Retro Viator Posted November 21, 2021 Report Share Posted November 21, 2021 Though I'm no expert, I have done my best to put together a history of Harpoon. It's posted at my blog: Harpoon – Retro Viator. I have had a wonderful time pouring through old forums, abandoned websites (thanks to the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine), and reading through manuals and strategy guides. Besides, this gave me an excuse to pick up all the boxed Harpoon software I could find! If you notice any egress errors or omissions, please let me know in the comments. Thank you! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted November 21, 2021 Report Share Posted November 21, 2021 Awesome, I'll have to add links to your site a in a few places. Thank you for sharing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byron Posted November 21, 2021 Report Share Posted November 21, 2021 5 hours ago, Retro Viator said: Though I'm no expert, I have done my best to put together a history of Harpoon. It's posted at my blog: Harpoon – Retro Viator. I have had a wonderful time pouring through old forums, abandoned websites (thanks to the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine), and reading through manuals and strategy guides. Besides, this gave me an excuse to pick up all the boxed Harpoon software I could find! If you notice any egress errors or omissions, please let me know in the comments. Thank you! Excellent work! You must have spent a lot of time digging through the Wayback machine to find all those bits and pieces. And you're dead right: this game would have died many years ago without the hard work of a lot of gamers who pretty much did it for the love of the game. Some of my best and oldest friends were made over IRC and talking Harpoon and that's pretty much how it was kept alive. Again, nicely done! Byron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CV32 Posted November 22, 2021 Report Share Posted November 22, 2021 22 hours ago, Retro Viator said: Though I'm no expert, I have done my best to put together a history of Harpoon. It's posted at my blog: Harpoon – Retro Viator. I have had a wonderful time pouring through old forums, abandoned websites (thanks to the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine), and reading through manuals and strategy guides. Besides, this gave me an excuse to pick up all the boxed Harpoon software I could find! If you notice any egress errors or omissions, please let me know in the comments. Thank you! Excellent piece of work. I would note that this comment - "By mid-2013, essentially all community-driven Harpoon database and scenario work had ended." - is more about Harpoon 3/ANW than about the Harpoon Classic/HCE stream. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Viator Posted November 22, 2021 Author Report Share Posted November 22, 2021 1 hour ago, CV32 said: I would note that this comment - "By mid-2013, essentially all community-driven Harpoon database and scenario work had ended." - is more about Harpoon 3/ANW than about the Harpoon Classic/HCE stream. Ah, good point… as evidenced by this very forum, of course! I have made the correction. It now reads “By mid-2013, essentially all community-driven Harpoon 3 database and scenario work had ended; however, there was some ongoing contributions for the Harpoon Classic / Commander’s Edition platform.” Thank you all for your kind words. This was an intimidating project because many of you have devoted years to Harpoon, and I wanted to get it right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted November 22, 2021 Report Share Posted November 22, 2021 I'll have some suggestions as well but don't have them worked up yet. There seems to be some mixing of the HC and H2 lineages in the section including and around Harpoon 3. The introduction of my involvement can hopefully be modified as well. From a 30 year simulation perspective, I came in with Bret and Byron, and Saul, and Ed but in reality they did all of the lobbying and wrote HC2002 before I even caught wind. I was a lowly beta tester happy to help out. I made a post with photo earlier in this thread mentioning EC2000 being released with a WinHarp (16-bit Windows) just before Harpoon 97 was released. I think you missed that particular release in your anthology. Thanks again, at some point I'll get my more detailed observations assembed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byron Posted November 22, 2021 Report Share Posted November 22, 2021 I didn’t write a thing other than a world class snivel to Don to convince him to hand over the source code to a bunch of gamers he’d never met 😉 Of course, that made me the perfect project manager 😁 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Viator Posted November 23, 2021 Author Report Share Posted November 23, 2021 9 hours ago, TonyE said: I'll have some suggestions as well but don't have them worked up yet. There seems to be some mixing of the HC and H2 lineages in the section including and around Harpoon 3. The introduction of my involvement can hopefully be modified as well. From a 30 year simulation perspective, I came in with Bret and Byron, and Saul, and Ed but in reality they did all of the lobbying and wrote HC2002 before I even caught wind. I was a lowly beta tester happy to help out. I made a post with photo earlier in this thread mentioning EC2000 being released with a WinHarp (16-bit Windows) just before Harpoon 97 was released. I think you missed that particular release in your anthology. Thanks again, at some point I'll get my more detailed observations assembed. Thank you! I'll look forward to your additions. I struggled to piece together the confusing goings-on in the early 2000s. I would appreciate any help cleaning up that period. I believe I pulled some of my info from a post providing information from Byron years ago: OT-Harpoon 2002 Gold - Front Office Football Central (osftw.com), but looking at that again, I can see I missed some things. Speaking of missing things... You're right about me missing a version of Harpoon between Classic (1.5) and Harpoon 97. I see WinHarp (1.62) is listed in Harpoon Ultimate (thanks to you I see) but it won't run on Windows 10, so I couldn't ascertain the difference between it and Harpoon 97 (1.63). Was WinHarp as beta of sorts? I really appreciate being able to get first-hand info from those directly involved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted November 23, 2021 Report Share Posted November 23, 2021 1 hour ago, Retro Viator said: Speaking of missing things... You're right about me missing a version of Harpoon between Classic (1.5) and Harpoon 97. I see WinHarp (1.62) is listed in Harpoon Ultimate (thanks to you I see) but it won't run on Windows 10, so I couldn't ascertain the difference between it and Harpoon 97 (1.63). Was WinHarp as beta of sorts? 1.62 is still Harpoon Classic, it just happens to be a 16-bit Windows application that could run on Windows 3.1, 95, ... so any 16 or 32-bit version of Windows version 3.1 or newer (cue somebody making it run on 3.0!). Here is a composite of three screenshots showing both the version and that EC2000 was included. Note that like earlier Harpoon Classic versions, it has the fixed layout of windows as opposed to Harpoon 97 where you can resize and re-arrange the Group, Unit, Strategic Map, and Report Window. Harpoon 97 marked the conversion of the Game Engine (GE) to be a 32-bit application meant for Windows 95 and newer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Viator Posted November 24, 2021 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2021 20 hours ago, TonyE said: 1.62 is still Harpoon Classic, it just happens to be a 16-bit Windows application that could run on Windows 3.1, 95, ... so any 16 or 32-bit version of Windows version 3.1 or newer (cue somebody making it run on 3.0!). Here is a composite of three screenshots showing both the version and that EC2000 was included. Note that like earlier Harpoon Classic versions, it has the fixed layout of windows as opposed to Harpoon 97 where you can resize and re-arrange the Group, Unit, Strategic Map, and Report Window. Harpoon 97 marked the conversion of the Game Engine (GE) to be a 32-bit application meant for Windows 95 and newer. That's good to know! If 1.62 was still Classic, does that mean it was developed by Alliance Interactive prior to Interactive Magic entering the scene? If so, is it safe to say the Alliance was already working on the Windows version of Harpoon before they ran into financial trouble, and Interactive Magic picked up where they left off? Do you know what year that was by chance? I know 1.5 came out in '94 and Classic 97 in November '96. I would guess earlier in '96. Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyE Posted November 24, 2021 Report Share Posted November 24, 2021 1.62 was still Classic, splash screen shows both Alliance Interactive and ACSI. The Advanced Scenario Design Workshop created the EC2000 BattleSets. It was released in 1996 just like HC97. You get an extra hint of that on the back of the HC97 box where it says copyright 1994, 1996 Alliance Interactive, Inc. While just a guess, my thinking is that the 1.62B release was mostly coded in 1994 and just had to wait for EC2000 to be ready to be packaged. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Viator Posted November 24, 2021 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2021 That makes sense to me. I incorporated these corrections. And, unless you object of course, I snagged your screen shot (described as "courtesy of Tony Eischens"). So, the update impacts the Harpoon Classic and Harpoon Classic 2002 sections--along with adding WinHarp to the product timeline. Thanks for making the post better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CV32 Posted November 24, 2021 Report Share Posted November 24, 2021 You came to the right place for the info. 😀 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byron Posted November 24, 2021 Report Share Posted November 24, 2021 Not sure if you came across this page during your research but this was a very good Classics site back in the day, owned by my good friend, now passed on, Ed Ladner. Lots of bios for old Harpooners from back in the day, including those who won Pooner awards until this ended. https://www.harpoonpages.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Viator Posted November 24, 2021 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2021 8 hours ago, Byron said: Not sure if you came across this page during your research but this was a very good Classics site back in the day, owned by my good friend, now passed on, Ed Ladner. Lots of bios for old Harpooners from back in the day, including those who won Pooner awards until this ended. https://www.harpoonpages.com/ Yes, this site was VERY helpful! I added a mention to Ed Ladner's original HULL site in my last round of rewrites. 9 hours ago, CV32 said: You came to the right place for the info. 😀 No kidding! This has been a blessing. I was not expecting so many of the notable Harpooners in one place. You gentlemen have earned your reputation. I'm trying to decide if Don Gilman would find it enjoyable to read through an attempt at capturing the past, or perhaps he closed the door when he shut down AGSI. Any thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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