TonyE

No

For me it works quite well as long as you don't try to use EC2003 or newer battlesets. So overall that means not well at all. Have you considered virtualization lately? http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...mp;showfile=718 Or picking up a dinosaur of a computer on the cheap for the SE.

Seems to vary on a number of criterion. Absolute max rate seems to be around $0.002 per play but numbers much smaller are rolling around $0.00004 per play for instance. I've only dealt with restaurants and they pretty much pay a flat quarterly fee to play any ASCAP member's goods however much they want during the period.

Allrighty, start submitting national anthems as wav, mp3, or other non midi formats that I can easily read, Enrique wants his sunk ship songs playing again. We'll need additional information with each: 1. What nation it is representing 2. Reasonble proof the file can be used in a commercial product with nothing more than attribution as 'payment.' I would suggest leaning towards instrumental variants but I don't see why lyrical variants wouldn't be acceptable though we'll review each for content.

Ah yes, good old MIDI files! Sure, if someone comes up with audio files (not midi files please, wav or mp3 or...) of the national anthems I'd be happy to add that trinket to HC.

It just might be possible. Most of the resource files use a similar format so in theory one of the utilities could be modified to turn it into a win/loss media editor. What did you have in mind?

Here is where I think you may have a disconnect with Gunny. My reading of the situation is that you and he have very different goals for HUD4. A question is whether they are compatible enough to get you each what you want?

Gunny has written [here] and commented elsewhere that there won't be distributed editing of HUD4. Hopefully that stance will change in the future but there is no guarantee and I for one haven't heard what restrictions AGSI and/or Matrix have placed on Gunny and HUD4. The distributed approach has benefits but also challenges, especially unless and until we/they make a database editor meant for distributed editing (notably the ability for the central maintainer to approve or reject individual changes). The initial distributed approach I'm advocating depends in large part upon each editor producing quality work because it would be difficult (not impossible, just difficult) for Gunny to review the changes. The good news is he would be able to reject or accept a whole batch of changes at once (i.e. Mark checks out the HUD4 files, makes 20 changes, checks them back in. Gunny can then roll back to the pre-Mark version almost instantaneously and ask him to try again if Gunny doesn't approve of some of the changes.). As far as beating the competition, DB work would be only a small part of that effort. If you want to build a database that you like and don't care about beating the competition that could certainly be undertaken but still needs a leader and supporting cast. That is tougher to accomplish without beating the competition but not impossible. Don't expect the attacks to end though in that case, expect them to continue unabated. This is kind of like HC. We have no intention of making it challenge H3 or any other game, we're mainly making it better for ourselves and adding capabilities requested by the community as we are able to prioritize them in. I think that is also akin to the approach Dale took with ADB for H3. It does what he wants so therefore it pleases him.

Oh, and I hope someone makes competition happen, just like for HUD4, we're here to enable and aid and do what we can from an infrastructure and advice basis.

Mark Gellis put forth a question in the HUD4 forums. How to improve the reception of HUD4. I'm going to give my 2 cents on the name of the topic, "Beating the competition." In order to think about beating the competition you might want an understanding of the competition. There used to be more competition, now it pretty much is down to PDB. Frankly I can't even say that HUD4 is competing with PDB, PDB is it right now, period. Anyway, PDB's creator is the one and only Herman Hum. A few things to note about Herman: Herman has a seemingly endless supply of time to devote to his passions. Herman is not afraid to learn and will learn in order to accomplish his goals. Herman is more of a forest person than a tree person Despite the being a forest person by default, Herman will dig into the details and use his... Unbounded Persistance For those reasons I've said things like: Herman produces very high quality bug reports and a volume of them unmatched by anyone in Harpoon's history. I have yet to see a HC bug report from Herman that has no merit. We may not have agreed on bug vs feature vs expected behavior but that is beside the point when testing. Herman and company have been a major force in destroying the Harpoon community, certainly not the only force, but a large force. My general feeling is summed up by saying that Bond should say, "Forget the old guard, give the game to Herman & Co since they have the largest active following." Being of that old guard my view of Bond would greatly decrease but computer Harpoon would live on. See also: http://www.computerharpoon.com/ that from Don Gilman, current rights holder to computer Harpoon. Given the above, if you are stubborn enough, these are the things I think are needed in order to beat the competition: The database must have a single ultimately responsible maintainer. The database will need multiple editors in order to beat the competition, a competition with a huge lead. The database should be hosted in a version control system or even better be a web-accessible editor so that multiple editors can work on the database simultaneously. The database must have a drop-dead simple installer. I sent a template to Ralf for a HUD4 installer better than PDB's (which I also initially created back in the days Herman was more a force for the positive). A team of people needs to greet every new forum member across a range of forums as soon as they sign up (for Harpoon specific sites) or as soon as they post Harpoon inquiries (general sites). Herman & Co are the first contact for most new players and first contact is all it takes. A team of people needs to understand the game and the database and be able to answer questions intelligently and quickly. Herman & Co have had the corner on this market since HHQ got smart and bailed. Scenarios need to be written. They need not be perfect or large or realistic but they need to exist and be publicized. They needn't be hosted all over tarnation but if someone wants to manage that nightmare, go for it. They should all be in the single installer anyway (see PDB and HHQ approaches to databases). Make it easy, which in large part is covered by packaging the database, scenarios, and any other collateral in an easy to use installer. Write AARs, some can include videos, some can be PDFs, but they better be numerous and they better have screenshots if they aren't videos. Don't sign your database over to the Harpoon rights holder or publisher. I think this was a huge mistake by Darren and has helped limit HUD4. The community is the ONLY way forward, closed and limited will not work. If you ask for my thoughts in a nutshell: The competition can't realistically be beaten, they have to fail on their own If you don't believe #1, you need a huge amount of time. Even establishing the base of skills needed may take years, they just don't exist anymore outside of Herman & Co. HUD4 is not a tool to use in beating the competition as long as it remains a closed solution. Start from scratch and document sources.

Vince, there won't be much of your prattle tolerated. You may not be competing with anyone but you have been and continue to destroy what little Harpoon community there is left. Thanks to your gang's antics I have much less respect for sites like Subsim now that I know that they host copyrighted files without permission.

*** Spoiler Alert *** AAR below . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . As the scenario opens I find myself commanding some little crappy ships, a couple of MPAs, UAVs, embarked helos and one magical SSN. The words I so dread set the tone, "Do not fire until fired upon." Oh crap. To prod the situation along I sent out a couple of relatively expendable attack planes to try to provoke an incident. It turns out Red was way ahead of me as some Flankers take out a harmless little SH-60 not quite 20 minutes into the scenario. Game on! A couple of brave Kfir C.7 pilots attempt to engage Flankers after taking out a long range radar. The first goes down in flames without even detecting the AAM, the second gets off two heaters and safely returns to base. Both heaters miss. Minor victories by 33 minutes in. P-8's two Harpoon missiles each hit a missile boat and sink them. Torpedoes from the SSN finish off the other two missile boats in the same enemy group. I nearly forgot to use the Harpoons since the SSN was just sitting there, but the big huge weapon range ring on the P-8 caught my eye and contributed greatly to the cause. The little corvette can now suffer a respite until the next danger arrives. In a stroke of luck, a Steregushchiy runs aground and falls victim to two Harpoons from a P-8. Now can I do in the accompanying Lupo that is very much not grounded? Yes, more luck, the Lupo just sits there picking up sailors from the stricken ship and finds herself hit by 2 x SLAM-ER missiles diverted from an airfield attack (four launched, two hits). The SSN provided target localization and would have launched an ADCAP if the P-8 hadn't been available for re-tasking. We're now three hours into the scenario and I've neutralized the non-Flanker targets that I can find. Red owns the air thanks to the Flankers but the range of the SLAM-ER and Harpoons launched from the P-8 are giving me an edge for now. Oh fun, someone keeps volleying torps at the LCS group. I like the touch of including a Perry in the group for defense! Turns out (SH-60B) it was a Lada class submarine. Once the SH-60s were reloaded with two torps a piece there was no more escape and the Lada shall launch torps no more. We're almost 10 hours into the scenario at this point, picking away at the Red airbase and still afraid of the Flankers. I've been hoping the Perry will lob some SAMs at the Flankers but no such luck as yet. A couple of Flankers finally stray too close, my little Frigate gets zapped by a sizzler! Then a little more payback with six and a half hours to go when another Lada starts the eternal patrol. The Red airbase is up to 42% damage, the LCS group is plodding along to see about doing some damage to it but we'll see if they make it there or not. The Red airbase reached 60% damage when the scenario time limit expired. I was not granted victory and neither was the Red side. My LCS group was definitely within the on station rectangles and so was the SSN. So I'm not sure what more I could have done except keep the little corvette from sinking. My losses: 1 Ship, 4 AC, 2 Helos Red losses: 6 Ships, 2 Subs, 20 AC, 3 Helos, 1 damaged base, and 1 destroyed long range radar A fun scenario, thank you Greg!

Breaking the back

Aside from treaties (sounds like SHUK has a good bead on that anyway), what do you all think of the idea of shift some conventional VLS tubes to the nuclear deterrent role? I would tend to think that maybe the Trident SLBM isn't everything 20-50 years down the road when a cruise missile or VLS tube sized ballistic missile can do the same job. Range may suffer but SLBM range is pretty crazy long these days. Just wondering

Well, when the author is Chris Carlson... Almost a circular citing

Thanks for sharing! With those kind of results (especially the fully manned scenario) I doubly wouldn't want to be on a torpedoed ship.

17ish minutes from hit to entirely underwater, that's rather scary even for an unmanned ship (that probably had the watertight doors open?)!

Thanks Pete, it looks like GMT is ramping up their electronic conversions so we can probably expect iPad and dinosaur computer versions too. I think we're looking at an interesting few years as game specific play aids meld with all-out conversions, matchmaking, and such.

I'm reading Harold Coyle's "Team Yankee" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Yankee . The book takes the premise of "The Third World War" and looks at that war through the eyes of a US armor company. Good read so far, about halfway through.

I never knew that Enrique (or long since forgot). Thank you for mentioning it!

you win sir, I had forgotten about that little incident.

Must the Chinese try to one-up the US Navy in every incident? We run aground entering or leaving port, they run aground in high tension areas, sheesh .

Oops, did I do that?

Welcome, I'm glad you found improvements to the game(s) worthwhile. HC97 wasn't enough for me, I really enjoyed the winharp interface. It took HC2002 for me to jump and I've been thankful ever since. We look forward to your questions and comments as well as hearing more about your background and interests.

My thought is that the original variant won't offer much, if anything, beyond the current AMRAAM models but that future variants of Meteor will take the ramjet propulsion and make a very pleasant longer range AAM. Decent now and great in the future?