TonyE

Yes, the publishing agreement allows for updates and upgrades.

In a few weeks you should start seeing signs of the current Harpoon Classic build being published on Steam. Apparently, the publishing process has been prioritized again.

No update yet, will reach out yet again.

Welcome! Picking up HC97 without prior Harpoon experience probably puts you in the minority but it was a great game that just happened to get improved in more recent iterations. 1. Yes, and with the recent uptick in inquiries, I reached out to the powers that be today, received a response that it is being looked into (so good job bringing it up again everyone) and hope for a response in the next couple of days. There was certainly an expectation a few months ago that the more recent Harpoon Classic would be re-released like HC97 was re-released. 2. Some of them will work with HC97 but many do require the Matrix edition. It will help to try older scenarios first. On GIUK - HarpGamer page for instance, the ones that mention EC2000 should work with HC97, the ones that say EC2003 will not. 3. For the old-timers like me the answer is very long and complex involving intellectual property rights, personalities, fundamental disagreements on what drives a realistic outcome, ... However, an easier answer is that for many players HC is just more enjoyable. Command is amazing in so many ways but the reward is gives me doesn't compare to HC which aside from Civilization may be the only game that can keep me so engaged that I find myself putting off bedtime just one more hour right up until my alarm goes off for work. 4. Very very different. HC97 follows the Harpoon 3 paper rules for the most part however it uses an adaptation of the Harpoon 4 paper sonar model. For the post-HC97 builds we weren't allowed to use the Harpoon paper rules (politics!) so when algorithms were replaced they tend to be my creations. Where we tweaked things (such as sonar), we attempted to make the results come close to the Harpoon 4.1 paper results without copying the data and rules themselves. You can often find a copy of H3 paper on eBay (GDW Harpoon 3). 5. The tutorial is a good start, hopping on Discord (link at top of forum) and chatting with the gang with questions can be helpful. The command card made by a player will become one of your best friends Keyboard Commands, by location - Tools/Mods/Docs - HarpGamer

Thank you Don, I'm hopeful I can give some additional answers tonight. The good news is that your demo suggestion is valid. The demo does not expire until 2030 and demonstrates the bulk of the changes between HC97 and the latest and greatest. If one gets really invigorated, I expect the ExportDLLs (game functionality add-ons) that worked with the 2024.005 build should work just fine with the demo.

Thanks broncepulido, Merry Christmas all!

Puzzling thru this with eeustice on Discord... case 18: /* event processor */ if (dllexEffect18() == FALSE) ProcessEvents(); break; The ExportDLLs are called before the built-in ProcessEvents logic. To avoid re-creating all of the harpoon event-processing logic (which is a ton), an ExportDLL can cheat by cherry-picking the events it wants to process then returning False so that the built-in ProcessEvents is still called. The negative side effect is that the order ExportDLLs are called is not nicely sorted by filename (See c++ - How can I get FindFirstFile to sort files - Stack Overflow for a nice explanation) so using this approach is somewhat risky but it would still be a valid approach.

From pacMissTest-B1.hpq Combat5.c around line 1050 number of rounds should be 4, appears to be 1024 (but there is a funky 1-byte offset for # of attacks)... This section of code creates the AttackEvent. Effects.c around line 559 number of rounds is the correct 4. Effects.c around line 929 changes number of rounds to 2. Yup, that's the problem, ProcessAttackEvent changes the number of rounds to fire from 4 to 2 but the ammo was previously removed from the mount in AllocateRounds. Issue confirmed. This can be can be fixed by overriding ProcessAttackEvent in an ExportDLL. This isn't exposed at a very granular level, it is at ProcessHarpoonEvents aka dllexEffect18 meaning all Harpoon Event processing needs to be overrideen.

But this is an appropriate place to ask, there are just better places at the moment like what xavier posted

You can find it at I do need to move the post out of the beta testing area to reduce confusion, it is a real patch, not a beta.

A source for when someone decides to update this FAQ, Harpoon – Retro Viator

Those are some powerful AGIs! I can confirm that the HC97 we published with Matrix Games also has/had that flaw. I suppose that would mean it is a known issue since for nearly 30 years <g>. The same flaw is present in the most recent builds so was not corrected. What we did with some similar situations is programmatically override bad BattleSet data when the BattleSet (which in those old ones included the platform database specific to each BattleSet) did have issues. The tools to re-generate those legacy BattleSets were lost to time. MicroProse has the ability to fix in a couple of ways (via programmatic override or painstakingly re-building the BattleSet). I suggest the time is much better spent re-making such scenarios in newer BattleSets that do not have the flaw, something you can do without any exotic tooling. I'm 99% sure I wrote a utility that could at least view but possibly update some of the legacy BattleSets but haven't located it yet.

If you purchased Harpoon 3 ANW from Matrix Games, you can still download it from Matrix Games (log into your account then you'll be able to download it). If you didn't purchase Harpoon 3 from Matrix Games, you don't currently have a way to buy a new license. Give it some time and I believe you will be able to again. Which H2 database editor are you seeking? There is pfedit (https://www.harpoonpages.com/ftp/harpoon2/pfe116.zip ) or Jon Reimer's editor or the in-game/native editor.

That is with the debug SE. If you have the interest, run through similar processes in both debug and release SE (switching between legacy BattleSets, legacy to commondb, commondb to legacy, WestPac to Malacca, Malacca to WestPac, ...). Maybe create a table of what crashes and what doesn't if you get super into it.

@eeustice, any chance you can assemble a test scenario in HDS9? AI side should have unarmed transport aircraft, Player side should have F-14 or something with an Intercept or similar loadout (so that it will try to use guns in a dogfight position. Fire up the game and play until the planes are about 4nm apart then get a save just before the interceptor tries to dogfight. Don or I will be able to use that to troubleshoot the StoreConsumed code.

In the legacy (non-commondb) BattleSets, certain aircraft (with certain loadouts like Intercept) are assigned 4 bursts of air to air cannon. If the planes when flying get close to enemy aircraft, they will attempt to dogfight all on their own and ideally shoot down the opponent. In other words, you are seeing exactly what the game is supposed to be doing.

Are there steps you can provide to reproduce the crash (ideally from a particular saved game file; I see two in the rood of the zip file)?

Yes, MicroProse is a small operation at present. You also hit upon an important additional consideration, they are not as intimately knowledgeable about Computer Harpoon as many of their consumers. The next six months or so should be informative, how they handle the growth in their catalog, communication with players about roadmap, etc. but in my dealings so far there has been positive intent and a desire to learn.

I recommend not using a VM and instead using the 32-bit scenario editor. Wscenedt32.exe in your game directory. Current Files - General - HarpGamer has the latest patch. Unless you are running the game in a VM anyway but still, I'd suggest that VM be an up to date OS which means a 64-bit build then you run the 32-bit scenario editor directly on that.

An item to keep in mind, if you already own Harpoon Ultimate, you have Harpoon 97 already (and a lot of other versions) via the 20th Anniversary launcher pictured below.

This issue report only applies to that BattleSet. It could affect multiple legacy BattleSets as each has a copy of whatever database was used in the compilation of the BattleSet.

Confirmed in 2025.024 This can be fixed with the aid of an ExportDLL. In other words, it doesn't absolutely require a change to the game code itself.

You can 'fix' this one by copying NACV.res and NACV.rsr from HUCE\HC20\WH00163D\ to HUCE\ but that may re-introduce other issues (like Baku being type AFS instead of CVHG, Kalinin no longer being a BCGN, etc.)

Ah, I missed the nuance about SAM vs. SSM. It appears things went awry between HC97 and HC2002 per the attached screenshots I just grabbed. Can you post in the Issue Reports forum? Be specific about the BattleSet since this is a BattleSet specific issue and is not related to HCDB. Thanks for bringing it up!

That is what is known as a pre-commondb BattleSet so it does not use the user modifiable databases. I strongly suggest players only play the EC2003 and 'newer' BattleSets as they use the user-created databases and also don't have sub-optimal (i.e. compatibility) logic.