How to play the tutorial?

[lonetrav]

Update!!!
Meanwhile I've discovered that the issue has nothing to do with the browser, but with the format of the tutorial file and that Win10 can't interpret HLP files. I know there are workarounds, and I can help myself.
By the way, the old shareware version did contain a real manual for SE3. Perhaps Steam could include this freely available doc file in its SE3 download? This manual came with a written tutorial included which is probably identical with the HLP tutorial.
The manual can still be downloaded (search for "space empires 3 manual").
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When I launch the tutorial, a game screen is displayed, and then an MS Edge window pops up with an error message - no surprise, I'm not using Edge.
Assuming that the game is trying to launch a browser-based tutorial - how can I access it in, say, Firefox? Could you provide the link, please?
Or am I wrong?

Anyway - thanks for making these two games available. What about part 2?

PS: By the way, I noticed that the strategy guide says SE2!

[lonetrav]

For those who I have managed to confuse by my post above (I should have investigated the issue better before posting):

- SE3 offers an in-game tutorial, which doesn't work in Win10 anymore. The reason is that the tutorial file is an HLP file, which Win10 can't read.
- There are tools available which can read or convert (for example to CHM or PDF) HLP files, including freeware or shareware software. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm pretty sure that the Win3.1 emulation version of DOSBox can read HLP files, too. And an XP virtual machine should also work.
But all these tools don't give you in-game access to the tutorial (unless you can run the whole game in DOSBoxWin or Virtual XP, which I haven't tried) ...
- ... which is a shame, as it's one of the best tutorials I've ever seen (contentwise). It takes you through the first more than 10 moves of a pre-configured game in a very detailed manner, providing lots of additional information and explanations.
- Luckily there is a workaround: The shareware version of SE3, which can easily be found and downloaded contains the same tutorial in DOC format (included in the game manual). Just load the tutorial game, open the DOC file in a separate window, do what the tutorial tells you to do and read the accompanying text. Unfortunately you have to switch between the game and the DOC window all the time, but it's worth it in my mind.

What I don't understand is why Steam replaced the game manual included in the shareware version by a strategy guide for SE2 (yes, SE2, not SE3). The strategy guide is a good one, too, and applicable to SE3, up to a degree, but it can't replace a manual, especially when it's as well written as the real SE3 manual.
Perhaps Steam can include the proper manual in an update of SE3?
Otherwise just download it, it's not difficult to find (and legal to download, as it's included in the shareware version of SE3).

[LarryP]

Where is the frigging dev in this forum?!

[blueoriontiger]

Originally posted by LarryP:

Where is the frigging dev in this forum?!

The "friggin dev" is AWOL and off-grid as far as we know.

I'm part of the original fans for this game, and bought this game back all the way on 2004. As far as I know, Strategy First (the company that released this game on Steam), had a deal to publish Aaron Hall's Space Empires games for him. Unfortunately he signed away the rights to the company, and they wanted him to pay $1,000,000 to get it back. He didn't have that much, so the company retained the rights since.

They've used the Space Empires name to make a 4x tabletop game, which they vehemently slap people in the head when they point out it has graphics from the old PC games, and is just a bastardized version of the PC game. But they are not the "true" developers.

Aaron Hall did work with Strategy First for a few years, but vanished off the face of the Earth around 2010-2011; especially when a domain squatter bought over Malfador Machination's website and uses it now to direct to a gambling app/game. We have zero clue where he is all these years later, much less any contact info.

That said, it would've been his source files that would've been used for these re-releases, so I agree. Where is the dev?

[Axeking]

I would guess that these steam releases are entirely up to Strategy First.

Last activity I have seen from Aaron was on the app he built for iPods...

The game that the SE series is most similar too (especially 2 and 3) is the Starfire board game from Taskforce (now Starfire Design Studio).

My play time on the series is in the thousands of hours... I was a playtester on a couple versions :-). Just wish that we could get an update of SE 3,4 and 5 to run on win 10 properly. But not likely for reasons mentioned by blueoriontiger...

[ThreeSon]

Has anyone found a working link to a manual or guide yet? I've searched everywhere including the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine and found nothing so far, other than this Gamepedia page[gamicus.gamepedia.com], which is only partially useful.

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by ThreeSon:

Has anyone found a working link to a manual or guide yet? I've searched everywhere ...

Everywhere? How about reading the earlier posts of this thread?

[Ceri Cat]

Managed to locate the manual for the newcomers. I'll put it into a guide for people to reference ASAP. I'll also look at converting the help file to something still usable. For now here's a DB link to the manual which was always AFAIK a separate download. https://www.dropbox.com/s/dmqlub044o3oygz/SE3V110.DOC?dl=0

Not a SF employee or Hall, just trying to fix some crap because I was always fondest of SE3.

[Warspite]

I converted the manual to PDF format and it can be downloaded here.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z7bmixbdptztlnu/SE3V110.pdf?dl=0