Pointy hex grid

Our initial approach when we started developing The Panzer Division was to use the Panzer General I look. That meant that units were 2D icons, facing either left or right.

The original Panzer General look

Panzer General II came with a better approach, displaying the battlefield from an oblique angle, and the units had a 3D look. Of course, the game was not really 3D, but it looked better anyway.

The second Panzer General game looked better with pseudo-3D units and terrain

The units could rotate to twelve different directions, six of them facing the hex sides and the other six pointing toward the hex corners.

Back when we started developing our game, we used the original Panzer General artwork . This has helped us a lot, not having to bother with a map editor and such. But after we implemented a great deal of the game mechanics, we said it's time to create our own artwork.

I started designing the units graphics, and I used a great tool for this: Blender. It's a free 3D modeler and in the past few years it has improved a lot, especially in the user interface area.

I began modeling some panzers and rendered them into 2D images from the sides. I managed to get them to look like the original PG units. But as long as we have the units modeled in 3D, it is a breeze to render them from an oblique angle and facing different directions, as they are in PG2. So we decided to take that route, and use a pseudo-3D look for our game.

The Panzer General games use a hex grid, which is obvious by looking at the screenshots above. But the hexes are aligned in vertical columns, the hexagons lying on their side. That means that the directions facing the hex sides include pointing up and down, but in our opinion, a unit facing north or south doesn't look so good.

Units facing north or south (up/down) do not look so good

So, we changed the way the hex grid is oriented and make it have the corners pointing up and down, as you can see in the image below.

With a 'pointy' hex grid, units are never facing up or down

This way, the units would never be displayed from front or back, making it easier to recognize the differences between various units of the same type.

Breaking News : We have Gareth Hector's artwork

Great news, we acquired the rights for great artwork from one of the best artist that modeled Tigers and Focke-Wulfs.

Here they are:

Target!

Normandy Bound

Bad Omen

Desperate Days

Bottleneck

OK, I lied, this is just wishful thinking.
Sometimes I wish we could hire a great artist like Gareth Hector to so some great artwork for Panzer Division. Sadly that won't happen. Huge budgets never happens with small indie games.

Still, you are a great artist Gareth!