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Just notice that today is the 2nd "birthday" of H3ANW. Two years ago, on June 14, 2006, this terrific game was released to the public. Now this game have four official patches (3.8, 3.9, 3.92, 3.93) and improved pretty a lot since its release. It's also certain that H3ANW will become more and more playable and prefect.

Summary:
After 3.7.0 release: 80 Issues reported
After 3.8.0 Patch: (80 Issues - 34 Fixed + 88 New) = 134 Issues
After 3.9.0 Patch: (134 Issues - 31 fixed + 68 New) = 171 Issues
After 3.9.2 Patch: (171 Issues - 15 fixed + 35 New) = 191 Issues
After 3.9.3 Patch: (191 Issues - 17 fixed + 10 New) = 184 Issues

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Happy birthday to ANW. Thanks for many many hours of entertainment and many more to come.

Well since it shows more Issues after release, that would mean that more are playing and such and noticing the bugs so that they can get fixed. I look back to the original windows conversion times and realize just how far we have come. Amazing isn't it? For those of you who remember just how difficult it was to run H2AE under windows and the problems that presented with CTD's all the time. Remember the  "Save your game and save it often"? Well now these types of crashes are not occurring at near the frequency of those days. Now, it getting down to modifying the "guts". We have come far indeed. Thanks to all those that made it possible.
 
Happy Birthday Harpoon![:D]

Hello,

ORIGINAL: JRyan

Well since it shows more Issues after release, that would mean that more are playing and such and noticing the bugs so that they can get fixed. I look back to the original windows conversion times and realize just how far we have come. Amazing isn't it? For those of you who remember just how difficult it was to run H2AE under windows and the problems that presented with CTD's all the time. Remember the  "Save your game and save it often"? Well now these types of crashes are not occurring at near the frequency of those days. Now, it getting down to modifying the "guts". We have come far indeed. Thanks to all those that made it possible.

Happy Birthday Harpoon![:D]

How far we have come? That is indeed the question...

Well, let me explain my last 17 years of Harpoon in a few words; I try to be as neutral as possible and will not deal with any community conflict:

1. I started with Harpoon 1.X for DOS back in 1991

2. In 1993 (or 1994?) Harpoon 2 came out. On our PCs it was nearly unplayable: We had 486-33 Mhz with 4 or 8 MB RAM. Crashes after crashes and the worst performanace I ever have experienced by ANY computer program.

I only played the small scens. But even this limited experience demonstrated Harpoon´s potential. An incredible detail loving simulation which gave way for most creative play and work !

3. Then came various updates, the last one was H2AE I think. Meanwhile I had a Pentium I with 133 Mhz and - for the first time in my Harpoon 2 history - I could watch a Tomahawk fly to its target without yerks.

Combined with Ragnar Emsoy´s database db2k - the de facto standard db for years - Harpoon 2 was good.

4. A real milestone was Jesse Spear´s work: He converted Harpoon 2 into Harpoon 3 for Windows. And not to forget Ragnar Emsoy working together with him and calibrating his database to make an awful good combination out of it (and writing dozens of scens which are the best I have ever played).

Harpoon´s golden years came: Harpoon 3 became more and more stable, fast and in its latest versions (3.6.X) it really was close to perfection. The combination of Harpoon 3.6.2 with the db2k still is the best IMO. Player´s did not have to focus on bugs and how to find workarounds - we concentrated on scenarios.

5. In 2006 H3 ANW 3.7.0 came out. The first versions (especially 3.7.1 I think) were a shere mess. Compared to H3 3.6.X the first ANW versions were a desaster; a real earthquake for us "old" pooners and a major setback. But I remained faithful and bought two copies for 66 Euros each in order to support the game and to try MP in my home LAN.

6. I joined Team AGSI as beta tester for 3.8 and 3.9 and I still think, that the latest versions are far better than 3.7.X. But the game engine is worse than 3.6.X - with the sole exception of ASW IMO.

7. For my scen writing over 15 years for all versions of Computer Harpoon I was elected Pooner of the Year 2007. I really felt honoured.

8. Some months ago I resigned from any cooperation with AGSI and returned to customer status. I have stopped writing scenarios, too.

Here is my actual, personal resume on ANW 3.9.3:

- It is far buggier than 3.6.X
- There are still lots of weird behaviours in it
- ...but MP is great
-...ASW is improved
- ...and all in all it has made progress since 3.7.X

Addendum:
An explanation for newbies about typical differences between H3 3.6.X and H3 ANW 3.9.X - what are we "old" veterans are talking about:

1. Choose the original scenario "Attack on Kamchatka", Battleset "Global Conflicts 2"

2. Choose the Russian side

3. Make your recce birds (the Foxbats and the Bears) airborne.

4. Search and find the US CVBG.

5. Place your recce birds right on top of the carrier group.

6. Vector your bombers and subs in.

7. Finish the carrier group of with a coordinated missile strike.

8. Congratulations on your victory!


...but this is simply "wrong!"

..reboot...

..and now...play the same scenario under harpoon 3.6.X (if you have it or are lucky to find it a ebay):

0. Few minutes after the scen has started dozens of vampires appear right out from the fog of war - Tomahawks !

1. three of your four bases are hit; half of your aircraft are burning wrecks...

2. You make your remaining recce birds airborne.

3. You find the CVBG - great !

4. Instead of placing your birds over it, vectoring your assets in...your recce birds are blown out of the sky.

5. Your are on the egde of a humiliating defeat.

..and this is how this scenario was meant to work, guys. ..and how your optimism would have been punished in "real life". Yes, that Tomahawk strikes come and they come out of a clear blue sky. And yes, your enemy will not like your recce birds radioing his position to your forces.

Translated into the "weird behaviour discussion", we have found two major issues:

1. While in H3 3.6.X the carrier group on its transit mission fires its Tomahawks at the detected red bases, it does not fire a single one in ANW. That illogical behaviour alone shifts the odds and breaks the scenario.

2. While in H3 3.6.X a hostile unit is a hostile unit, ANW says: "Ok, there is a hostile Foxbat. But great - it only has cameras and no missiles! Thus I´ll not waste a single missile - please come over and take some nice photographs!"

I hope the newbies now understand better why it is by no way sufficient to have a "stable" game. Sorry, JRyan, that is not what I would call "progress" - we have been there years ago.

We are talking about a military simulation. And a simulation in which the AI behaves like that - is flawed.

And it is simply not ok to tell the database developers that they should implement a workaround for the bugs (so that unarmed hostile units are treated as hostile) - AGSI has to patch it in the code. We have paid for it !

But still - there is no better naval warfare simulation available right now - at least I do not know one.

And yes, multiplayer is great. Playing MP in my home LAN with a good old friend of my Harpoon 2 time is great.

And I love ANW´s handling of ASW more than H3 3.6.X´s.

So - Happy Birthday - Harpoon ! Maybe you´ll make it.

Ralf

ORIGINAL: koelbach

And it is simply not ok to tell the database developers that they should implement a workaround for the bugs (so that unarmed hostile units are treated as hostile) - AGSI has to patch it in the code. We have paid for it !

And most especially when the half-baked abortion that is proposed as a 'work-around solution' doesn't even work. [:@]

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ORIGINAL: koelbach


Addendum:
An explanation for newbies about typical differences between H3 3.6.X and H3 ANW 3.9.X - what are we "old" veterans are talking about:

1. Choose the original scenario "Attack on Kamchatka", Battleset "Global Conflicts 2"

2. Choose the Russian side

3. Make your recce birds (the Foxbats and the Bears) airborne.

4. Search and find the US CVBG.

5. Place your recce birds right on top of the carrier group.

6. Vector your bombers and subs in.

7. Finish the carrier group of with a coordinated missile strike.

8. Congratulations on your victory!


...but this is simply "wrong!"

..reboot...

..and now...play the same scenario under harpoon 3.6.X (if you have it or are lucky to find it a ebay):

0. Few minutes after the scen has started dozens of vampires appear right out from the fog of war - Tomahawks !

1. three of your four bases are hit; half of your aircraft are burning wrecks...

2. You make your remaining recce birds airborne.

3. You find the CVBG - great !

4. Instead of placing your birds over it, vectoring your assets in...your recce birds are blown out of the sky.

5. Your are on the egde of a humiliating defeat.

..and this is how this scenario was meant to work, guys. ..and how your optimism would have been punished in "real life". Yes, that Tomahawk strikes come and they come out of a clear blue sky. And yes, your enemy will not like your recce birds radioing his position to your forces.

Translated into the "weird behaviour discussion", we have found two major issues:

1. While in H3 3.6.X the carrier group on its transit mission fires its Tomahawks at the detected red bases, it does not fire a single one in ANW. That illogical behaviour alone shifts the odds and breaks the scenario.

2. While in H3 3.6.X a hostile unit is a hostile unit, ANW says: "Ok, there is a hostile Foxbat. But great - it only has cameras and no missiles! Thus I´ll not waste a single missile - please come over and take some nice photographs!"

Ralf,

What an excellent description of how a fantastic scen has changed form 3.6 to ANW.

I agree with you that the AI logic to not fire on unarmed Recce units is one of the worst behaviours of ANW. Their suggestion to DB-authors (which I am not) to put phantom weapons on each platform is not thought through or tested - its not even implemented in the ANW DB that comes with the game.

I have numerous similar stories, but another good comparison is trying 'Hemphills Ordeal' in 3.6 and ANW. Herman has rebuilt it for PDB; and while Hemphills Ordeal certainly works in 3.9.3; and is a challenging scen, when at the invitation of Herman I retried it in 3.6.3 I was amazed at the sheer agressiveness of the Russian submarines in 3.6 compared to 3.9.

At the root of that appear to be mainly changed mission behaviours;
- SSKs in 3.9 in any mission never move faster than 'creep'; so little or no chance of an intercept
- Submarines on some missions will not attack unarmed merchant ships (what were subs built for?)
- Submarines on some missions will avade (go to flank speed and change course) torpedoes they fire themselves (not wire-guided)

Also surface vessels under AI control suffer from broken mission behaviour: for example
- Ships on delayed ASuW-missions will not fire on enemy and armed ships unill the delay time expires (I've seen DDs killed by ships aremed only with MGs). In 3.6.x they would fire their missiles and guns.
- Ships on Transit missions will not fire at hostile and armed ground targets (guns protecting a coastline). In 3.6.X they would carry out shore bombardments (probably same cause as the Tomahawks not firing).
And there are numerous other mission behaviour changes I'm investigating.

Like you I love Harpoon, I do continue to develop scenario's (its taking MUCH longer that before becasue of all the extra testing required to spot the new behaviours). ANW has some nice new features such as Multi-player, realistic visual sighting distances and the Earth rotating the right way round, but at great cost especially to established scenario's.

Regards

Freek


1.

ORIGINAL: FreekS

At the root of that appear to be mainly changed mission behaviours;

- SSKs in 3.9 in any mission never move faster than 'creep'; so little or no chance of an intercept

- Submarines on some missions will not attack unarmed merchant ships (what were subs built for?)

- Submarines on some missions will avade (go to flank speed and change course) torpedoes they fire themselves (not wire-guided)

Since you are on the subject of about brain-dead submarine behaviours, here's a couple more worthy of consideration:

• Subs activate sonar on ship strike mission
  
  Subs activate sonar on ship strike mission. Previously, subs only activated radar on ship strike mission.
• Sub goes active on ASuW
  
  Sub goes active on ASuW area patrol mission even though mission setting is for EmCon.

Hmm.
 
Well I guess I play a bit different than some. That Recon plane would have been wiped out as I would have vectored an intercept manually. When I play I micromanage, which agreed I should not have to, but it is the way I play the game so I don't notice some things others do.
 
Sure things are not as they should be and I will not argue that. I do however remember the challenges on the windows conversion. It was the most 'friendly' of times for pooners. Now so many are pissed at others that it just saddens me, but so is life. These behaviors are indeed a bit freaky, I have not noticed here lately as I have not played in a couple of months. I will soon be back playing again, bugs and all. I have been busy "moving".
 
Thing is, the MP is the best part, we can finally match a human, pooner vs pooner.....ah that is progress.
 
So the code is hosed, how can it be fixed? This game is not supported with Electronic Arts type money. Heck I would like to even know how many copies have sold? It is a specialty market with limited testers and coders.
 
I go back to HC in 1995, then H2ME, then in 1997 to my surprise I found a copy of H2AE. Yeah I played on a P133 also. It was slooooooooow going. Program my moves in and go to bed type slow. Oh but the crashes, save, play, save, play, restart, save, play... No matter what workarounds it did not work to good with winders. But alas, it was converted and was stable.
 
I still own my 3.6x, I have the disc and all, and yet I probably will never play it again. I want to see 3.7+ move on to the Next Harpoon. I am not saying it is all roses, but considering the size of the budget and the amount of folks involved, I will tend to fall on the side of "benefit of doubt".
 
So in closing, Happy Birthday Harpoon, flaws and all.
 
PS, I also own HCCE and will try out the updates as soon as I can manage.
 

It seems that HCE has fewer bugs than H3ANW, and it makes more progress than its former version--HC97, HC2002,etc. What's more important, I think HCE is much friendly to the player--the UI, the classic windows layout (not like H3, H3 is much like a out-of-date dos game). H3 is unquestionably a dos -based game, but by now, the designed had done their best to make it suitable to play in the year 2008...So how can they improve more? Maybe I should buy a second or third copy and introduce it to my classmates? But I am sure that they will soon be flinched by the old fashion interface and ugly color of the game...What a pity! If only H3 were "prettier"!

Perhaps you should change the interface of Harpoon 3.6 or ANW into the Aegis-screen with NTDS to experience the real digital battle-field on your screen.
I prefere the "Old fashion" DOS interface of H3 when talking about the [in my eyes] ugly Windows interface of HC Classic/HCE. [;)]

But, that's of course my personal view. I like both games, but H3 at most!!!![:D]

IMO, one of the best ways to 'sell' your classmates on ANW is to have them come and play a multi-player game online. If they enjoy themselves, they will want to get the game. Since you already have a copy of ANW, they can just use your copy for a quick 40 min session.

Lots of old Harpoon players (and new) have had one session and been totally amazed at the challenge, realism, and fun of ANW MP. Some hate it, too. [:)]

At least it will give your friends an honest try at it. What have you got to lose but 40 mins of your time?

ORIGINAL: hermanhum

IMO, one of the best ways to 'sell' your classmates on ANW is to have them come and play a multi-player game online. If they enjoy themselves, they will want to get the game. Since you already have a copy of ANW, they can just use your copy for a quick 40 min session.

Lots of old Harpoon players (and new) have had one session and been totally amazed at the challenge, realism, and fun of ANW MP. Some hate it, too. [:)]

At least it will give your friends an honest try at it. What have you got to lose but 40 mins of your time?

[;)]

ORIGINAL: Taitennek

ORIGINAL: hermanhum

IMO, one of the best ways to 'sell' your classmates on ANW is to have them come and play a multi-player game online. If they enjoy themselves, they will want to get the game. Since you already have a copy of ANW, they can just use your copy for a quick 40 min session.

Lots of old Harpoon players (and new) have had one session and been totally amazed at the challenge, realism, and fun of ANW MP. Some hate it, too. [:)]

At least it will give your friends an honest try at it. What have you got to lose but 40 mins of your time?

[;)]

It seems that Freek and I are the only two persons in NL who play the game.
I once invited some friends to show them the dynamics of H3. They walked away..... H3/HCE is more challenging than "Cartheft"with X-box [boaring game], but people are not patience to "see" the units moving on your screen and the "feeling" that Alamo's have been pointed at your aircraft.

For me, Harpoon is the ultimate simulation of modern [naval] warfare, but the game itself needs a bit more attention. Don't you think?

Actually I have been experiencing the Aegis display and NTDS since April. And I only made a little adjustment: change the background color to 220 (much like azure, but darker than the default aegis color. IMO this color is much more realistic than the default one). The reason why I  like to use the NTDS display is that in the manual, it says this NTDS display cost millions of $ of those tax-payers.  I am not a US resident (I am a Chinese, live in Shanghai) , and I'm very new to harpoon (I bought h3 in this Feb and HCE in March). But now i like these two game much more than any other games (I like them even more than Commander: Europe at war and War in the Pacific). So I really think this game will be immortal forever.

Harpoon is definitely not a game for everyone. It gets pretty involved and there are no attractive graphics so it is difficult to find people who will like it in today's flashy instant gratification world.
 
I prefer the NTDS icons as they give me a much better understanding of the battlefield and exact unit positioning with their center point dots than the other icons. As far as color schemes go, I prefer the total black background with all geographical information turned off. I can't stand clutter.

When I play Harpoon 3.6/ANW I always create several screens. When a submarine is involved, I turn on the waterdepth within the preference-screen [F8]. I do not play with NTDS. Years ago I have choose colours for the weather circumstances and never changed them. Background: black with green lines.
 
Harpoon is......................Harpoon[:D]
 

Just to add one idea: For those newbies interested in the "classical" game behaviour, there is maybe a "workaround": It may be hard to find H3 3.6.X at ebay, but there are always some H2 copies for sale over there. H2 behaves similiar to H3 3.6.X in many aspects.

Though it is a DOS version, there are ways to make it run under Win XP. Or - that´s my way of playing it - use an old PC running Win 98 for it. I have it on a Pentium II 300 Mhz and it runs very fast and stable.

Of course I don´t want you to switch back to 1994, but by playing H2 you get a better feeling for this whole discussion and can develop your own opinion on it - if you´re interested.

Please mind - this is not a "political" statement about the relative value of the different Harpoon versions.

That work solution is at home for many years.
H2AE with w98 and pentium II [;)]

Harpoon 2 Admirals Edition (H2AE) runs just fine under XP with the DOSBox utility.