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old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:04 am
by Smekke
Hi all,
I found my way back to harpoon, after 14 years when i made my first mouseclick in harpoon [:D] thx EBay [&o]
I dwnlded and patched the game with the beta-patch.
BUT,i still feels slow and it does not respond very fast when i click on button's ,its like am playing on an old pc,why is that?

I have an
AMD +3000 2000MHz
1024mb RAM
ATI 9800PRO 128mb VGA-card
Windows XP

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:15 am
by hermanhum
Welcome back to the game, shipmate. [8D]

Looks like you have plenty more than the stipulated minimum processing power and RAM.

I am running on a very old machine with 1.6gHz and 384mB RAM. This is well below the minimum requirements stated by AGSI. My machine runs ANW at about 15-25% the speed of the Harpoon3.6.3 version. There's a lot of new code in the ANW version and it takes time to crunch.

In fact, I think that many players are realizing that the largest scenarios will present a problem to ANW whether in solitaire or multi-player mode. I have even heard it said that the larger scenarios may be difficult to play or nearly out of reach. It's really a shame since I prefer the large scenarios. [:(]

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:45 am
by Dimitris
The UI code still suffers from occasional slowdowns, though the situation has improved greatly since the original H2.

Generally, the primary cause of low speed is an excessively large scenario being played. The scenario may be large in either map area (e.g. a half-global scenario) or in unit count (e.g. if you have loads of aircraft and missiles flying around). In the latter case, the sensor interaction and the LOS calculations necessary are the most computationally-intensive operations in the game. Things like radars & sonars take a while to crunch the numbers when there is a lot going on. Things like jammers and sonoboys also slow down things a bit.

Are you observing a slow performance on each and every single scenario you have tried? If yes, then something else may be wrong with your setup. If you experience slowdowns only in large scenarios then it is mostly a normal behavior.

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:09 am
by Smekke
Thanks for the responses.
I'll check it out.
I played only 1 mission so far, i shall have to adapt myself to the slower way of playing
with all those fast modern games [:)]
Do you guys play in full-screen or windowed mode?
Looking forward to launch a shipwreck missile like in the good old days [:D][&o]


RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:14 am
by hermanhum
I always play in full screen mode.  Just too many things usually going on.  I'd lose track of events in the Windowed-mode.  [;)] 

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:24 am
by Dimitris
Both modes have their pros and cons.

Full screen gives you the maximum real estate and is somewhat more immersive - particularly with the lights out. Several graphics glitches, however, have been reported when switching between the game (while in full screen) and any other Windows application. No showstoppers IIRC but your mileage may vary.

Windowed mode gives you less screen area but avoids most (all?) graphical issues. It also allows you to use complementary applications (IRC, IM, whatever works for you) on the side at the same time, which is quite helpful both for MP and also when testing.

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 12:14 am
by KlubMarcus
I play Harpoon on a low-end Celeron laptop in windowed mode. It runs fine unless I load up an oversize scenario. Check to see how many programs you've got running on the taskbar or in the background (Ctl-Alt-Del will pull up Task Manager). I still can't get over how much junk is pre-installed.

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 9:09 am
by Smekke
How do i get those circles on my screen? For air-radar,surf-radar,ASW-range AA-range etc....
I already tryed with the gamecolors and scheme's but can't get it,in formation mode i see it but not in the tactical screen

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 9:23 am
by hermanhum
Select the map where you want your range circles to appear by clicking on it to make it active.

Hit F8 hotkey to bring up the Map prefenences menu.

Select the range circles you want to appear.

(This will also work for the formation editor window.)

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 10:59 am
by Smekke
I do so like you said, i click in the tactical map,press f8 and put on rangecircles but they still don't appear [&:] what am i doing wrong?[8|]

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 11:50 am
by Dimitris
When you are viewing the map in group mode, only individual units will have range circles visible. Groups do not show range circles even when you have enabled them (range circles) through the preferences menu.

To make absolutely sure you can see range circles:

1) Go to the "Preferences" window (F8).
2) Select the range circles that interest you.
3) Close the Preferences window and get back to the main tactical map.
4) Make sure the main map is the "active" window (its window borders will have a different color than the other windows)
5) Toggle between "show units" and "show groups" by pressing "9" on your keypad.

When in "Show units" mode, you should see the selected range circles for all your units. When in "Show groups" mode, you should see the range circles only for stand-alone units (not units in groups).

RE: old school player back in harpoon

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 1:11 pm
by Smekke
Found it! thank you [&o]