Also, don't let the sizes fool you, since you can strech AOD DOS on a CRT (secondary display) to pretty much make its window fill an entire 20" CRT display.

How's that? What are the main differences? :hmm: Now you got me thinking, I should install vanilla AOD on ol' Retro...

Neal,

AOD DOS has variable pitch sounds for the diesel and electric motors. CAOD uses just a single sound track. CAOD allows you to aim the deck gun. I find the graphics better in AOD; more solid and well defined. CAOD seems to run at an inconsistance rate when it loses windows focus. AOD does not have this problem. CAOD includes a lot of extras like an online manual and interviews with 8 u-boat commanders. That's why I installed it; to watch them.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/marksh...es/caodint.jpg

A good trick with CAOD that works wonders in sharpness of the image is to set for teh desktop exactly double as much resolution (1280x960) as CAOD has natively (640x480). When you go full screen then, the game looks really way better.

But yes, the 3D graphics like ship models somehow look better in AOD than in CAOD. That's the price to pay in CAOD for an overall better resolution that allows much more detailed and easier use of charts, gauges, and other screens. Except exterior views of enemy vessels, CAOD is superior in graphics.

P.S. Mark glad you found the interviews, it's great to hear Silent Otto telling his experiences. What a set of lucky boys his grandsons! Must have been an experience to hear him telling all that many times and being able to ask anything :up:

Well, of SH2 and SH3, CAOD had the best set of interviews.

I'll still be playing AOD DOS. Also, I wasn't too happy with MS VPC 2007 compared to using DOSBOX for DOS games. I tried 1830 (DOS) with VPC. 1830 is business game which is somewhat chess like. I found the graphics to be very slow and jerky. To the point that it destroyed game play. Clearly, the graphics subsystems of DOSBOX is better than VPC. However, VPC does seem to serve up more CPU cycles to the resident game than DOSBOX does (even when running at MAX).

Well, I just received CCAW today (Complete Carriers at War) after trying Matrix's new CAW. I will be installing it under DOSBOX today.

QEMU is also a good and free emulator, but a bit harder to configure, you'd have to play with some text configuration files. Works well with CAOD (using Win98).

I've also heard good things about VMware Server, but never tried it. No cost, but you have to register to get the download.

I posted a whole set screen shots for the classic Complete Carriers at War if anyone is interested in seeing them here:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1498311

Ah yes, the old AOD vs CAOD debate. I always remembered that AOD was the way to go with 'real' players.
Personaly I'm still playing AOD using DOSBox. :up:
And to those that say DOSBox is complicated to configure (I agree), don't forget about the frontends!
I'm using D.O.G. that makes all DOSBox configurations (screen resolution, CD drive location, sound, CPU speed etc...) a breeze! http://www.freewebs.com/erikgg/

Long live classic gaming, when gameplay was more important then eye candy!:rock:

btw I also have Fast Attack but without the manual, I'm a little clueless about certain things...
Anybody have a magic link to the manual by any chance?

Try www.replacementdocs.com - they have manuals for quite a few older games.

I, also, use DOSBOX all the time. What a great piece of software. For those who think it is too technically complicated, they probably have no idea as to what trouble we really went through with DOS to get games to run: memory managers, disk compression technology, interrupt handlers, etc...

I remember having a menu of various boot configurations which would came up depending on which game I wanted to play.

Actually, many of these older games are enhanced by being able to run them under Windows.

You have the full use of your PC for other things now while playing.

You can manipulate auto-saves and other things to develop background game checkpointing facilities.

Since DOS games tend to be very menu/keystroke intensive, they work much better with gaming programmable keyboards like Logitech's G-15 series, ...

You can run in a Window on a second monitor when the game has gotten kind of uninteresting ... do something else ... and keep your eye on the game.

I've even played AOD DOS when it was stuck on 64X compression while returning to base ... put AOD in a window ... and play 1830 (an old DOS stock trading game) in another window on another monitor on a separate processor while my u-boat made the long trip back to France. With true DOS, I guess I would have been sitting in front of my PC reading a book for a few hours.

Yup thanks for the link Mark, I love that site! But nothing for Fast Attack.
I think that official manual is very rare indeed...I'll keep searching.:ping:

I've been looking for the Fast Attack manual as well but no luck so far =\

Any news?:hmm:

You guys still looking for a Fast Attack manual? I ended up buying another copy of FA off of eBay but this copy came with the box AND the manual. I'll get around to scanning it this weekend - it's about 80 pages, brief but it will fill in the gaps you have about operating the various stations.