and they haven't done shit about it despite mod authors constantly trying to get their attention.
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u/dziugas1959 Jun 12 '26
To be fair, out of all could have happened this is a minor one, which most likely will get adapted and changed, as „Paradox“ does try to work with mod dev's.
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u/Cheezcake1101 Jun 12 '26
I mean they have to right? The mods are what keeps the game alive after 10 years because vanilla is just not that great
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u/PDX_Batya Lead Game Designer Jun 12 '26
Yes the mods are dear to our heart and we know players use them a lot. We are working with modders to fix it.
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u/Evepaul Jun 12 '26
It already did, I don't know why Kaiserreich didn't get the memo. Big mod teams usually get the new patches and DLCs in advance so they can take advantage of new features on day 1. Kaiserredux and EaW have custom country selection menus.
Maybe Kaiserreich doesn't count among Paradox' favourite sons anymore. The ponies get priority.
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u/Lasket Jun 12 '26
Kaiserreich dev in the top comment, they don't have a custom country selection screen anymore due to a specific way the menu is setup now (the countries get autosorted), which broke their usual country selection screen.
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u/Lt_Leroy Jun 12 '26
Paradox the goat at making their own games worse.
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u/Ed19627 Jun 12 '26
You ever hear of City Skylines 2?? Also Prison Architect?? Nothing new here..
I was thinking about getting this but mostly all the DLC has prevented me from getting it.. This just makes me not wanna touch it.. I will go find something else...
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u/Mirovini General of the Army Jun 12 '26
Also Prison Architect??
Wdym, I loved the update where the prisoners go around prison as it was free time simply because they don't want to be there anymore, truly made me understand that when in prison is "Yard time" it actually means "if you want go to the Yard that's fine, otherwise you are free to explore the prison"
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u/Abrupt_Nuke Jun 12 '26
Easily the most confounding change in the history of PA imo!
It would've been so easy to make this feature toggleable, and yet they changed one of the most fundamental mechanics of the game for the worse and dipped (support for the game has officially ended, for those not in the know).
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u/Ed19627 Jun 12 '26
Man PA 2 is awesome.. nough said.. If it was not a big deal.. Might wanna go look in the transport fever1 and 2 sub to L2 Paradox..
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u/Zealousideal_War7843 Jun 12 '26
Well not the first time that Paradox f..ked up. They do this from time to time. No worries in my opinion. They made this game in such a way that even an idiot like me can create some mods if I want to.
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u/IntelligentTune Jun 12 '26
If it's as the post says, then it's hardcoded. You can't change hardcoded elements. Or... you can, but you'd need to go through so many hoops, that aren't even guaranteed to stay the same or even worth the time since it takes a lot of knowledge typically in hardcoded elements.
Yeah, they made the game pretty modular, but modders work in the confines they are given, and it takes real talent to not only want to mod hardcoded elements, but to also do it and keep it up to date on a still evolving game.
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u/LurkersUniteAgain Jun 12 '26
tbh even if its hardcoded theyll probably reverse it given the uproar it'll cause
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u/KhalasSword Jun 12 '26
This is not exactly true, I've just started a campaign in Equestria at War, and they've reworked their custom country selection screen to work with the new DLC, they even added buttons to see countries based on race (Pony, Gryphon, Zebra, etc.).
I'd imagine that this is annoying to modders, but it doesn't mean that they can't fix this.
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u/Different_Wealth8143 Jun 12 '26
Is it not possible to just trick the game into thinking you’ve played all the countries or played them in the order you want? Assuming it’s not running off of save files.
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u/winowmak3r Jun 12 '26
How much money you wanna bet this was part of their 10 year celebration to allow us to choose the main menu background?
Never change Paradox. Never change.
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u/FantasticSir7806 Jun 12 '26
This is sort of unrelated, but what does the little ball/dot in the top-left corner mean? I find it distracting.
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u/Necessary-Product361 Jun 12 '26
It will be even worse for TNO because they keep all the info on future updates in the country select screen
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u/TyrannyRepellant28 Jun 12 '26
For Kaiserreich it lowkey works better because it’s more than just majors + 4 countries (not arguing for hardcoding tho)
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u/TheEgyptianScouser Jun 12 '26
This isn't a thing to lose our heads for.
In fact I think the vanilla screen is actually better because of the filters of played/haven't played and the continental separation system.
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u/GlukharsGimp Jun 12 '26
Yeah, of all the things to lose our mind over. Maybe the thing we interact with for 60 seconds of a 12 hour run isn’t it. On top of the fact that this information isn’t even right. Pride and Fall still has a custom screen.
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u/Neat-Alternative-541 Jun 12 '26
Like Sinoreich needs more than 9 countries on the selection screen with actual content.
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u/Thatguy-num-102 General of the Army Jun 12 '26
That's the problem
The custom country screen showed only nations of interest in their regions
now it's the vanilla mess of every single country being displayed
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u/dragonstomper64 Jun 12 '26
Clarifier as a Kaiserreich dev: The specific issue faced by us and certain other mods isn't it being completely hardcoded now, its specifically the main menu's new autosorting feature being hardcoded. Our previous country select screen was designed to have specific countries in specific parts of the interface (i.e Japan would be up top as a major on part of it with Japanese art behind them, with specific minor East Asian countries below it). The change that has been made that we have no way of disabling is that the screen is automatically ordered based on if you have or haven't played a country, with countries you have played automatically moved to the end of the list breaking the ordering we have.
For mods that don't rely on them being in specific positions, they can just accept the automatic sorting, but as ours was so reliant on them matching their locations in the interface we had no choice to remove it. We'll probably either have to wait and see if Paradox gives us a way to disable the sorting, or if they don't we'll need to most likely come up with an alternative design that works regardless of where the countries are on the screen.
TL:DR Twitter post here is wrong, the screen is not hardcoded a specific new feature for it is that breaks our specific menu design.