Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flaser on May 22, 2003, 11:20:29 am

Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Flaser on May 22, 2003, 11:20:29 am: It was once again suggested that HLP should have a Home World section (if we don't count the guys - and girls - at Apocalypse), that the admins once again had to deny for reasons beyond their control.
However the same signo goes for another great program, albeit not a space-sim simulation, but the next best thing, a sort of glider simulation in one of the best atmospheric environments ever seen.
It's Hard War.

It's the greediest, meanest moth simulation ever written whacked up with a superb economy model.
We dare call it Elite 2 - if not for the feir of the Elite veterans, who prefer to be angels of our galaxy.
For on the surface of Titan, in Misplaced Optimism one thing is sure: There are no angels here.

I guess the community should consider giving it a shot.
There already is a community at Aborwood Forums and now they have a bulletin too, but still HLP would be benefical for them too.
The makers of HWar - Software Refinery - has breaken up, and their grand project was left unfinished.
Brave souls however tempt to get hold of the source code and finish the epic.

That's where our source coder specialists and all-round coders come into play.

Do we care to give them a hand?
Would we like to know their ideas?
As for all the Hard Warers among us, would it be nice to give them a ground of their own?

PS. to any admin: could you make this a sticky please?
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: 01010 on May 22, 2003, 12:21:05 pm: You win my vote for most bizzare post.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: tEAbAG on May 22, 2003, 01:04:06 pm: How is it bizzare? Seems kinda cool to me.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 22, 2003, 01:07:34 pm: This gets my support. HardWar is severely under-rated.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Xavier Lazarus on May 22, 2003, 02:07:35 pm: Indeed it is.

More people need to be able to visit me in my tower, so that I can decipher messages for them.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Unknown Target on May 22, 2003, 02:59:50 pm: it's ugly as hell. I think it looks good in concept, but I can't play it for more than ten minutes at a time before I start to get pissed off at the low-res textures and text that's undecipherable, and the near-impossible-to-learn-without-a-manuel controls.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Flaser on May 22, 2003, 03:12:57 pm: Hard War is hard - there's a reason for the title - but worth the effort.
You should start with contraband trade. Take a big loan, buy as much alcohol or narcotics you can, then start the trade.
Buy a hangar as soon as you can so you don't have to pay for repairs. (with patch 3.x this will be good for several other things)
Get a bigger container, better software - especially power soft. - and first of all a cell 2.
If you work hard you should be able to pay the loan and still make enough money for a Neo-Tiger. Strip down your moth in yout hangar before buying the new moth. Buy the components you need and change them yourself in your own hangar.
Watch out for other people carrying narcotics. If you can snatch their cargo its worth 40.0000 $!!!

And don't buy autopilot soft!! It makes landings slow and clumsy.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 22, 2003, 03:15:31 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Unknown Target
it's ugly as hell. I think it looks good in concept, but I can't play it for more than ten minutes at a time before I start to get pissed off at the low-res textures and text that's undecipherable, and the near-impossible-to-learn-without-a-manuel controls.

I've told you before, you can configure your own controls through the launcher, HardMan.exe.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Unknown Target on May 22, 2003, 03:18:27 pm: I did. Everything's cranked up to max, and it still looks ugly. :p ;)
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 22, 2003, 03:20:28 pm: How queer. Are you sure you're not running it in software? :p

I see from another thread that your system is very similar to mine (same RAM an GFX card anyway), and it looks quite acceptable on my machine.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Rictor on May 22, 2003, 03:38:36 pm: how about a link or something, since it seems like everyone here seems to know whats going on except me.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 22, 2003, 03:40:23 pm: You can have a link to the main HardWar fansite, if you like.

http://zedo.hardwar.org.uk
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Rampage on May 22, 2003, 05:58:35 pm: What the diddily is "Hard War"? I visited the site. Plus, I can't find it in stores! (Eh. Must be a UK thing.)
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Unknown Target on May 22, 2003, 06:31:31 pm: You can get it off of Home Of the Underdogs. But it seems to be missing a few files.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Flaser on May 22, 2003, 06:31:34 pm: Check the first post.
Beside Hardwar is an Elite like game, where you have to gain as much money as possible, while you fly your moth - a flying craft used on the surface of Titan.
You can gain money by trading, scavenging, bounty hunting, or pirating.
Actually you'd be doing most of these if you want to be truly sucessful.

By the way you can get Hardwar free a HOTU:
Home of The Underdogs - Hardwar (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=4234)
This is the no.1 Hardwar community page. (http://zedo.hardwar.org.uk/)

Quote
To anyone asking what Hardwar is check first HOTU, then Captain Zedo's page:
Home of The Underdogs - Hardwar (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=4234)
This is the no.1 Hardwar community page. (http://zedo.hardwar.org.uk/)

I hope that takes care of it - even the -'m gona read last entry guys.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Flaser on May 22, 2003, 06:38:44 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Unknown Target
You can get it off of Home Of the Underdogs. But it seems to be missing a few files.

Actually it's the demo that HOTU is offering.
It's missing videos, and the soundtrack.
The soundtrack is high quality industrial techno - which I can't qualify since I'm not into techno or industrial.
As for the videos - ther are funny FMVs recorded with English(!) actors who speak an accent almost as bad as mine.

You can get the ISO images from someone at the HW community though. I did...
As for me doing something for you...64 kbits/sec, that how much ISDN can handle. So I'm technically not up to uploading the ISOs.
If someone gives me FTP acces I may consider uploading the music - it's only circa 100Mbytes.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 23, 2003, 02:03:33 am: Most of the cutscenes were recorded in Leeds by Gremlin Digital Video, which explains the actors' accents.
On a similar note, listen to the last track to CD2 to hear the team finishing the game.

Oh, and I did find this HardWar forum (http://web16.denver010.server4free.de/hwboard/index.php)
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: HotSnoJ on May 23, 2003, 05:36:49 am: WOW what a HardWar following here at HLP!

Haven't played it for a while though, to much MODing FS and playing FS2. ;7

Quote
What the diddily is "Hard War"? I visited the site. Plus, I can't find it in stores! (Eh. Must be a UK thing.)

Acully it's not just a UK thing. It was marketed in the US but InterPlay (read: CraperPlay) didn't think it would go far and never did a whole lot for it. Think FS and FS2. So then SoftwareRefinery sorta went down the money hole and started to do something else (don't have a clue what it was) but they did make patches for the game. They eventual got to U3 but never completed it and so the latest patch that works well is U2.07.

Recently SoftwareRefinery liquidated all their property and went out of business. (thats why U3 was never finished)
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 23, 2003, 05:51:22 am: I only found the game by looking in a charity shop, and I NEVER saw it in a mainstream game shop like EB or Game.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: J.F.K. on May 23, 2003, 06:50:35 am: Quote
Originally posted by HotSnoJ
It was marketed in the US but InterPlay (read: CraperPlay) didn't think it would go far and never did a whole lot for it. Think FS and FS2.

No wonder I've never heard of the damn thing... :sigh:
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 23, 2003, 10:42:57 am: AFAIK it even had quite a small run in the UK. As you can see, there are only a handful of us here who are HardWar fans, and I believe I'm the only British one.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: tEAbAG on May 23, 2003, 12:38:59 pm: Quote
Originally posted by tEAbAG
How is it bizzare? Seems kinda cool to me.

After reading the review and checking out the fan sites I am changing my statement to:

:drools: :D

I need to get this!
Goddamn my crappy DSL!!
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: HotSnoJ on May 23, 2003, 03:12:02 pm: the one problem however is modding it. The makers didn't give out any info on how to do it so it's very open to speculation. :(
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 23, 2003, 03:19:58 pm: People have started making reskins, though.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: YodaSean on May 23, 2003, 04:34:35 pm: tried downloading it, first it didn't work at all then it told me I tried to download it eight times and I was banned :wtf: Are their any other places to download it?
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Flaser on May 23, 2003, 04:55:29 pm: You must be very careful when downloading from HOTU.

I guess your downloadmanagger tried to accelerate the download by breaking it down and downloading the bits simultaniously.

In HOTU's case this is a serious no-no...

You should download only 1 file - with 1 thread at all times!
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Tiara on May 23, 2003, 05:10:24 pm: :blah:

I downloaded 6 files with a download accalerator and each file was broken up into 8 pieces. 48 files total. Then why did they let me d/l? Because of my dT3? ;7
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: YodaSean on May 23, 2003, 08:29:33 pm: nope, no download manager. Download didn't work the first time, I checked in task manager to make sure it wasn't hiding somewhere, then right clicked and tried saving to disk, and it went nuts :lol: :shaking:

edit: Worked this time, for some reason ie was secretly downloading the zip file without showing me :eek:
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: 01010 on May 24, 2003, 05:42:24 am: Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
AFAIK it even had quite a small run in the UK. As you can see, there are only a handful of us here who are HardWar fans, and I believe I'm the only British one.

You believe wrong. The problem with hardwar is the limited scope that being stuck on the planets surface offers, that and once you get a decent bit of cash the difficulty just drops. I still prefer Frontier: Elite 2.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: 01010 on May 24, 2003, 05:42:24 am: Odd
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 24, 2003, 05:43:44 am: I heard you the first time.:p
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: YodaSean on May 24, 2003, 07:10:38 pm: downloaded it, its a cool game, but which patch do I download? For the latest patch it says the economies screwed up, should I download the one right before that?
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Stryke 9 on May 24, 2003, 07:31:21 pm: Beh, unless you have a tiny-ass hard disk or feel like wasting time playing with partitions just to get one little game working it's a waste of time.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: YodaSean on May 24, 2003, 08:04:07 pm: didn't have that problem on my hardrive on XP(have like 20 free gb). I do remember having that problem on another game on W2K though
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: HotSnoJ on May 24, 2003, 08:49:42 pm: Quote
Originally posted by YodaSean
downloaded it, its a cool game, but which patch do I download? For the latest patch it says the economies screwed up, should I download the one right before that?

Use the 2.07 patch, it's the best, unless you want those new features that are in the U3 series.
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Flaser on May 25, 2003, 07:48:44 am: If you plan on using a 3.x patch - which has many cool features, I recommend 3.4 - for some reason it rarely crashed for me, and beside saving in the right moment is a must be in the ordinary game as well.
NOTE:
-Make sure NOT to save when you've died!
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: YodaSean on May 25, 2003, 03:15:47 pm: ok downloaded 3.4 patch its a really cool game(wish i had the movies and stuff so i knew whats going on though), only problem is my joystick throttle got deactivated with the patch, which makes dogfighting really tough. Any way to fix this??
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 25, 2003, 03:32:06 pm: I've had this problem, anyone have any ideas?
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Flaser on May 25, 2003, 04:17:00 pm: This is a problem specific with this patch.
Go back to 3.3 if you insist using joystick throttle - believe me or not first time I played through the game by keyboard.
Don't use 3.5 because the economy gets really s****d.

I haven't had trouble though with my Skyborg joystick.
Maybe it only affects older - Game port based - sticks.
What stick do you use?
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Flaser on May 26, 2003, 03:16:33 pm: Lookslike this thread turned into a Hardwar discussion forum, however it still leaves my original question open:

Should HLP have a Hardwar section?
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 26, 2003, 03:17:49 pm: Yes!
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: YodaSean on May 26, 2003, 07:48:30 pm: I concur
Title: Not HW, but Hard War?
Post by: Stryke 9 on May 26, 2003, 09:58:47 pm: There's a treatment they can give you for that, you know.