General

Below is an installer that should bring any copy of the game purchased from Matrix Games up to the current build. https://www.harpgamer.com/downloads/HC2025.025_ComprehensivePatch.zip When you get to selecting an installation directory and Start Menu group, please double-check that they are correct before proceeding.

We of HC3 (TonyE, Akula, CV32) would like to welcome all of the beta testers and thank you for your time. I played Harpoon for a decade before I came a beta tester for HC2002, and have since alpha tested and programmed many creations. Each of us has been there and realize most of the frustrations and opportunities the testing brings. We ask that you make an effort to contribute to the process and help to make the game better. Over time we will be able to distinguish those who are just downloading the betas from those who are aiding the process. You can be sure those putting in long hard hours will be rewarded with more resources from those of us towards the top of the he…

Tony hinted I could a write How To on Issue reporting as "Would you write one?" so I took the hint. I don't think there is much technical novelty to add to the topic (but I will try), Tony said my issue reports were good but all I did is based on the beta guide and the forums here. Perhaps there is one thing, I want to write good issue reports and this is because I did my share of debugging in the past. To understand why do you want to write a good issue report you only need to understand (a little) how issue fixing works. From the software engineer point of view there are 4 steps in fixing an issue, these are Reproducing the symptoms, Identifying the bug, Analy…

As many of you know, HCE has some difficulty with the geometries of short range engagements (witness the ATA gunnery issues). Aggravating this limitation is the fact that the seeker acquisition range of many torpedoes is 1,000 yds (roughly 0.5 nm) or less. This can make effective engagement of submarines, even submarines that you have precisely located, a 'challenging' exercise to say the least. Currently the seeker acquisition ranges reflect the actual best guesstimate of their real life effective range (according to H4 specs). I am currently considering, however, introducing an artificial boost to the acquisition range to improve torpedo performance and …

I've mentioned this at the H.U.L.L. before, but I believe this is the proper forum to post it. When an ASW A/C is sent on a long distance patrol, it seems to stay pretty much in one spot dropping buoys at random. The 5-6-5 Distro plan (see attached diagram) was the most popular plan we used to use in these situations. The Kingpin position and Road are based on the area you wish to cover and the Spacing is based on CZ conditions in that area. I realise it's probably not practical to have an A/C in the game drop bouys at these precise locations, but I would suggest an on station Patrol be given a detection area based on such a plan. Input from the player could be limit…

I'm interested in hearing how airfield damage and repairs should happen. Obviously we already have damage occurring including reduction in runway size. However that doesn't prevent air operations in the way you might expect. Please suggest your rules for: 1. Repairs (ex. one runway size increase per 12 hours if die roll of ##) 2. Effects of damage (planes requiring runway size x cannot land or take off from runway damaged to size x) a. Planes in the air divert to nearest friendly airfield ... Thanks! I'm mainly asking because this shouldn't be a terribly difficult thing to implement (runway repair and related effects) and I need something to get my cod…

I thought I'd just add a note that I've uploaded modified versions of my toolbox and my extended version of TonyE's lazGUI so as to operate with the GEs since 2017.05. While the internal game changes are being implemented by TonyE these two tools may or may not work, but I'll try to keep them upto date. Also I'd be interested if there are any comments on features within my extended lazGUI that users of toolbox would like (eg the expanded unit information within startgroup?) I also haven't done anything to my other tools such as AAR-report, so any comments would be interesting. (I kind of play with this stuff on the assumption no one else finds it useful so I don't exac…

As some of you may remember, years ago we implemented in HCE a delayed turn rate for aircraft such that they could no longer "turn on a dime" and fly in the opposite direction. Essentially it delayed the ability to turn by a period of time (i.e. wait X number of seconds before executing a turn) and the values varied between types, e.g. more rapidly for maneuvering fighters and more slowly for large transport types. These turning rates (so to speak) are still quite simplistic and still allow an aircraft to change direction relatively quickly. The time has come, perhaps, to further adjust these values to impose a further degree of realism. Note that these ar…

HCE has, as of version 2007.022 the ability to send some game data out to external DLLs. I'll work up documentation as able. As implemented in 2007.022 every piece of data that AGSI allows us to export is being exported. We'll work with AGSI to increase the exported data items (for instance, number of missiles or planes in a unit would be nice, weapon launch events would be nice, etc.). The DLL files will live in C:\Matrix Games\HCE\ExportDLLs\ in a default installation. To disable a DLL, rename it so that the file extension is not .DLL, i.e. rename DataDump1.dll to DataDump1.dll.bak to turn it off. The DLLs will slow the game somewhat depending upon how much processin…

I'm testing some of the PAK's new EC2003 scenarios and am stuck with a total victory condition (scenario 5, sink three amphibious ships). I can only get this complete vic condition if I've scored a minimum victory. Is this normal? D

January 10th I restarted the attempt to make a 32-bit scenario editor based on the current codebase. That day saw the development environment configured well enough to start compiling. Ended up at 39 errors, 667 warnings during compilation. For reference, the program doesn't get to run and go down in flames until there are 0 compilation errors. January 20th update: 23 errors, 652 warnings, progress...

Priority ranked list of capabilities to add to the ExportDLL interface: Implemented: Write functions that can look up platform information from the database. This doesn't necessarily need to be via the ExportDLL interface but is required to do things like see which weapons are in a loadout. Expose the disk_id_to_annex_id function. Expose the GetLoadoutIndex function. Expose a CheckLocationDepth-like function that takes lat/lon instead of map coordinates. See SCENCHEK.C ~ ln 707 for components. Expose functions to the ExportDLL to replace the EventHead, TopGroup, and such passed by the GE. Currently the DLL is notified when there is a change but the DLL cannot chang…

Notes for investigating air to air refueling. Automatic refueling is instigated from CheckStaff. CheckStaff is called in a few places, the key one being CheckGroupStaff. CheckGroupStaff is Harpoon Effect #20, in ExportDLL parlance, HCEffect20. In other words, if one wants to replace the built-in auto-refueling behavior, HCEffect20 must be handled in an ExportDLL instead of in the stock GE. General Process: 1. Effect21/HCEffect21/CheckGroupFuel decides a refuel is merited and creates a AirRefuelEvent that will be processed in 30 seconds. 2. AirRefuelEvent is processed after those 30 seconds, game decides how much fuel to give to each recipient plane.…

I noticed there hasn't been a ton of action on the release notes verification and while I'm grateful for the issue tracker being somewhat alive, most of the excitement has surrounded a bashing of multiplayer. Well, it got me interested enough again to pound out some code. I'll try to remember to post an update here every couple of weeks until we get back to testable builds. 2011/02/20 - First time firing up the game and selecting multiple sides for the player to control. Extended the Staff Assistant to indicate which side a message is for by modifying the window title (it already differentiated with the graphic chosen but this may be more easily interpreted and hel…

As you may have noticed, we have a 32-bit SE. The main side effect of that from the programming side is that I no longer have to maintain backwards compatibility with the Win16 API. I can allocate memory in chunks larger than 64kB and pull off all kinds of other "fun" stunts without writing and debugging it all twice. I could even go wild and implement right-clicking, wow . That said, even writing against the Win32 API natively is painful and that is where the GE and SE now reside. I'm more likely to take advantage of the underlying commonality to do things like work towards raising the items per annex limit in the database rather than add "pretty". Recapping an…

This post is intended as a STOVL rocket booster for programmers who are looking at starting out with the CodeTyphon IDE, like myself, e.g. to shorten the time you can get airborne and start to build your own ExportDLL code. ExportDLL is an API for HCE that Tony generously provided, right now he is working to enable access to the Harpoon Events which as he put it is the soul of them game and will enable the self proclaimed programmers to try their hands on modding Harpoon. The recommended programming tool is for ExportDLLs is CodeTyphon, a free Pascal based public IDE. Here I'm sharing my baby steps with it buildling an ExportDLL, that is installing CodeTyphone and then …

One major challenge with modern Harpoon Classic is detection. In the older versions of Harpoon you were able to spot the enemy at ranges of 200 miles and more, when they were coming at you. Most of you probably recall those NACV scenarios, where you were defending Northern UK and were facing volleys of Su27s/Su24s from Iceland and Norway. The E3s were able to spot those formations at long range, giving you ample time to vector in your F15s/Tornadoes. In the current versions detection is really challenging. Most of the times I pick up aircraft at ranges less than 100 miles, some times only after they have fired upon me and this despite the fact that multiple unit…

Defect Name: Attacking ships head the wrong way Build: HCE 2009.004 Repeatable: Yes Operating System: Vista SP1 DB used: HCDB_080712 Scenario used: Saved game "WrongWay" for EC2003 GIUK Long Description: Ships ordered to attack initially head the wrong direction. Steps to reproduce: 1) Load and run saved game "WrongWay" in EC2003 GIUK. 2) Order Group ACS to Attack Base ZZb. 3) The ASA announces "Sir, we are out of range. Group ACS must close 13 NM before we are in range. Should we close and attack?". Answer Yes. The ASA reappears with "Sir, request permission to increase speed of Group ACS to 5 kts, to intercept enemy Group ZZb." Answer Yes. 4) Increase…

Since upgrading to the lates version (2008.033), and possibly before, I'm having display problem when I play any WestPac Scenario and use Formation Editor. Instead of seeing appropriate Unit Icons, I get black boxes (see attached). This hasn't occured in any of the other Scenarios I've tried in any BS excepr WestPac. Buddha

For my own usage/prioritization. Prepare Official Release files for MatrixGames so they can distribute an official patch. Target to finalize files: 2022-10-16 Build each component with current version [done] GE [done] SE PE BSB OW Ask that the installer remove the DigMilArt.dll AutoTest as much as possible Consider addressing [done] [Postponed 2022-10-11] Write a new Platform Editor Choose tech stack Initial affinity to …