yojimboguy

1I found these instructions for opening the PE using MS Access Runtime. Runtime installed properly as far as I can tell. But it will not open pfbuild2005.mdb. I get an error box saying: "can't be started. was unable to initialize the Windows Registry. Rerun MS Access or MS Office Setup to reinstall." There is a note about problems running the PE under Vista, but I didn't find posted details about what that problem is and what the fix is. I don't have Vista, but I do have Windows 7. Any solution?

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I had no idea this was a possibility, though I should have. I have seen fighters detected by the surface search radars of recon planes like the Bear D if they get really close.

Forgot to mention -- all three groups have F-14A and B model fighters.

I have encountered a situation where lowering my plane group altitude from Low to Vlow results in an immediate warning that my planes are detectable and that I should turn on my radar. I inadvertently have a near perfect example in a saved game. I was concerned that going to Vlow might crash planes from pilot error, so I saved the game before doing it. I would upload it as an attachment here, but the forum tells me I am not allowed to upload a file of this type -- it is "autosave.hpq". So I had to cheat a bit to get past your security. If you get rid of the " - Copy" part of the filename and change the file extension from "txt" to "hpq", it should work and you'll be able to repeat the occurrence immediately upon entering the game. A little more detail that makes the problem unambiguous. There are 3 Blue parallel fighter groups, AIA, AJA, and AKA, all flying north. Select any one of them, lower the altitude, and see the warning message. I thought for a bit they were all reaching a threshold at the same time, but no, the warnings appear explicitly attached to the action. Don't lower the altitude, and the warnings don't appear for any of the groups. They appear immediately after the altitude any group is lowered, specifically addressing that group. The reason I mentioned "over water" was a question as to whether the surface the planes fly over has any influence on how detectable they are at various altitudes. In this game, all 3 groups are over water. FYI, this game started as scenario #10 in WestPac, "The Back Yard II". It is simply a saved game version of it, less than a half hour into it by the game time clock. autosave - Copy.txt

I have a couple of things to update. 1. The bad news... My experience of the last few days reminds me of why I started looking for online answers. I bought a 64 bit machine when my 32 bit machine started started blue screening on almost every startup and repeated every half hour to an hour. So I can no longer run Scenario Editor, and won't be able to create a scenario to demonstrate the problem. 2. The good news... perhaps the problem is not in the .076 update, but a function within the battlesets. At least, you seem to have a fix in place in the USNI-GIUK battleset, where the new guns appear in the loadout and work as they are apparently supposed to. You can see this by opening up the first scenario, "No Man's Land", select base ABA, "Ready Aircraft", and choosing either fighter type on the base. The gun, number of bursts, and damage will appear among the weapons in the loadout box.

I went to this page (http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/topic/2049-current-files/) to test drive the newest "stable" version people have referred me to, build 2009.076. But I'm confused by the comments accompanying the two attached files. The file names are: 2009.072GESEOWBSDLL.zip and HC2009.076GE.zip. The comments are: 2009.050+GE will get you the Ultimate level stable fixes & improvements 2013.### gets you up to the current (very experimental) beta (currently unavailable). Both files have "...GE..." in their titles, neither has "...2013..." in their titles. The second title suggests the stable version, but the Winharp file in it has a more recent modification date, which suggests the newer, testier version. Also, somewhere up thread I was given to understand (or maybe misunderstand) that updated battlesets came with the ".076" build, but the only battlesets appear in the "...072..." zip file. I dunno what happened here. Perhaps the file names were changed after your thread comments were written, but I'd rather not guess just what I should be downloading for the current "stable" version. Please clarify for me. Also, if the "...076GE.zip" file is the stable version, can (or should) I use the battlesets from the other zip file with it? If not, where do I get the updated battlesets?

When, if ever, does Matrix release the current version on its site? I ask this because of that little quickstart box Matrix provides with the game, so you can open the game, the manual, the scenario editor, the order writer, etc. Among the choices is "check for update". That's a meaningless button, or perhaps worse than meaningless, if they don't distribute any new builds that get gone here. And from earlier comments, they're apparently not doing their old builds. And let me restate a previous question more clearly now that I have a better understanding of what's going on. Is there any point to writing up a defect in an old build that people in this community aren't using anymore?

I'm running what Matrix is currently distributing. For HCE -- that shows on my screen as Build 2009.050. Does this version have the gun upgrade? Was 2009.076 ever distributed by Matrix? If not, I don't have it, at least not yet. I have not downloaded anything from this site except a few scenarios to play around with. What exactly is the "current" build version? And if Matrix doesn't deliver it, does that mean the button on their little screen box to "check for updates" is meaningless? I have pressed that button and been told I have the most current version, but I don't know whether that button is checking with the Matrix site, or checking here. What I'm mostly confused about is why this site exists seemingly as an entirely separate entity from the "community" and "forums" that the Matrix site supports for these games. Why aren't you running those parts of the Matrix site, or why don't they just put up a notice that the community and/or forum for Harpoon is hosted separately, and provide a link to this site. If there is such a notice and link there, it's not very prominent.

So am I supposed to be writing up details of a flaw of the "stock" game, or of a beta version that I don't even have? Let me go back a step even further -- does this redesigned gun system even exist in the "stock" version, as opposed to upgrades that are only available here? I'm concerned that there are two diverging Harpoon "cultures". I've been playing this game for probably 20 years -- I remember buying it and finding it to be the most bug-filled computer game in the history of the world. But seeing such great potential, I bought more versions over the years, hoping the potential would be realized. And in all that time, I only recently stumbled on this site, once someone referred me to it in one of the Matrix forum threads. So now, I am becoming constantly confused whether any comments made about tech issues refer to the game that Matrix is selling, or the game you folks have modified.

I'm new to this site, but not new to the game. Jettisoning ordnance doesn't actually improve the plane's performance, does it? The the various cruise/military/afterburner speeds remain the same, from what I can tell. To me the issue is not about getting rid of weapons, but about a decision to abort the mission and turning back, as an entirely separate question from jettisoning. It would also be fun to play with the idea of the AI selecting an alternate target, but really I have no clue how that would be implemented. However, if a plane does jettison, then give it a measurable performance improvement, say 10% faster cruising or something. If I'm wrong in my assumptions, feel free to ignore. I never even bothered to try to jettison any of my own ordnance, and I never noticed if the AI enemy did. Sometimes bombers turned back, sometimes they didn't, but in neither case did they get any faster.

Ok, now I'm really confused. A few days ago, this and some other problems had me wondering if my version of the game had some corrupt files. So I un-installed the games entirely, downloaded the whole program again from Matrix, and re-installed from scratch. The first thing I did then was "check for updates" and was assured by the program I had the current version. Yet my version of USNI has 5 scenarios, not ten, and I acquired it direct from Matrix within this week. Which leads me to think -- either Matrix is not distributing exactly the game you think it is, or you have the expectation that people are downloading patches/upgrades/whatever from here (or some mysterious 3rd site) rather than the Matrix site. Maybe this is not a bug of the newest version. Maybe Matrix is distributing an older version of the game. Is there something I (and I'm not a programmer) can look at among the various game components to see if everything is as current as it should be.

Ok, my first followup questions is: were WestPac and USNI released at the same time, and should their guns behave the same? Because they don't. And am I correct in thinking guns should operate the same in all battlesets from EC2003 onward?

I'll try writing this up, but since I don't know how this new gun function is supposed to work, I'm not sure how it's broken. Let me ask some questions ... Any documents you can point me to to describe how it works? Some or most of these other questions might be answered by any documentation you point me to, so just tell me if that's the case rather than writing out a an explanation that's already explained somewhere else. Which battlesets are these guns supposed to work in? Should the guns appear in the "Ready Aircraft" window where you select ordnance for a mission type? It that's the case, you don't need a special scenario to see this problem. You can look at practically any scenario and open that window for an airbase with some fighters, and see that they are not listed among the weapons, at least for modern planes. Presumably those guns are integral to the fighters and can't be removed. There are some older fighters like Phantoms where a gun "pod" is listed as part of the loadout. I'm finding it hard to believe that this game has been out so long and nobody's noticed yet that the guns stopped working.

Yes, the problem was mostly fixed by turning off Instant Action, and then (in my case) by resetting Winharp32.exe to its original configuration. But even then, the problem recurred if I started a new scenario without entirely quitting the game. For my situation, the entire workaround is: 1. Set compatibility of Winharp32.exe to Windows XP (service pack 3) 2. Start game by executing Winharp instead of the autorun desktop shortcut. 3. De-select "Instant Action" checkbox on (1st?) screen. 4. Exit game. 6. Restore Winharp32.exe to its original compatibility setting by de-selecting the compatibility mode. 5. Start game again through regular desktop shortcut and run scenario of choice. 6. Exit game entirely. 7. Restart game from desktop icon to play another scenario.

I'm not sure I understand you. By "attack window" do you mean the box where you assign the missiles of your group to the targets of an enemy group? A gun should somehow show up in that along with thelist of available missiles? Because I've been playing Harpoon for many years, and I've never seen that in any version. For me, the guns worked entirely automatically if you got your fighter within a mile or so of an enemy plane. The only certain indicator that I ever saw of a fighter having a gun was the line "Gun ammo available" in the box with the description of the group or unit you have selected.

I have fixed the problem, at least for this scenario, at least for now. I had different problem about the same scenario that I asked for help at the Matrix site (the OPforce subs started at speed 0 so there was never a surge). That resolution called for changing Winharp32.exe to be compatible with Windows XP, which fixed the problem so the subs started at proper default speed. I thought maybe changing Winharp back to its original settings might help, and the game has sped up enormously. However, I have yet to try starting the game from scratch again, so maybe the subs will revert to their old, bad behavior.

I have a relatively young computer (less than 2 years), 6 megs of RAM, and a 2.4 GHz 64 bit processor, yet some lots of scenarios run painfully slowly, even old ones. Right now I'm running the original battleset Gatekeeper scenario (as Blue), and time compression or not, it running maybe 5 times real-time regardless of the compression settings. Running Windows 7 Home Premium. I've run the various Windows diagnostics and the computer doesn't seem to be overburdened by anything else running at the same time.

Thanks for finding that link. I posted my first post yesterday about a problem, in the "General" forum because the Issue Tracker link didn't work for me. Now that it's already posted, I dunno if I should re-post it in the Issue tracker again. Also, the problem may be about some computer settings on my laptop, rather than a problem with the game itself, which muddies the water even more.

To clarify why I'm sure I either don't have guns or they don't work... It used to be that if my fighters came into gun range of an enemy, the guns would automatically engage and shoot it down. AFAIK there was no way to manually select and fire them. After a number of firings, the "Gun ammo available" would disappear, presumably because the gun had run out of shells. Now none of that happens. The "Gun ammo available" is never visible in the first place and the fighters don't use guns when in close proximity to enemy planes.

Well. it clears up one mystery and creates another. If I'm supposed to have guns in my planes and I don't, how do I get them (or maybe get them back, assuming they disappeared along the way somehow)?

I have Ultimate Edition with all the stock battlesets. I see that in numerous battlesets, fighter planes that I would expect to have internal cannon -- don't seem to. I concluded this buy loading at least one stock scenario from each battleset and launching a fighter that I would expect to have a gun (typically F14s or F15s when available), and look at the unit window after selecting the plane I've just launched. If there is a message at the bottom of the box that says "Gun ammo available", then I assume it has a gun. If there is no such message, then I assume there is not a gun. If there is not a gun available in the first scenario I try in a battleset, I open at least two mare scenarios in the same set and try again. Battlesets where fighters don't have guns: EC2003 Battle for the GIUK Gap EC2003 Battle for the Mediterranean EC2003 Battle for the Atlantic Ocean Western Pacific Oddly or not the USN battleset, which IIRC came out in the same release as WestPac, DOES have fighters with guns. Is this a problem with the game design, my copy of the game, or some setting in my computer? A couple of more points. I'm pretty sure WestPac used to have guns, as I designed at least one scenario where the fighters needed them if they were to get all the targets. Also, I tried to use the "Issue Tracker" in the Defects forum to report this, and kept getting a "could not find this page" message.