Discussion Group-- http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/ Website-- http://linetap.com/www/drg/SPCamo.htm Sponsored by Shrapnel Games © Game Guide

Last Updated March, 2012

© 2012 The Camo Workshop

Introduction

What is WinSPWW2?

WinSPWW2 ( Windows, Steel Panthers, World War 2 ) is a combined arms tactical level World War 2 historical wargame derived from SSI's Steel Panthers: Modern Battles ( SP2 ) code. .

Its time frame covers 1930 to 1946. WinSPWW2 has 33 nation's forces available for historical or "what-if" experimental battles plus 3 "spare" nations for player development .The game uses hexagons and is an alternating turn based (I go you go or IGOUGO) design.

One unit playing piece represents one vehicle or gun, or an infantry section or squad of up to 19 men or a section of 1 to 4 support weapons. Therefore, 1 machine gun or mortar "piece" CAN represent 2 or 3 actual MG or mortars.

One game hexagon represents 50 metres of terrain.

One game move (player 1 turn plus player 2 turn) represents roughly 3 minutes of 'real time'.

For the full details of the developments over the original Steel Panthers 2 game, please refer to the Development History section.

Using the Game Guide

This Guide is designed to be Viewed on 1152x864 wide or wider monitor display settings. If you have trouble reading the text at this display size or to view the guide without a scrollbar at the bottom you may need to adjust the "Text Size" in the "View" Tab of Internet Explorer. To use it in a 640 wide mode, it is best to open the guide up, then use the "open in new window" trick mentioned below to view the right pane only, keeping the original 2 pane view for navigation. If you do not know how to set your monitor display, refer to your Microsoft Windows Help documentation.

Point at the heading bars in the left frame with the mouse, on clicking there the sub headings list will drop down, click a sub heading to go to that section. (IE 5, right click on the subtopic, select 'open in new window' , should you want to open up a second window, e.g. to compare 2 sections of the guide). To find a particular word in the main text, use your browser's search facility, with IE5 this is under 'Edit/Find on this Page', but ensure you clicked on the right (this) pane first, or it will just search the left (Table Of Contents) pane.

Important Point, The majority of this guide uses English spellings, with some exceptions, therefore if you are used to some variant on English spelling (American or Australian, for example), remember to search using English spellings [e.g. 'armour' not 'armor', 'colour', not 'color' and 'ised' not 'ized'] first. Obviously American designations will be used where American units are being discussed (e.g. armored cavalry).

Remember that your browser's 'Back' button will take you back to where you were previously, e.g. after jumping to a new section. (Please note that to link to any external URL link in this guide, you will require to be online at that time, as this HTML cannot start up the Windows Dial Up Connection - this is subject to your Windows setup on your own machine).

Game Requirements

Windows 95,98, ME, Windows2000, XP Vista or Windows 7. DirectX 5 or higher installed.

Recommended CPU would be a Pentium 2 of 500 MHz or better, DirectX 8.1 or better, and a video card (3D DirectX features are not used) with 32MB of on board video RAM. A basic Windows sound card will suffice for the MP3 sound .

The minimum specification system tested was a Pentium I 233MHz Running Windows 95, DirectX 5, 48MB RAM, STB Nitro 3D graphics card (Circa 1997 according to the video drivers, video RAM size not known). This played the game Ok at 640 pixels wide full screen mode, however response was unacceptable at 1024 pixels game resolution.

The main development machine is a Windows 98 Pentium 2 450 MHz Dell of 1998 vintage with DirectX 8.1 installed. Ram is 128MB, video card is an NVIDIA RIVA TNT 2 Model 64 with 32MB of video RAM. This system will play the game fine at 1152 windowed or full screen, and will play it at up to 1600 mode full screen though performance gets a bit "choppy" there especially with larger battles.

The other development machines were a Windows XP machine with an AMD Athlon 1900, 256MB RAM, fitted with a 128MB RADEON 19200 with 128MB of VRAM installed and DirectX 9 and a Dell Dimension 4100 WinME machine with a Pentium III 800 and 128 MB RAM using a ATI Rage 128 Pro video card and DirectX 9. The game runs fine in 1600x1200 windowed mode on both these systems.

Game Installation

This game is a complete stand-alone product. It is not a patch to be applied over any other SP series game.

Double click on the installation programme, this is an Install Creator scripted install. Read and follow the instructions presented to you by this programme. Also, ensure that you read any late breaking news in the readme.txt file which may be presented to you as an option by the installer.

## Windows Vista or later installation

If you are running the game under Vista or Windows 7, install the game to a separate Games folder (directory), DO NOT install the game in the default Program Files folder (Vista or Windows 7 only -XP and earlier it is OK to install under Program Files). However you will need to remember this new path when installing any patches.

This new folder must be outside the “Program Files” hierarchy, in order to avoid Vista and later operating system’s attempts to “manage” the game files in what it considers to be a “system” area.

The simplest way to do this would be to edit the default installation location line the installer uses by removing \Program files, so change this...

C:\Program Files\Shrapnel Games\The Camo Workshop\WinSPWW2

to this...

C:\Shrapnel Games\The Camo Workshop\WinSPWW2

However, you may be happier with something like

C:\Games\WinSPWW2

Use Windows Explorer to create this before running the installer, or the appropriate ‘make new folder’ control in the installer’s navigation screen, as you prefer.

## Game Patch installation

After installing the base package, you must then install each of the patches for the game in order. If you have used a different installation path that the default (Which Vista and Seven users must do), then remember to point the installer at the appropriate folder.

The patches can be found at
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Workshop/WW2/WW2_page.html

in the ‘Downloads’ section.

Running WinSPWW2 from the GameOptions Programme

The default installation will place a shortcut for the GameOptions programmes on your desktop. We HIGHLY recommend starting the game via the GameOptions programme at all times.

This game will use a lot of Windows memory, so it is best if you run it on its own, bar any use of your browser to read the game manual. It wants "real RAM" and so it is best to start any other memory hogs after launching the game, should you wish to try say some word-processing or spreadsheet programme - start these after the game is launched.

Please also refer to the Tuning Your Machine section after reading through this section.

Before attempting to play the game in WINDOWED MODE first ensure that you do not, repeat do not have your windows task bar set to "Auto-Hide" mode. Right click your task bar, choose "properties" and ensure that The Auto Hide check box is not checked!. Auto hide, if on, will confuse the game's calls to the windows system metrics routines, and a false result will be returned for the desktop size. As well, you should also ONLY run the taskbar from the bottom of your screen while playing in WINDOWED MODE. DO NOT run it from the side or top of the screen.

These are simple restrictions to make the game happy. NO autohide and DO NOT run a taskbar from the top or side of your screen.

These restrictions DO NOT apply to fullscreen mode

Game Options Programme

The Game Options programme allows you to preset some of the more common game preferences and access to our utility programs

Game Options, Tab 1 ( Main )

Show Introduction- Turns the start up splash screen on or off.

Game Mode-Sets up the game to start in as a Window or Full screen and to use Direct X or GDI. GDI may be useful in some windows emulators e.g. on Linux. Normally DirectX is recommended but testing has revealed that GDI works better when the game is run in Windowed mode with MS Vista or Windows 7 because If directx mode is chosen the Windows Aero system will still scramble the palette when you alt-tab to another programme and the game is minimised to the task bar. On restoring the game later the palette will be scrambled. However, with GDI mode, this problem does not occur, and so the GameOptions launcher now selects GDI mode for windowed game play and DirectX mode is disabled for Windowed mode when gameoptions finds Vista or Win7 on start up

Screen/Window Size- Set to 640x480 or 800x600. If you own the CD with the game enhancements you can additionally set the screen resolution to 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024 and 1600x1280. The maximum game resolution is determined by your systems display resolution. If you have your monitor set to 1152x864 then that is the maximum size for the game as well. for CD owners a new setting named " Desktop" that , when set, automatically adjusts the game to fit the resolution your computer is currently set to and is particularly useful for widescreen monitors.

Default battle pairing- Choose your standard battle opponents here for when setting up a battle once the game starts.

Battle Date- Presets the default battle date that appears for generated battles. Note that if the chosen date is out of range for the pair of nations selected then the game will choose a suitable default battle date which is in range for both. Click HERE for the list of nation availability dates.

Windows Vista or greater / Windows XP or earlier- Shows the operating system you have. This information is read and used by Gameoptions to determine the best way for it to run the game depending on what operating system you are using and if you are running windowed or fullscreen mode

Play WinSPWW2- Starts the game, closing the Options Programme, with the options as you have set up here.

Exit- Exits Game Options, saves the game settings you chose, but does not play the game.

Game Options, Tab 2 ( Misc )

Map Scroll Sensitivity Zone- Sets how close to the edge of the map window the auto-scrolling starts to move the map. Set this to 0 if you do not like mouse map-edge scrolling. (NB - Mouse scrolling is not checked for in the edge portions of the map covered by the mini-map display).

Scroll speed- Sets how fast the scrolling works. Different machines and players will need different settings for optimal useage. 0 is scroll as fast as possible.

Show ID Numbers- Sets the game to show the unit and formation numbers in the game. Generally this is for OOB designers use, but it is very useful for reporting bugs to the design team, as you can then say "Unit 123 - Sherman V" which will point us to the exact unit in question, especially if there are several Sherman V's in that OOB.

Show most ranges in- Set the game to report ranges in Hexes, Yards or Metres.

Shotgun V-Hex%- Set's how often you will get the The Camo Workshop individual Victory hexes routine and how often the tradition 3 x 7 V hex clusters will appear

Interface Mouse Click- Turns ON or OFF the mouse sound F/X that are used when clicking on the various buttons etc in the game

Graphics Delay- This adjusts the minimum wait between screen frames in Milliseconds ( zero is fastest ). Use larger numbers to slow down fast CPU's

Unit Move Delay- This adjusts how long a unit "waits" on a hex in a multi hex move. If you feel the movement is too slow turn this number down. If you have a fast CPU and the units are moving too fast for your taste adjust this number higher

Reset Default settings- Resets all settings to "factory spec"

GameOptions, Tab 3 ( Utilities )

PBEM Games - Clicking on this opens the \WinSPWW2\PBEM Games folder with Windows Explorer and allows PBEM players easy access to their PBEM files for zipping and sending to their opponents.

Tournament Games - Allows Tournament organizers easy access to the Tournament folder when sending out their games. This is only operational in the extend features CD version

Manage OOB Sets - This is a wonderful new feature for WinSPWW2 that allows players to store an infinite number of custom OOB sets and load them into the game anytime they want and be able to restore the default OOB's just as easily. It is no longer necessary to juggle custom OOB's that may come with a PBEM or Tournament game or even a special OOB for a scenario. The procedure is fast and simple. First click on "Manage OOB Sets and this screen will appear

Next, click on the "Pick Custom OOB set" button and this screen will appear...

The game is issued with one folder as an example. The custom OOB's would be inside this or any other folder found under \Game Data\OOBs\Custom OOBS There are NO custom OOB's in there when you first open the game now but this is where you would create the folders to hold them.

You do NOT need to make a complete set of OOBs. It can be as little as one OOB. This example below has four custom OOB's

To load a custom set all you need to do is click on ONE of the OOBs then press the OPEN button. When you do this screen appears

Now press the INSTALL button and this screen will appear

Click on Yes and this screen will appear

Your custom OOB's will now load when you start the game!

When you want to restore the default OOB's ( always a good idea when playing a scenario or campaign!) the procedure is quite simple.

Start up the OOB manager and when the screen loads click on the button , answer Yes when the confirmation screen appears and all the default game OOB's will be reloaded.

You can add as many custom OOB folders as you can keep track of and name the folders whatever you like so you could have something like this after playing the game for awhile

There is no limit to the number of sets you can have on hand to load into the game and restoring the as-issued set is a button click away. You can edit the OOB's with MoBHack and save them with the SAVE AS button into the custom OOB folders. You can also run the cost calculator from the custom folders on individual OOB's. You CANNOT run batch calc on custom sets unless you do it from the main OOB folder. You can always restore the as-issued set afterwards as they are stored in another folder.

NEVER MoBHack the set of OOB's in the DEFAULT OOB's folder.

ALWAYS use the games set in the regular OOB folder as a starting point. Even if you feel the need to alter most or all of the OOB's for one reason of the other you should store them in a custom folder and load them into your game from there.

MoBHack OOB editor - Allows you access to our OOB editor. For more information on MoBHack please return to the GameOptions screen and click on the HELP tab then "MoBHack Help"

OOB Cost Calculator - Allows you to run the OOB cost calculator program . For more information on The OOB Cost Calculator please return to the GameOptions screen and click on the HELP tab then "MoBHack Help". When that help file appears click on "Running the Cost Calculator"

Extended map editor - Allows access to the new extended map editor with cut and paste capability only available as an extra feature on the CD. For more information on the new Map Editor click HERE

ScenHack scenario Utility - A utility for scenario maintenance that allows players to delete, move scenarios to another scenario slot (i.e. renumber), or to copy an existing scenario to another slot as well as providing extensive repair and editing functions for existing scenarios as an extra feature on the CD. For more information on the new Map Editor click HERE

CampaignHack Campaign Utility - Allows the conversion of existing DOS based campaigns to work with WinSPWW2 and allows the extraction of a campaigns scenarios into the scenario menu for alteration. Previous to this it was impossible to alter existing scenarios in a campaign without having the original scenarios in their original slots as an extra feature on the CD. For more information on the new Map Editor click HERE

GameOptions, Tab 4 ( Help)

Game Documentation: Game Manual- Start up the Game Guide from here

Running The Programme Directly

You can of course run the programme by double clicking the desktop shortcut provided, or the actual EXE in the root folder. This bypases the Game Options programme, and runs with the settings as currently set. If you have your settings exactly as you desire, this is the quick option.

Tuning Your Machine

Windows Vista and Seven Full-screen mode Full-screen mode requires the use of a batch file which turns off the windows desktop and hence the Aero interface which interferes with the game's colour palette. The GameOptions launcher will automatically run the game using this batch (.CMD) file if it detects a windows Vista or later operating system.
Should the Windows desktop not be restored on exit from playing the game full-screen, press CTRL+ALT+ESC to bring up the Windows Task Manager. Start a new task "explorer.exe". Close Task Manager.
Note that under Windows Vista or greater, the ability to ALT+TAB out of the game as with Windows XP or earlier is no longer possible, although any programmes running when you started the batch file session may still be available - perhaps with palette reduced to 256 colour mode. In Vista or later, the batch file that runs the Full Screen game is designed to run the game exclusively. Should you require to work with other programmes (multi-task) while playing the game, then we recommend that CD owners play in "windowed mode" with desktop resolution.
Windowed Mode
The GameOptions launcher now automatically selects GDI mode when running in windowed mode in Vista or later operating systems. The game is fast enough in GDI mode, and no conflicts with the Aero interface will occur ( When DirectX is allowed palette problems can occur as Aero clashes with the 256 colour mode - even if the 256 colour "Compatibility Mode" setting is selected).
Vista/Seven Compatibility mode switches
These are not required to play the game due to the above mentioned batch file that automatically removes explorer during "full screen" mode, and use of GDI mode in "windowed" mode).

The game wants as much real memory as possible, so for optimum performance, especially on lower end machines, try to run the game with as few other windows programmes running in the background as possible. Also, since many other programmes will fragment the main Windows memory, it is often a good idea to reboot the box and start the game as the first thing run. Do not run it in paralell with any other games! - only windows desktop type applications.

Screen Size is the first determinant of horsepower required. The larger the screen size you choose, the more pixels the CPU and graphics card have to push about. Especially with a lower end machine, you will have to find the screen size that suits your hardware's capability. The smaller the screen size you choose, the higher the performance you will get.

In Full Screen mode, only DirectX graphics are supported. The game will play in full screen mode using the resolution you specify. On regular CRT monitors, this is not a problem as the CRT will resize to fit, but on LCD type displays, the fixed pixels of these cannot resize. Different LCD type displays will handle resize requests differently. Some will play full screen modes at less than the native resolution in a "postage stamp" with black pixels to fill up to the native resolution. Some will interpolate the pixels to fit, which can make a fuzzy and/or stretched screen. Consult the user documentation of your LCD screen. In general it is best to choose the native screen resolution of your LCD screen. For those laptops which have non-standard display sizes outside the regular windows desktop sizes (e.g. 1450 pixels wide ) then try a resolution close to this, or avoid full screen mode and play in windowed mode.

Unlike many full screen DirectX games, we allow you to ALT-TAB out to the desktop from Full Screen DirectX mode. This is at your own risk of course!. However we have not noticed any real problems, except that sometimes on returning to the game you may get a "psychedelic" screen, as windows has destroyed the game palette. The cure for this is to go into a sub screen which disables and then re-enables the colour cycling. Thus if in the game screen, open the preferences screen and exit it and the game palette should be restored. This effect seems to be graphics card related. A few of our playtesters had this happen frequently, most had to really try to get it to happen and some never saw it. It also seems to be related to how many other programmes you had up and running either before you started the game, or tried to run while the game was ALT-TABBED to the task bar.

Full screen DirectX mode is the fastest graphics mode. There is no Windows desktop to worry about co-operating with. It will therefore likely be of most use to those users with older machines and/or graphics cards.

If you do not have the the CD version of the game, you can choose from the 640x480 or 800x600 full-screen modes only.

In Windowed Mode, the game will play in a fixed size window. The Window cannot be resized, due to the constraints of the graphics package used as the game core. The window will take up only as much of the desktop as is actually available after deducting the windows task bar. So if you have say a 1024 by 768 screen and select 1024 by 768 (or a larger size) then the window will take the full screen, barring the windows task bar, which will remain visible. If the window size is much smaller than the desktop, the game will play in a small fixed window.

In any case, you can minimise the game to the taskbar (sequences in play, such as enemy AI turns will not stop while the game is minimised - the game will be playing on. Use the replay feature, if desired, to see the result of the AI turn in detail. Can be handy to let the AI play while you handle some email ).

Windowed mode is the mode which is guaranteed to be "cuddly and friendly" towards the windows desktop, as opposed to full screen DirectX mode, where we do allow task switching with ALT_TAB, but there cannot be guarantees. As it has to coexist with the windows desktop, it is somewhat slower than full screen mode. However, on modern machines there is likely not to be a noticeable difference. This is not a 3D shooter type game after all.

We offer 2 different graphics modes for Windowed mode. The Default is DirectX acceleration. Most Windows users will want to stick with this, as it is significantly faster than the Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI). We also allow you to select the regular windows (slow!) GDI non accelerated mode. This may be handy for some situations where the DirectX drivers on your card are "flaky" perhaps, but mainly this mode is the only (as-is) support we give for non-DirectX systems. We see this as perhaps useful in non-Windows machines (Linux boxes perhaps?) which may have an emulation mode, but cannot handle DirectX calls.We have not tested the game on such emulators, and provide no warranty as to the fitness of this option.

There is no need of any external screen capture mode when using Windowed Mode. The normal Windows ALT-PRINTSCREEN will copy the window to the Windows paste buffer. Simply open up a normal paint programme (such as the supplied Microsoft utility) and select paste.

If you do not have the the CD version of the game, you can choose from the 640x480 or 800x600 windowed modes only.

Map Scroll Sensitivity Zone Is a value in pixels from the map edge where the mouse scrolling kicks in. This value is user selectable, as it is entirely up to you where you like your mouse scrolling to start from. Some folk like it very small in value (say 6 pixels) , others may prefer a large value. The edges of the map beside the mini map are not checked for mouse scrolling. Use 0 here if mouse initiated scrolling irritates you, and you want to rely only on pressing the mini-map to move around the battlefield. You may find you have different preferences for this if you play in different window sizes, and perhaps in full screen (In full screen, you may want say 1 or 2 pixels here, i.e. the mouse fully to the display edge).

Scroll speed is set in milliseconds (Unlike the previous game which used ticks which changed as CPU speed increased). We would suggest you try increments of 250 milliseconds (quarter second sized chunks) as you experiment to get this to your satisfaction. Again, you may find you want to change this to suit the current display type and size.

Where you are using windowed mode and the window is smaller than the desktop, you may want to move the mouse out of the game window to select another programme, on the desktop say. If you move the mouse too slowly, it may trigger an undesired scroll. To avoid this - simply move the mouse over the scrolling zone fast enough that the scroll is not initiated.

Next Page

Top of Page