Re: Enhanced version question
 

My question is, Where EXACTLY do you see the "V3" you refer to??

You say

ANY "enhanced version purchased a few years ago" would be V1. There has NEVER been an upgrade to the basic CD version of the game SPECIFICALLY to avoid problems like this. Everyone starts with V1 then builds the game to the current level by patching sequentially oldest to newest and if you started with the DL verison and then upgraded to the CD version you MUST start the process of patching up all over again.

If you are starting from a physical CD version or a DL of the CD version or even if you are starting from the the basic DL version of the game you MUST start building the game from V1 NOT "V3"

I think, since this has been going on and on that the problem started with the assumption you could start with V3.

ALL of the DLL's were issued with V1. As Andy say, some may have been updated but if you repeatedly get messages that the game cannot find the DLL's then there are only two explanation

1/ You are not starting with V1

or

2/ Windows 7 does even stranger things with the game files than we had previously thought possible

but in this case I'm thinking it's 1/


There are NINE .Dll's the game needs to run. They should all be in the main root directory of the game.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...1&d=1328792636

Don

Re: Enhanced version question
 

My guess is he located the version 3.0 supplemental patch (filesize 27.0MB) and not the actual purchased Enhanced CD version of the game.

It reads "WinSPMBT- Version 3.0 Supplement Install Program" and "Welcome to the WinSPMBT- Version 3.0 Supplement Install program. This program allows you to install WinSPMBT- Version 3.0 Supplement on you hard drive."

Maybe that is the cause for confusion here. A better text would be: "This program will upgrade your game to version 3.0".

All the later patches use the word "Upgrade" on them.

Re: Enhanced version question
 

Wow! I really appreciate all of the replies. The install screen reads "SPMBT V3 COMPLETE GAME" (see attached zip file). After reading all of the recent replies I see the only thing I have not done before is disable UAC. So, to make sure I have not repeatedly made the same mistake I did the following...

Disable UAC

Completely deleted my latest attempt at installation

Restarted computer

Installed using the complete game installation file to C:\Games\SPMBT This install file has the "SPMBT V3 COMPLETE GAME" title at the top left corner of the screen during installation. (See attached zip file. This install file is 77.9 MB on disk before installation)

Installed all patches 2.0 - 5.5 to the same location C:\Games\SPMBT

After all of this the C:\Games\SPMBT folder size on disk was 546 MB.

I tried opening the GameOption exe file and received the same relentless error message.

Re: Enhanced version question
 

:doh:

What you have there is V3 of the old DOS game and that is not compatible with the windows based winSPMBT.

I'm not quite sure where you see it called the "enhanced version" however and it would not have been purchased because we didn't offer a CD version of the DOS games and on top of that, I don't recall that photo in the screen shot that appears while the installer is running. Where did you get this ?

So the reason your game will not run is because you are trying to patch an old DOS version of the game from 8 or 9 years ago with the new Windows version patches of the game. That is a first for us I must admit.

Finally, even though that screen shot is a full sized BMP I cannot read what it says at the top left corner. Could you please tell me what it says exactly.

Don

Re: Enhanced version question
 

As Don says, these forums are for support of the WinSPMBT and (in the other case) WinSPWW2. The Win prefix came about when the DOS version was buried after the conversion to Windows.

These games only have ancestry in the long dead and gone and completely unsupported DOS versions (SPMBT and SPWW2) of half a decade or more ago. See the release history of the game guide.

Applying the Windows patches to the DOS games is as logical as trying to patch MS Word with WordPerfect. Completely different animals. Completely different file formats for one thing. Though way back in the days of messy-DOS though, we did have some folks try to apply our game patches to the original DOS SSI games...:doh:

If you have found an old copy of the antique DOS game installer - throw it away, MSDOS is dead and gone.

Follow the steps I outlined in my previous message using the free demo download as the base game and you will be able to play WinSPMBT in Windows.

(If you do want to play around with the defunct messy-DOS game, then you may find the old SPMBT Yahoo! group - no idea if it is still active, but some die-hard DOSsers did hang about there for a while.)

Andy