Developer Diary I - Under the Horizon!
Hello and welcome to the first developer diary for Over the Horizon! Well, it's more of a loredump than anything... this one will be a bit lighter on actual mod screenshots as this is mainly to establish the lore that I'm sure many of you have been begging to know about.
Some aspects of the map are very much so still work in progress, especially the starting states of some proxy conflicts and the borders for some divergences.
The Iron Curtain, 1990
^(As you can see, the DDR is a little larger, Greece is communist, and Austria is split in half?!)
^(Also, Yugoslavia isn't a puppet or anything. It's socialist but non-aligned, if you think the color should be changed feel free to say so!)
Over the Horizon's timeline ultimately branches out from the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the most important battles of the 20th century:
1940s:
- At the battle of Stalingrad, and subsequent Soviet offensive (see: Operation Uranus), German operational blunders result in a heavier loss of armor reserves and ultimately cascades in the Germans being routed at the Battle of Kursk. What follows is a faster collapse of the Eastern Front as Manstein's strategy of elastic defense cannot be sustained as well with less armor, and victory in Europe is achieved by early Feburary in 1945.
- During the conferences for establishing a post-war order, further Soviet territorial advancements resulted in the Soviets essentially getting more industry to strip as they secured Holstein, including the cities of Kiel, Hamburg and Hannover. In exchange, the allies retained the division of Korea in spite of the earlier Soviet entry in the pacific.
- Further, Roosevelt's commitment to free elections at Yalta now that the war has ended would also result in less British intervention in Greece, with a weaker Dekemvriana and the EAM participating in elections - resulting in a communist-led coalition government.
The Korean Peninsula at the start of the game, December 31, 1989
1950s:
- In June of 1950, North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel after Kim Il-sung received his blessing to reunify the Korean peninsula. The ragtag UN coalition assembled by the US did not arrive in time as the Busan perimeter, already the last defensible line on the peninsula, was broken along the Naktong bulge and cleared of defenders within weeks. By the end of summer, Korea would be unified under Kim Il-Sung's DPRK.
- In Tokyo, MacArthur and the occupation authority concluded that Japan could not be left unprepared in the event of an assault by a red Korea backed by the Soviets and Chinese. When sovereignty was returned to Japan in 1952, the remilitarization results were... underwhelming. The problem? Prime Minister Yoshida's pacifism. Soon after, in a shocking coup, Yoshida was murdered in broad daylight and the conspirators led their Security forces to seize government institutions and install Ichirō Hatoyama as the new Prime Minister.
- Back in Europe, the Austrian State Treaty was never signed and both Austrian states were now comfortably integrated into their respective blocs. The Greek Civil War concludes in an EAM victory.
1960s:
- In October of 1962, Soviet missiles in Cuba brought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, however both Kennedy and Khrushchev found a face saving way back from the edge: a mutual withdrawal, American missiles out of Turkey and Italy, Soviet missiles out of Cuba, and a quiet promise not to invade each other.
- Khrushchev returned to Moscow with enough prestige to survive removal, and could end up governing until 1971, however he would assume a more 'party elder' role and slowly hand off the reins by his later years.
- In Vietnam, the fall of Korea had left Washington with no appetite for another humiliation. Troop deployments climbed through the Kennedy years and exploded under Lyndon B. Johnson. By the height of the war, nearly 700,000 American personnel were stationed in Southeast Asia, culminating in massive anti-war protests and the derailment of his Great Society initiative.
- On October of 1965, Indonesian General Suharto, was killed in a coup by junior officers of the 30th of September Movement. President Sukarno and the PKI leadership, returned to Jakarta to find the army decapitated, and the Socialist Republic of Indonesia would be proclaimed on the 3rd of January, 1966.
^("The indomitable will of the proletariat, propelled by the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, can overcome any obstacle." - Alexei Leonov)
- In 1968, the Soviet Union achieved the impossible and catches the United States by surprise. Carried by the UR-700 rocket, Alexei Leonov stepped onto the lunar surface, becoming the first human being to walk on another world.
^(Fun fact: ITL, approximately ~550 million people would watch Leonov take his first steps on the moon on tv!)
- NASA scrambled to catch up, with Apollo 11 being rushed and launching weeks later. Many of the issues that plagued Apollo 10 would be left unaddressed, and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would perish upon descent as the LM crashes into the moon, resulting in Nixon's infamous 'In Event of Moon Disaster' speech actually being broadcasted to tens of millions across the world.
Sub-Saharan, Central, and South Africa at the start of the game, December 31, 1989
1970s:
- Without the Lin Biao affair to discredit the radical Maoist faction, the Gang of Four kept much of their political credibility through Mao's last years. Mao's health deteriorated faster in the aftermath, and by 1974 he was in a coma. Deng Xiaoping, already in disgrace, was put on public trial in 1976 and executed. Wang Hongwen became Chairman of the Communist Party as a figurehead.
- In late 1977, Brezhnev died of a stroke and was succeeded by Yuri Andropov. A pragmatist, he reinstated key reforms, starting with a wide-scaled anti-corruption campaign, and turned his attention to addressing the stagnating economy, and took interest in the OGAS project, a nationwide computerized economic planning network developed by cyberneticist Viktor Glushkov.
- The Nigerian civil war that had begun in 1967 would soon grind to a stalemate, with neither Federal Nigeria nor Biafra being able achieve victory. In 1971, American diplomats brokered a partition: the Republic of Nigeria under a Hausa-Fulani junta in Kaduna, the Yoruba Republic in Lagos, and the Republic of Biafra.
- By early 1973, Nixon had secured his 'peace with honor' in Vietnam. American forces withdrew as South Vietnam secured a bilateral security treaty with the US, deterring invasion by the north and ultimately securing South Vietnam's independence.
- The Estado Novo remains in power as the colonial wars would largely result in the pacification of Portugese holdings in Africa, and the AFM's coup would quickly fall apart.
1980s:
- After years of stagflation, Colorado Senator Gary Hart defeated George H.W. Bush in 1980 in one of the largest landslides in American history. The Atari Democrats, the new generation of fiscally conservative and technologically optimistic liberals, inherited an economy already meaningfully recovering from the worst of the 70s. By 1982 the economy was growing again, driven by the buisness computing boom and a nascent semiconductor industry.
- Across the Atlantic, Iraq invaded Iran in 1980. The war quickly ended and Iraq emerged from the conflict as a major regional power with an intact army and greater oil reserves. Iran would soon fall into civil war as the Islamic Republic loses legitimacy.
- In 1984, the Americans would see the establishment of the Plymouth Lunar Base. Zvezda, the Soviet Union's lunar base, would soon follow. The 1980s would see private investment flow into aerospace as the Americans and Soviets begin assembling their own large LEO space stations.
- >!Margaret Thatcher would killed alongside several members of her cabinet in late 1984.!<
- In Japan, Yasuhiro Nakasone came to power in 1983. American pressure over trade and the Plaza Accords (which Japan refused to sign) pushed Nakasone toward a confrontation with the USA, by announcing that Japan would not renew the Anpo Treaty. For the first time since 1945, Japan stood alone. Over the course of the decade, Gary Hart preserve relations through negotiating voluntary caps in Japanese exports to reduce the strain on American companies.
- In South Vietnam, a miracle was happening on the Mekong delta. Japanese agricultural companies, trading houses, and American manufacturers had found in Vietnam exactly what they needed: cheap labor, improving infrastructure, and a government eager to make deals. Over the 80s, annualized growth in Vietnam would slowly approach double digits.
- The African National Congress had also been radicalized by the death of Nelson Mandela, shot during a botched rescue operation, and driven toward terrorism due to having no other option. Bombings and assassinations would further increase western hostility and delegitimized the movement abroad in spite of apartheid's institutions.
- In Portugal, Rui Patricio's reform program was slowly turning the country into something approaching a modern democracy. Economic liberalization and foreign investment were producing growth rates Portugal had never seen. In 1987, the first free elections since the 1920s were held. While the assimilado system was abolished, citizens in Angola and Mozambique were still left without a vote.
- By the end of the decade Andropov's reforms produced increases in efficiency in industrial sectors where implementation was widespread. The cultural thaw done out of pragmaticism was producing a richer culture quite different from our historical late 80s: science fiction would boom in popularity, boosted by the space program's achievements. Rock would be legitimized and the scene wouldn’t be underground like it was OTL due to less restrictive institutions. TV would be more varied: at the national level, science programs explaining the space program to kids, serial dramas, comedy, cooking show, musicians performing live, cartoons, etc. However, two unspoken rules remained: do not question the party, do not place western liberal democracy in a positive light
- American foreign policy would sharply change course with John McCain winning the American presidency in 1988, declaring that the United States would no longer tolerate Soviet imperialism as domestic concern over Soviet influence abroad and the militarization of space grows.
^(There is also some loredump here in the form of news exerpts from the perspective of the universe)
Aaaandd... that's it! We did have to skim over a LOT of events, pieces of major historical info, and including those would make this dev diary end up being 10x longer (im serious). Plus, we'd have nothing to show off in the following dev diaries! Over the last few years (since 2021 at it's earliest!), Over the Horizon remained as a more or less solo passion project for the first few years and it's taken two major iterations of essentially nuking everything and starting from a clean slate to get to the point where we are today. (lesson learned: perfection is the enemy of progress).
There's no schedule at all for these and it's mainly when we feel like it because this alone took like 5 hours to piece together from our lore docs and picking and choosing the events we felt were most important. We hope you enjoyed our first real dev diary, and thank you for reading!
^(Also an obligatory thank you to our current contributors, those who were with our team and the dozens of modders who have let us use their stuff like pie charts and such!)