Anyone play Oolite?

[sloanjh]

I'm currently um-ing and ah-ing over buying Harpoon Commanders Edition from Matrix Games.

I bought the first few versions of Harpoon, although I haven't bought that particular one. Please post a review if you do. One of my most memorable gaming experience was the first scenario in the first Harpoon PC game where you had to escort a pair of cargo ships and got attacked by some missile boats. Aurora is strongly influenced by my Harpoon gaming.

I learned about Harpoon (the minatures rules) from the reference to it in the forward of Red Storm Rising (the book).  I bought the game, and most of the expansions (*sniff* I miss GDW *sniff*).  I actually decided to learn C by coding Harpoon up on my C64 while I was in grad school.  I got it up to the point where I ran a few missile engagements (all text based - no gui) of a Backfire strike on a Ticonderoga-class cruiser.  Then, IIRC, I heard that someone was writing a computer version and my motivation waned :-)

John

[Steve Walmsley]

I learned about Harpoon (the minatures rules) from the reference to it in the forward of Red Storm Rising (the book).  I bought the game, and most of the expansions (*sniff* I miss GDW *sniff*).

I used to enjoy GDW games as well. Looking at games collection (which is always close to hand ), I can see Harpoon, the four WWIII games (The Third World War, Southern Front, Arctic Front and Persian Gulf), the Assault games (Three copies of Assault, two of Chieftan, Bundeswehr, Boots and Saddles), Twilight 2000, Traveller 2300AD, Star Cruiser, Battle Rider, Brilliant Lances and Traveller: The New Era. There are probably some more in storage as well. Harpoon was a great game but I think my favourite GDW games are the WWIII collection. I have set the whole thing up (all four games at once) and played it through twice, although the last time was many years ago.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

Even so, I think Red Storm Rising (the C64 game) was one of my all-time favorites, along with Elite.  

Was that called Red Lightning rather than Red Storm Rising, or am I thinking of a different game?

Elite was certainly one of the most memorable games of all time. It was also my first game on a floppy disk instead of tape and I remember being massively impressed by the 1-2 second load time instead of 7-8 minutes for many of the tape games.

Steve

[Shinanygnz]

Even so, I think Red Storm Rising (the C64 game) was one of my all-time favorites, along with Elite.  

Was that called Red Lightning rather than Red Storm Rising, or am I thinking of a different game?

Elite was certainly one of the most memorable games of all time. It was also my first game on a floppy disk instead of tape and I remember being massively impressed by the 1-2 second load time instead of 7-8 minutes for many of the tape games.

Steve

Different games I think.  Played RL through several times, but never has RSR even though I loved the book.

The Harpoon Commander's Edition is a fully up to date version of the original Amiga game it seems. with all the battlesets and more.  They also do the updated wireframe Harpoon 3 one.  Harpgamer.com has more info.  I am weakening.  Credit cards nearby...

[welchbloke (OP)]

 Thanks to Welchbloke, I finally broke down and downloaded Oolite last week - been spending way too much time in nostalgia-land with it since :wink: I've had to take a rest from Oolite for a couple of weeks (I sure I was becoming obsessed).  All of this renewed discussion, suddenly makes me want to get the laptop out again......

[sloanjh]

 Thanks to Welchbloke, I finally broke down and downloaded Oolite last week - been spending way too much time in nostalgia-land with it since :wink: I've had to take a rest from Oolite for a couple of weeks (I sure I was becoming obsessed).  All of this renewed discussion, suddenly makes me want to get the laptop out again......

I've had to limit my play because my right wrist is starting to flare up  Taking the night off from it....

John

[sloanjh]

Even so, I think Red Storm Rising (the C64 game) was one of my all-time favorites, along with Elite.  

Was that called Red Lightning rather than Red Storm Rising, or am I thinking of a different game?

Elite was certainly one of the most memorable games of all time. It was also my first game on a floppy disk instead of tape and I remember being massively impressed by the 1-2 second load time instead of 7-8 minutes for many of the tape games.

Steve

Different game.  It was an early submarine simulator, similar to 688 attack sub, silent service, dangerous waters, etc.  The title came from the USS Chicago thread of the book.  The nice thing about the game was that it got a really good balance between abstracting away micromanagement details and having various stations where you performed interesting tasks.  IIRC, it had a waterfall sonar station where you'd first acquire possible contacts - you'd have to sprint a ways and look for the contact again to get some idea of the range.  At some point you'd go to a narrow-band station where you'd see a contact's spectrum and try to match it against a library to figure out which class the contact was.  I think it had the computer (i.e. your plotting staff) handling all the Target Motion Analysis, so that was a bit of dull complexity that you weren't forced to manage.  A lot of the excitement came when trying to evade detection or attack (you could give engine and heading commands, and drop decoy noisemakers) - I have a vague memory of hours of fun trying to thread my way through lines of sonobouys and dipping sonars (although I may be getting that part mixed up with Harpoon).

I went googling for it a few years ago in the hopes that someone had ported it to the PC, but no such luck.  Maybe I'll see if I can find an old C64 that still works on EBay - I probably still have the old floppies around somewhere.

John

[Steve Walmsley]

 Thanks to Welchbloke, I finally broke down and downloaded Oolite last week - been spending way too much time in nostalgia-land with it since :wink: I've had to take a rest from Oolite for a couple of weeks (I sure I was becoming obsessed).  All of this renewed discussion, suddenly makes me want to get the laptop out again......

I've had to limit my play because my right wrist is starting to flare up

Steve

[sloanjh]

I am so glad you included a quote with that post

LOL