Guys,

 

watching the HUE coming out and looking forward to Christmas, it is a nice time for reflecting over the "game" which excites us so much. Not about H3 ANW, that´s a totally different story, but about Harpoon Classic.

 

While in the last two years I´ve focused on H3 ANW and not written a single HCE scenario (shame on me but I´ll do it better in 2011 - promised), I never lost contact to HCE and to Harpgamer.

 

Since a few weeks, I have returned full scale, enjoying donaldseadog´s latest scen, having fun whenever I start HCE. And getting "that same old feeling".

 

Why is that so? Why is it so fascinating to play a sim which...

 

...uses an very old 16-bit scenario editor

...uses pixel maps giving horrible graphics when zoomed out

...cannot start scenarios with aircraft airborne (this one is really serious and game-narrowing)

...denies a lot of micromanagement ANW offers

 

Why is HCE marching on and on and ANW always on the brink of defeat?

 

Following the reasons coming to my mind:

 

1. Tony is an excellent developer moving the sim forward step by step. And not losing in a jungle, creating game stopping bugs and weird behaviour. Thanks, Tony!

 

2. The HC3 are a working core team, pushing it forward. Thanks, core team!

 

3. There are lots of excellent databases, created by Brad and Rene. In fact, HCE has far more good databases than ANW, regularly mainatained an on a very high level. Thanks, Brad and Rene!

 

4. The game engine/AI is REALLY nasty! I have detailed experience with ANW, with GCB2 and Fleet Command (which btw is really fascinating and worth a try from time to time - good fighting atmosphere). In HCE hostile units are mean and dangerous.

 

5. The GUI may be old and technologically outdated. But it is good because it is intuitive.

 

6. Maybe this is the main strongpoint: HCE is "easy too learn and hard to master" as it was once advertised. You can write challenging scens in a few hours. No way to achieve this in other sims.

 

7. The community lives, produces content - and is decent. There may be some arguments from time to time but in all this one really works.

 

So there are very good reasons why HCE exists since 20 years (!!!) and will march on.

 

I´ll always remain a true fan of it. I´ll restart writing content, no way to stay clear of this After all, I think one of my scens is the most-often-downloaded-one in history

 

Thanks again to Tony, Brad, Scott and Rene.

 

Regards,

Ralf

Thank you very much!

Thank you Ralf, SHUK.

 

Ralf, I've made a good pile of game killing bugs the last couple of months but thankfully some beta testers are hanging in there and helping us through. The reasons for the bugs are massive improvements to the guts of the game that should make 2011 a really good game for those that love HC.

 

I'm still impressed by the scenarios we put together for the revised USNI demo/game demo. We'll have to toss them into the full game in a future patch since they are a really nice grouping of scens.

 

Now if I can manage to take a day (two?) to get some good playing done over the Christmas break I could be an even happier guy .

 

Thanks again and enjoy your time with the game; I often forget to play but one really shouldn't!