OK... but I'm still feeling confused because I thought that I did all of my reports pretty much the same way... but, apparently, some (or all) of the rest were "bad" reports for some reason? If so, I guess I'm still missing the distinction. (??)

 

This thread, 40 posts before you created a useable issue report (which ideally you would have linked to in post #41 in this thread).

http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...amp;showbug=197 . It is extremely out of character for us to make it to a post 41 without the goods being provided as it takes a large time expenditure and level of patience, neither of which I'll normally choose for this hobby endeavor.

 

Your Tanker to Base had a usable report on the first post. Plus, I quoted the useful two paragraphs in post #44 of this thread, the rest of the post wasn't germane to the issue and would have ideally been left out. One can't always know what is germane and what isn't but in that particular case I hope it was pretty easy to see that you migrated across multiple issues instead of sticking to one.

 

I think I'm done with this part of this thread, others will have to help clarify if you need more clarification.

Last night, I tried to run several of my game-saves on my "imaginary friend's" installation of Ultimate Edition, and I ran into some problems, raising several questions:

 

First, his installation reports as version 2009.050 - which is the same version as my demo copy reports. Are these actually the same version? (There are some noticable "appearance" differences that showed up right off, so ???)

 

2- The file extension applied by the demo version is ".USNI-hp2", even though the Battleset in use was the WestPac. This raised a question of which Battleset to run the demo under in the Ultimate Edition, where the USNI uses ".hp1" and the WestPac uses ".hpq". (I renamed all my game-saves to ".hpq" and ran them under the WestPac battleset in the UE).

 

3- Apparently, a lot less of the UI configuration gets saved with the game-saves than I was assuming - at least, I had to spend a lot of time re-configuring and re-positioning stuff in order to get a similar presentation on UE. (That makes me wonder if there is some game configuation aspect(s) to the problem of differing results).

 

4- The behavior of the game-saves on that installation of UE was puzzling - to say the least - maybe even bizzarre. First off, the good news is that the behaviors that I was trying to demonstrate via the game-saves behaved generally the same as they do on my demo (although perhaps somewhat less consistently). But the bad news is that there were several totally repeatable, unexpected (and unexplained) behaviors on the UE that I never see on the demo version:

 

a. Shortly after opening the game-saves, all three ships in the Blue group of Hayabushas spontaneously "self-destruct", and I don't see any missiles or torpedoes to explain this.

 

b. Shortly after that, there are about 20 instances of the Staff Assistant dialog stating that group such-and-such is being detected by enemy radar and should turn its own radars on. This is more puzzling because there is no graphical indication of any radar that impinges on all of the reported groups. It sort of gave the impression that something decided that most of the Blue groups were being exposed to some ficticious super-long-range radar... but I didn't investigate that in any great detail, so perhaps there is some explanation that I'm not noticing.

 

c. A little while later, all three units at the Blue FARP spontaneously blow up. I've watched the replays closely and I see no missiles or anything that would account for this.

 

These three effects occur consistently in several of the game-saves (which were originally saved at several points in the same original game)... but they never occur (before or after) when I run the game-saves on my demo installation. (What the heck???)

 

Anyway, before proceeding any further, is there something that I'm likely doing wrong when trying to run these game-saves on UE? If so, I need to get that settled and establish a decent baseline before trying to figure out anything else as far as comparative behaviors.

1- his installation reports as version 2009.050 - which is the same version as my demo copy reports. Are these actually the same version? (There are some noticable "appearance" differences that showed up right off, so ???)

 

2- The file extension applied by the demo version is ".USNI-hp2", even though the Battleset in use was the WestPac. This raised a question of which Battleset to run the demo under in the Ultimate Edition, where the USNI uses ".hp1" and the WestPac uses ".hpq". (I renamed all my game-saves to ".hpq" and ran them under the WestPac battleset in the UE).

 

Anyway, before proceeding any further, is there something that I'm likely doing wrong when trying to run these game-saves on UE? If so, I need to get that settled and establish a decent baseline before trying to figure out anything else as far as comparative behaviors.

 

1- They are the same.

2- There is a reason your demo saves have a different extension than the stock WestPac battleset, the saves are not meant to be exchanged between demo and full game. You need to start the scenarios fresh in the full game, not try to work from a demo save.

OK... but I'm still feeling confused because I thought that I did all of my reports pretty much the same way... but, apparently, some (or all) of the rest were "bad" reports for some reason? If so, I guess I'm still missing the distinction. (??)

 

This thread, 40 posts before you created a useable issue report (which ideally you would have linked to in post #41 in this thread).

http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?a...amp;showbug=197 . It is extremely out of character for us to make it to a post 41 without the goods being provided as it takes a large time expenditure and level of patience, neither of which I'll normally choose for this hobby endeavor.

 

Your Tanker to Base had a usable report on the first post. Plus, I quoted the useful two paragraphs in post #44 of this thread, the rest of the post wasn't germane to the issue and would have ideally been left out. One can't always know what is germane and what isn't but in that particular case I hope it was pretty easy to see that you migrated across multiple issues instead of sticking to one.

 

I think I'm done with this part of this thread, others will have to help clarify if you need more clarification.

 

I certainly regret the confusion that existed in this thread, but in my own defense, let me say that I did not provide any new game-saves until late because, earlier, I thought we were dealing with the issues that were already demonstrated in my earlier game-saves, and therefore there was no need to re-submit them. Later, I realized that you were asking for saves for a new issue of AI missiles hitting 100% - which was not a primary issue in the discussion. So, apparently, you were trying to talk about that, while I was still operating around the other earlier issues. Again, I apologize for the confusion... but that's why I didn't provide anything sooner: I thought it was already there.

 

Regarding linking topics, I'm sorry; yes, I probably should have thought of that... but I didn't, and it's a moot point anyway because I haven't figured out how to link in this forum. In fact, I have a really hard time just finding my way around here at times. Case in point: I don't know where in heck that Tanker to Base report even is now - so that I could go back and try to see what you were saying about it not being germane. (I saw the darned post somewhere yesterday - or the day before - but I can't find hide nor hair of it today. )

 

Call me forum-challenged, but honestly, I'm still trying to figure out what some of the icons in the directories mean! I can't even figure how to sort the posts by date or poster...

 

Bottom line is that I'm more than willing to help with any reasonable requests, and will do so if I understand what you need... but it's painfully clear that we need to somehow get on the same page here.

1- his installation reports as version 2009.050 - which is the same version as my demo copy reports. Are these actually the same version? (There are some noticable "appearance" differences that showed up right off, so ???)

 

2- The file extension applied by the demo version is ".USNI-hp2", even though the Battleset in use was the WestPac. This raised a question of which Battleset to run the demo under in the Ultimate Edition, where the USNI uses ".hp1" and the WestPac uses ".hpq". (I renamed all my game-saves to ".hpq" and ran them under the WestPac battleset in the UE).

 

Anyway, before proceeding any further, is there something that I'm likely doing wrong when trying to run these game-saves on UE? If so, I need to get that settled and establish a decent baseline before trying to figure out anything else as far as comparative behaviors.

 

1- They are the same.

2- There is a reason your demo saves have a different extension than the stock WestPac battleset, the saves are not meant to be exchanged between demo and full game. You need to start the scenarios fresh in the full game, not try to work from a demo save.

 

Then, what good are game-saves?? I thought the whole point of those was to demonstrate/replicate the problem (??) (Man, am I confused!! Must be 'cause it's Friday... )

hehe, probably Friday yes.

 

You don't want to cross-use saves. Use saves from the demo in the demo and saves from the full game in the full game. Don't try to use demo saves in the full game by renaming and vice-versa, they have internal differences as you've found.

hehe, probably Friday yes.

 

You don't want to cross-use saves. Use saves from the demo in the demo and saves from the full game in the full game. Don't try to use demo saves in the full game by renaming and vice-versa, they have internal differences as you've found.

Hmmm... Then there's no way to compare results from my platform to his? Darn! (I was hoping to get an idea of whether the problem is machine-related or not - that is, if it really is specific to my installation for some reason).

 

I guess he'd have to put the demo on his machine, then, in order to make any sort of comparison? Would that risk mucking-up his UE installation in any way? (I'm not sure he'd be willing to risk that, anyway.)

 

Is there anything else (useful) I can do to leverage his set-up to help figure out what's going on? But without risking his UE installation, of course.

 

That also brings up a licensing question: Can he install his UE on two of his computers, concurrently? Or, at least put the demo on another computer, concurrently? If so, we could use another computer for testing, and thus avoid any risk to his primary UE installation.

 

*** Speculation alert! ***

 

BTW, if the format of the game-saves changes from version to version - and seeing mine from the demo produced some rather "interesting" results in the UE version - it makes me wonder if there is any possibility that a demo game-save does not read-back the same as it was written (even in the demo), and thus causes the behaviors to differ from installation to installation? Specifically, I'm thinking of some piece of data that doesn't get saved (and/or doesn't get read-back) yet remains resident in the original installation, causing repeatable results there, but might be a different value in another installation (and would not get updated from the game-save under this situation), and thus could cause the saved game to behave differently from installation to installation? I know, I know... speculation (not to mention grasping at straws) but the question came to mind, and could explain the observations, so I thought I would be worth considering.

hehe, probably Friday yes.

 

You don't want to cross-use saves. Use saves from the demo in the demo and saves from the full game in the full game. Don't try to use demo saves in the full game by renaming and vice-versa, they have internal differences as you've found.

Hmmm... Then there's no way to compare results from my platform to his? Darn! (I was hoping to get an idea of whether the problem is machine-related or not - that is, if it really is specific to my installation for some reason).

 

I guess he'd have to put the demo on his machine, then, in order to make any sort of comparison? Would that risk mucking-up his UE installation in any way? (I'm not sure he'd be willing to risk that, anyway.)

 

Is there anything else (useful) I can do to leverage his set-up to help figure out what's going on? But without risking his UE installation, of course.

 

That also brings up a licensing question: Can he install his UE on two of his computers, concurrently? Or, at least put the demo on another computer, concurrently? If so, we could use another computer for testing, and thus avoid any risk to his primary UE installation.

 

*** Speculation alert! ***

 

BTW, if the format of the game-saves changes from version to version - and seeing mine from the demo produced some rather "interesting" results in the UE version - it makes me wonder if there is any possibility that a demo game-save does not read-back the same as it was written (even in the demo), and thus causes the behaviors to differ from installation to installation? Specifically, I'm thinking of some piece of data that doesn't get saved (and/or doesn't get read-back) yet remains resident in the original installation, causing repeatable results there, but might be a different value in another installation (and would not get updated from the game-save under this situation), and thus could cause the saved game to behave differently from installation to installation? I know, I know... speculation (not to mention grasping at straws) but the question came to mind, and could explain the observations, so I thought I would be worth considering.

 

Ugh, speculation and the answer is no.

 

You recreate the situation in the full game by playing the scenario from the start. If it is so rare that you can only reproduce it once AND in the demo then I'd have to say my resources are better spent on the hundreds of items that are reproduceable every single time. But I think you can reproduce the items, it takes you time.

 

He can install HUE on as many computers as he desires. The idea is that he can only play the game on one computer at a time (one concurrent user).

 

You can install the demo on as many computers as you wish and play them all at the same time. The demo can be installed on the same machine as the full game. I do that and each stores the settings in a different spot in the registry.

That also brings up a licensing question: Can he install his UE on two of his computers, concurrently? Or, at least put the demo on another computer, concurrently? If so, we could use another computer for testing, and thus avoid any risk to his primary UE installation.

 

You recreate the situation in the full game by playing the scenario from the start. If it is so rare that you can only reproduce it once AND in the demo then I'd have to say my resources are better spent on the hundreds of items that are reproduceable every single time. But I think you can reproduce the items, it takes you time.

 

He can install HUE on as many computers as he desires. The idea is that he can only play the game on one computer at a time (one concurrent user).

 

You can install the demo on as many computers as you wish and play them all at the same time. The demo can be installed on the same machine as the full game. I do that and each stores the settings in a different spot in the registry.

 

OK, If I understand correctly, we can legally put the demo on as many machines as we can get our hands on, and compare results... and it won't risk fouling the HUE installation?

 

And, if I understand correctly, he can legally put his HUE on multiple machines - so we can do some testing with a separate copy or two of HUE - so long as we run only one of the copies at any given time, correct?

 

But before doing that exercise of installing HUE, is there any real value to be gained from recreating the situation (if possible) on HUE, or should we focus on wringing-out the issue on demo versions instead?

 

I think he may still have copies of HCE and/or HC Gold, but probably no longer installed. If so, is there any point in fussing with those... and would they also be "safe" to install and use on the same machine with HUE?

OK, If I understand correctly, we can legally put the demo on as many machines as we can get our hands on, and compare results... and it won't risk fouling the HUE installation?

Correct

 

And, if I understand correctly, he can legally put his HUE on multiple machines - so we can do some testing with a separate copy or two of HUE - so long as we run only one of the copies at any given time, correct?

Also correct

 

But before doing that exercise of installing HUE, is there any real value to be gained from recreating the situation (if possible) on HUE, or should we focus on wringing-out the issue on demo versions instead?

The value is when you create very focused test scenarios with HUE so that I don't have to spend as much time debugging. There is also value when the current beta is so far beyond the demo as to make the demo experiences have less value. But we're still in that situation where the 2009.05(2) demo matches up closely with the current version so the demo is still fine from that perspective.

 

I think he may still have copies of HCE and/or HC Gold, but probably no longer installed. If so, is there any point in fussing with those... and would they also be "safe" to install and use on the same machine with HUE?

HCE and HUCE will conflict since they store their settings in the same spot in the registry. The conflict isn't bad but it exists. HC Gold won't conflict (though I don't know why one would want to go back that far).

 

Good questions

The value is when you create very focused test scenarios with HUE so that I don't have to spend as much time debugging. There is also value when the current beta is so far beyond the demo as to make the demo experiences have less value. But we're still in that situation where the 2009.05(2) demo matches up closely with the current version so the demo is still fine from that perspective.

 

I keep forgetting that the demo <> the beta.

 

Question about installing the HUE: My friend was muttering something about HUE taking "a year and a day" to install - I guess because it installs a number of different games and things. If we're only interested in HUCE, can we skip or bypass the other stuff somehow, and what portions would need to be installed for just HUCE testing purposes?

 

HCE and HUCE will conflict since they store their settings in the same spot in the registry. The conflict isn't bad but it exists. HC Gold won't conflict (though I don't know why one would want to go back that far).

Was just wondering whether testing on multiple versions would help to find anything. if not, I won't even bother with those.

Question about installing the HUE: My friend was muttering something about HUE taking "a year and a day" to install - I guess because it installs a number of different games and things. If we're only interested in HUCE, can we skip or bypass the other stuff somehow, and what portions would need to be installed for just HUCE testing purposes?

HUCE is by far the biggest component so you can't save a ton of time. But what time you can save is at the first chance to select what to install you would select to install only Commander's Edition and not the 3 H3/ANW options.

 

HCE and HUCE will conflict since they store their settings in the same spot in the registry. The conflict isn't bad but it exists. HC Gold won't conflict (though I don't know why one would want to go back that far).

Was just wondering whether testing on multiple versions would help to find anything. if not, I won't even bother with those.

 

Testing on HC Gold will provide no benefit to me. It doesn't really help me to know something used to work a different way since to go back and find out why again takes large amounts of time for little or no benefit. Mainly it makes me mad .

Yes, the effect seems to be highly biased "in favor of" the AI side, where I see hit percentages approaching 100% for the AI while approaching 0% for the player's side. I agree that it is not likely due to a failure of the randomizer alone, since there would have to be something that caused the bias - unless it is simply an artifact of the order that the randomizer gets applied. If the random values are applied exactly the same way for both sides, then it's certanly a puzzle - and one that tends to point elsewhere for a cause. I guess I've experienced so much ill at the hands of the randomizer functions that I tend to suspect them of being behind most all problems...

 

I've been playing Harpoon since 1995 or so, and while the game occasionally gets lucky like this, it's definitely not a pattern I can see in the game as an all-the-time thing. Usually, for every group I get blown out of the sky with a few missiles, I blow something of theirs up as easily, usually.

 

I lose more often with the newer DB (EC2003, etc) than with the old, but I win fairly consistently with both.

 

However: What Akula or someone said about holding off the launch a few seconds is exactly right. If you fire at max range, it's not unknown for the AI to jink and outrange the missiles on you. Missiles out of fuel don't hit much. Even Phoenixes. Especially don't fire early on anything with an uncertainty zone. Also, if jammers are up, that will hurt you, especially in old DB scenarios, as those PKs weren't written with that in mind.

 

Also, how does the HUCE version compare with the 'current beta' version? i.e. is it older than the hills, and, if so, can we put in the beta files to bring it up to date?

Also, how does the HUCE version compare with the 'current beta' version? i.e. is it older than the hills, and, if so, can we put in the beta files to bring it up to date?

 

The HUCE version is older than the hills (essentially August/September of 2009). The current beta is not what I'd call a stable beta. It is only good for beta testing, not as your everyday version of HC. You can get away with (kind of) playing as the Blue side in the current beta but playing as Red isn't advised.

2010.006 is expired, so I guess I'll have to deal with 2009.050, as the current beta is *too* experimental.

 

However, any advice as to if it might be better to play the old (fixed DB) battleset games under a certain old version for better results? 1.58e? 1.62b? Or the current HUCE?