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OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 4:40 pm
by Revthought
I really miss battleship simulators like Fighting Steel and the original Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic. I wish someone would pick up making games in this genre again.

As for other titles in the genre, Jutland! and Distant Guns from Storm Eagle were passable... they were great games, but I really would have enjoyed the finer detail of the simulation that was available in Fighting Steel and GNBNA. And, unfortunately, when Storm Eagle was sold, support for these games stopped. In fact, a patch literally broke Jutland! for years before it was fixed. :(

Of course, I should mention that Rule the Waves and Steam and Iron exist, and are great games. Again though, it would be great to have finer control (like damage control management) and the 3D eye candy that was Fighting Steel.

Do any of you remember these games, or those like them? Or even, still play them? $5 to the person who tells me how to get Fighting Steel to work on Windows X. [8D]

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 5:38 pm
by Lecivius
ORIGINAL: Revthought



Do any of you remember these games, or those like them? Or even, still play them? $5 to the person who tells me how to get Fighting Steel to work on Windows X. [8D]

DOS-box it. I take cash.

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 5:43 pm
by Schanilec
Yes, I loved those games. Nice short games and fun to play. Demand for them would be the big factor. People seem to want the gamey systems seen on television. Idiots in my opinion. Still have my old computers so I am still able to play them.

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 5:56 pm
by IdahoNYer
ORIGINAL: Lecivius

ORIGINAL: Revthought



Do any of you remember these games, or those like them? Or even, still play them? $5 to the person who tells me how to get Fighting Steel to work on Windows X. [8D]

DOS-box it. I take cash.

Fighting Steel doesn't work with DOS Box - its a windows game. Had Fighting Steel working great with Win 7 (I think), but no luck with Win 10. Video won't support I think....

Now DOS BOX does work for "Action Stations!" One of the greatest WWII surface simulations made - if you can still stomach the graphics of course...

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 5:59 pm
by Lecivius
ORIGINAL: IdahoNYer

Fighting Steel doesn't work with DOS Box - its a windows game.


Oh sure, steal my thunder (and my $5 [;)]) [:D]

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 6:28 pm
by Revthought
ORIGINAL: Lecivius

ORIGINAL: Revthought



Do any of you remember these games, or those like them? Or even, still play them? $5 to the person who tells me how to get Fighting Steel to work on Windows X. [8D]

DOS-box it. I take cash.

I can play GNBNA on dos box, and I often do. The problem is, you cannot get all of the expansions to work and some of the later games in the series haven't had their copyright protection removed--good luck finding what it the 5th word in the second paragraph on page 28 of the manual was.

I also remember taking part in the modding community for GNBNA through Prodigy in the early 1990s. The Sealion mod, for example, where I had to mail a bunch of 5 inch floppy disks to someone, have them copy the mod onto these, and send it back to me. Tons of fun.

Obviously, I can't get that mod to work either since I no longer have the disks, or the disk drive to read them. And forget about it being online somewhere...

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 6:47 pm
by dcpollay
ORIGINAL: IdahoNYer

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

ORIGINAL: Revthought



Do any of you remember these games, or those like them? Or even, still play them? $5 to the person who tells me how to get Fighting Steel to work on Windows X. [8D]

DOS-box it. I take cash.

Fighting Steel doesn't work with DOS Box - its a windows game. Had Fighting Steel working great with Win 7 (I think), but no luck with Win 10. Video won't support I think....

Now DOS BOX does work for "Action Stations!" One of the greatest WWII surface simulations made - if you can still stomach the graphics of course...
If it's a Windows game, you can run VirtualBox and install your old Windows Program (7, XP, whatever) inside it. I've used this to play some older windows games.

I also use DosBox to run my Dos 2.0 version of Sherlock. 4500 games completed and counting!

I'll take a credit card for the $5 if you leave me the card info info....

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 6:50 pm
by dcpollay
Oh, yeah....Back to the OP. I had GNBNA for years. Loved it, even though I could never get the sound to work right on my machine. I liked the manual damage control, and watching the shell splashes during initial spotting rounds.

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 2:40 am
by rockmedic109
Atlantic Fleet has been out for a while. I wouldn't use the term simulator but it is pretty enough for the eye candy need. Enjoyable for a while. The campaign was limited, however. I kinda felt that replay value {of the campaign} was low. As a quick pick up game to spend a half hour, though, it was decent. If you could take the GNBA campaign and use Atlantic Fleet battle engine, it would be MUCH better.

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 5:14 am
by Pilsator
got Atlantic fleet on a sale, guess was for 2,99 EUR. It is well worth that price.

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 1:06 pm
by pontiouspilot
I pissed away a lot of time in the old days on these...some were quite entertaining. After pressure from "she who must be obeyed" I finally cleaned out dozens of there and old SPI, AH etc...all to the garbage heap....and I still had the manuals too!! Ain't it funny how she never throws out her 30 yr old university texts and papers?!

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 2:14 pm
by m10bob
Go here for Fighting Steel version which runs on windows..

http://nws-online.proboards.com/thread/ ... el-project

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 4:30 pm
by Revthought
ORIGINAL: m10bob

Go here for Fighting Steel version which runs on windows..

http://nws-online.proboards.com/thread/ ... el-project

Well, it runs on some versions of Windows, not Windows 10. The issue is the direct X version, and the latest versions of direct X just cannot handle the old calls from Direct X 4, which Fighting Steel was built on.

Ironic really that the machines are too good to run the old games.

Edit

The one thing that has left a lasting impression on me with GNBNA is the German campaign. You had refueling ships, but nothing that could rearm your German BB raiders at sea. So it struck me that most of the time, if my German BBs had to deal with a single guarded convoy (and here we are talking cruisers) I could quite easily run both magazines to near empty and have to return to Germany.

For this reason, learned from playing this game, I was always extra impressed what historical German raiders accomplished AND was left with the thought that commerce raiding was a terrible use for a capital ship.

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 7:04 pm
by rustysi
old SPI, AH etc...all to the garbage heap.

Oh, say it isn't so. Heresy.[:D]


RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 6:38 am
by Sardaukar
GNBNA was good, ditto GNB III.

GNB II did suck. Haven't tried other 2.

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 5:12 pm
by Revthought
n run VirtualBox and install your old Windows Program (7, XP, whatever) inside it. I've used this to play some older windows games.

I also use DosBox to run my Dos 2.0 version of Sherlock. 4500 games completed and counting!

GNB III didn't have a campaign did it? I mean, either did Fighting Steel, but with GNBNA campaign, taking it away in future titles was really noticeable. And, of course, there was NWS Fighting Steel project that added a campaign by running the campaign as a separate program, which generated the battle to play out in Fighting Steel, and then imported the results.

As for virtual box, I will have to give that a shot. Whether it will work really depends on how the emulator is handling the Direct X calls.

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:13 am
by SheperdN7
I remember playing GNB:Fury in the Pacific as a kid on the OLD windows 98 we had... Classic indeed.

Task Force 1942 was a classic if I remember correctly as well.

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 6:48 pm
by rustysi
as a kid

It always cracks me up when this kid refers to when he was a 'kid'.[:D]

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 7:48 pm
by BBfanboy
ORIGINAL: rustysi
as a kid

It always cracks me up when this kid refers to when he was a 'kid'.[:D]
Makes me grumpy that he can remember being a kid and I can't! GRUMP! ... oh, wait, wrong thread![8|]

RE: OT: Fighting Steel & Other Battleship Sims

Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 3:09 pm
by Revthought
ORIGINAL: rustysi
as a kid

It always cracks me up when this kid refers to when he was a 'kid'.[:D]

Hey now, I'm 6 months shy of 40. I don't think I still qualify as a kid, do I? [:D]