TonyE

Made me laugh and pretty true this winter...

I found this review instructional as to a rather 'green' player's take on Harpoon. http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/pc/articles/101356.aspx

I could but I won't because it would take too much time to figure out. The mechanism isn't terribly reliable. I've had good results always selecting Immediate Notification. Then you of course have to visit the Issue link before you would be sent another e-mail. Still I hear that isn't 100% successful but can't speak to that myself since it seems to work for me. That or put a Post-It on the monitor to check the Issue reports now and again.

HCDB is what is considered the stock database. The most recent version can be found at: http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...mp;showfile=235 You can report data inaccuracies for HCDB at http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?showtopic=511 (most of the databases have threads in the Database Design forum). Looking at HCDB-101022 I'm not seeing wrong propulsion types. Let us know if you are still facing problems. Provide the version of MS Access or runtime that you are using as well as the HCDB version.

Tu-16, Tomcat fodder

Limitations from my perspective: * Surface gunnery - inability to disengage. * Surface gunnery - ability to cheat the ROF limitations to get extra shots. * Surface gunnery - minimal armor modelling. * Attacks in general - group-center targeting makes any intercept a manual affair which makes it tough for the AI not to mention the player. * Weather - limited affect of weather on operations as a whole. * Communications - instantaneous and flawless data network in HC takes away a lot of the strategy of WWII operations. * Communications - inability to model communications intercepts, not only for direction finding but also as an intelligence tool to cue forces to a certain location (though one can mimic this with Staff Messages with much effort). * Logistics - lack of logistics in HC seems especially limiting to Pacific operations. * Map interface - inability to lay precise courses at high zoom levels. * Sensors - HC checks most sensors only every 30 seconds, this makes Brad's AAA difficult at the correct ranges and certainly affects dogfights and other interactions. At a minimum visual detection should be checked more frequently for WWII ops. * AI smarts - this is not my own criticism though I agree, the AI will tear off after any detected target and often it would behoove the WWII situation for the AI group to follow the course of events that the scenario designer intended. Those are the ones that come to mind right now.

If you don't mind using the betas there is no reason to upgrade to HUE (with that assumption that you don't care about the digitalmilitaryart.com images and the old versions of HC). At some point Matrix may place an artificial limitation on us so that the betas only work with HUE but until then we'll continue as we have been. You did read such a post on Matrix but it is not as purely true as it once was. We had to beg and plead to be able to work on HC(E). It was a multi-year process convincing AGSI to let us continue improving the game. Finally they relented and here we are. The idea was that we would get token royalties ($0.25-$0.50 per copy that we split 3-ways) and the rest of the money would fund H3/ANW development. We didn't ask for any royalties at all but AGSI likes to do that. I think AGSI has paid us higher royalties than that token amount expected. It isn't enough to make the time expenditure monetarily worthwhile but it is enough to pay for most of the programming tools/add-ins this year. So yes, this is definitely a hobby for us and the way to fund HCE development is to pay us directly, not buy the game (and yes, that is strange as you note!). What buying the game from Matrix does do is show that there is still some commercial interest that may let us keep working on the game longer. We did successfully negotiate one pay for feature agreement with AGSI's approval so that is also an option. Unfortunately in that particular case the patron did not pay up, grrr.

My personal opinion is that HC is far from ideal for WWII action but some others find that it works well enough to satisfy their desires. Some existing material... http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...mp;showfile=523 http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...mp;showfile=459 http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...mp;showfile=447 http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...mp;showfile=596 http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...mp;showfile=424 http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...mp;showfile=377

True, what does not exist is the ability to choose the frozen/paused time directly from the staff assistant dialog.

Yep, make sure you are at 2009.042 (available at beta downloads area even though it is a release patch, not a beta) then overlay whatever beta you desire. So the install from scratch goes... 2007.000 (from CD or original download) 2008.044 (2008.024 can be skipped) 2009.042 Latest beta for each component

So in reading that there is mention of F-35 supercruise (right after F-22 supercruise). Does the F-35 really supercruise?

Excellent, thanks Ethan!

No worries, it is how we all learn.

When posting stories, please provide a link to the original and do not quote the entire story. We have had to remove posts like this one in the past due to copyright laws. Thank you

the checkboxes for side to play don't do anything yet but they will

HCE - 2011.001 - 2011/01/28 =========================== - Chg:B184 GE Game will no longer crash when selecting to play as Green side. (thanks Gopher, Don Thomas) http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...amp;showbug=184 HCE - 2010.020 - 2010/12/31 =========================== - Chg:0000 GE It should no longer be possible to drag the Group and Unit windows tall enough that the game crashes. To make this happen a verticle resolution > 1080 pixels was needed for me. I accomplished that by placing dual monitors one above the other in my Windows screen settings. (thanks Mr. Faustinelli)

HCE - 2011.001 - 2011/01/28 =========================== - Chg:B184 GE Game will no longer crash when selecting to play as Green side. (thanks Gopher, Don Thomas) http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...amp;showbug=184 HCE - 2010.020 - 2010/12/31 =========================== - Chg:0000 GE It should no longer be possible to drag the Group and Unit windows tall enough that the game crashes. To make this happen a verticle resolution > 1080 pixels was needed for me. I accomplished that by placing dual monitors one above the other in my Windows screen settings. (thanks Mr. Faustinelli)

Yep, and we read every wish and weigh them in picking and choosing what to work on.

The ANW scenario editor is fine on 64-bit operating systems. There have been some display color issues with ANW but most everyone has been able to work around them and most if not all of them are being dealt with in a patch. As for HC I'll mention one last time (to you) the potential to run the SE that opens up if you do an in place upgrade to the Professional version of Windows 7 so that you can run the XP mode and consequently the SE.

The dreaded words I never want to hear in instructions or when suggesting changes my 2 cents...

1) Altitude doesn't matter like throttle setting does. As a result High is the most efficient setting for most aircraft in the game (they'll burn the Cruise amount of fuel at High but go faster at High than at Medium where Cruise amount of fuel is still burned per second). 2) That means the unit with the symbol is feeling the effects of active radar jamming. There are two active radar jamming methods in HCE, standoff and escort jamming. Standoff jamming is when the jamming plane/ship/... decreases the detection range of searching radars. The closer the jammer is to the radar, the more severe the effect (as a rough rule) and the longer the listed range of the jammer, the more effect it will have (read the jammer range as a relative 'power level', not as a range). Escort jamming is when the jamming plane is trying to shield nearby friendly units. This makes it tough for a radar to detect only the units close to the jammer. The closer the jammer is to the planes it is shielding, the more complete the effect. Unlike in previous HC versions, the jammer does not need to be in the same group as any planes it is protecting. The HCE model as you can probably guess is much more potent. 3) It was purposefully changed to the fire and loiter. I don't like it, I didn't do it, but I also haven't undone it (yet).

While I did expect you to play bad cop to my good cop, that wasn't exactly what I imagined . Brad's argument against ease in pausing is supposed to be that pausing breaks both the real feel of pressure AND takes a big chunk out of one of the bigger tools a scenario designer has, overwhelming the player. And I hear pause is for pansies, LOL

With the in-progress and upcoming changes to the GE for multi-sides play there is a very real possibility the Staff Assistant will be updated. With the potential for the player to control multiple sides the Staff Assistant will have to indicate what side each message is for. I think he'll be brought at least into the late 1990s UI land. The changes should allow things like the insta-pause button. Don't get all excited for all of your Staff Assistant dreams to come true though. While the changes will contain the framework for much rejoicing I don't hate him as much as most people so the further refinement may take a very long time unless some more programmers with a thing against the Staff Assistant emerge. My goal will be to replicate the existing behavior but expanded to multiple-sides. The pause button may be an easy capability to add at that point and if it is I'll probably throw it in.

Welcome to the game. The text is supposed to be there but the main focus was the links to the images. The text should have been rewritten but obviously was not. Anyway, with the game closed you can go to the ExportDLLs subdirectory of your HUCE installation (be default C:\Matrix Games\HUCE\ExportDLLs) and rename DigMilArt.dll to some other extension like DigMilArt.dll.bak. The next time you start the game it will not appear. If you need more assistance, feel free to ask.

I don't know why Rene but it seems to be universal. The vendor of this forum software has seen a 30% or so increase in the spambot registrations since the beginning of the year. Unfortunately we're a version behind here so I had to hack the forum code to add that little extra verification but it works in testing.