winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

The winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade is now available. Click HERE.

Here is what it contains ( 17.6 mb )


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WinSPWW2 version 4.0 upgrade patch

22 New Scenarios
52 Revised Scenarios
6 Revised Campaigns including the ANZAC Campaign
96 New photos
29 New Icons
40 New or revised Text files
36 Updated OOB files
4 Updated sound files
17 Revised Graphic files
Upgraded ScenHack
Upgraded MOBHack
Upgraded Cost Calculator
ArmourCalc
APCalc




1) There has been a new "explosives" class added to the game. In WW2 there are three types of units added to each OOB

Booby traps

These represent any type of anti personnel weapon typically built from small explosive charges or bundles of hand grenades. They may occasionally damage an armoured vehicle or destroy a truck

Demolition Charges

A charge powerful enough to bring down a concrete / steel bridge but also used to bring down buildings on advancing troops in defensive battles. They could also be used as "roadside bombs" or IED type weapons

Fougasse
Fougasse was typically a mixture of gasoline and oil with an explosive igniter. In Britain during WWII fougasse was usually a 40-gallon drum dug into the roadside and camouflaged at a location such as a corner where vehicles would need to slow down. The Russians first used 'Fougasse flame throwers' in the defences around Moscow in 1941 and in the defence at Stalingrad. They were remote-controlled cans with nozzles designed to be embedded in the ground and set off from a distance and they were the basis for a German copy that showed up in Italy. Those weapons were buried with a fixed direction discharge tube and integrated with conventional landmines and barbed wire in defence works. Weapons of this type were widely used in the Korean and Vietnam wars as well as other conflicts and are well known to combat engineers


NOTE 1: These units are set up as one per formation maximum to curb overuse. They cannot be moved so must be placed during the deployment phase of the game.

NOTE 2:These explosive devises can self detonate when enemy units are nearby and, in the case of Demolition Charges and Fougasse can be "command detonated" on the players turn who "owns" them, IF there is radio contact, by selecting the explosive charge then pressing "F"



2) Buildings that collapse into rubble for any reason will now cause casualties to anyone in the building with more potential damage if the building is stone. Previous to this there was no test in the code for such casualties.

3) Engineer type vehicles that deliberately rubble a building will show markedly less chance sticking when "bulldozing" buildings than regular tanks do.

4) Mobhack would now retain the nation when "Paste as target nation" box was selected when copying formations from one nation to another.

5) When tanks turn their hulls to face an enemy firing they no longer turn the hulls directly 90 degrees which generally increases their chance of survival by increasing the angle of attack for the shell.

6) Passengers who dismount into a hex with mines will now be tested to see if they set off a mine. Previously the only test was for the vehicle when it entered the hex. This change also applies to any passengers unloading from a helicopter or a helicopter landing in a minefield.

7) All OOBs have had every unit and formation trimmed back to 12/46 where the OOB still existed in 1946. All OOBs have been checked for units that started before 1930 and the few that were found have been corrected to 1930. All OOBs that started or ended between 1930 and 1946 such as The Slovak Republic, Italian RSI, Polish LWP and both Spanish OOBs have had their start and end dates adjusted to their actual in and out of service dates used by the game code for all units and formations that strayed before or after those dates. Any unit with a start date after 12/46 was removed. This was a holdover from the original version of the game that allowed game play to 1949.There were 86 units that started after 1946 so were wasting space in the OOBs and there were 4851 units with end dates after 12/46 which made for "messy" OOBs.

8) There was an extensive comb though of the weapons list was done to corrected deviant and erroneous entries. All weapons of one type should now have the same stats in every OOB they are listed

9) Japanese infantry units may now disperse but at a 50% chance compared to all other nationalities. This speeds up the game and eliminates the need to hunt down 1 man squads.

10) MOBHack now shows template units used by formations as underlined in the units section and in the formation section the total number of men in a formation is now reported up to a limit of 255.

11) After a campaign river crossing, your core infantry will no longer be permanently assigned an inflatable raft.

12) When playing PBEM in basic security mode the game will now simply warn players if the OOBs differ from the original without aborting the game.

13) More historical battle locations for Canada in Normandy onwards in NW Europe have been added, such as "Le Mesnil Patry", "Orne Valley", "Quesnay Wood", "Scheldt estuary", "Hochwald forest", Sonsbeck (town), and Gronigen (city).

14) In campaigns it is no longer possible to change a dead unit and retain that dead units experience and morale for the new unit.

15) Smoke is now more readily available for non x0 armoured vehicles. In the past some formations contained support units who's purpose was to provide this service but they had no smoke rounds due to code restrictions. These restrictions have now been removed.

16) The code has been adjusted so that the V hexes , both cluster and "shotgun", are more evenly distributed to both sides

17) Experience and Morale are now presented in the same order on all screens

18) Occasionally the last reported page of formations in the purchase menu would turn up blank. This has been corrected. The code was producing an extra page every 25 formations instead of at 26

19) The ratings for HEAT protection of German Shurtzen has been increased from 6 to 10 based on new information found in post war British tests.

20) Two of our game development programs have been included with this patch and can both be found in the main winSPWW2 folder. ArmourCalc is a very straightforward program. Enter the armour thickness and angle and press calculate and the answer is displayed in the Result box.The second program is named APCalc and is a bit more involved. At the top of the screen is a "Select OOB" box where each nation can be picked. APCalc reads the weapons data in each OOB and displays the potential armour penetration at various range increments for AP and Sabot. HE and HEAT have only one result as they are not affected by range. There is also a "Best" results box for each type which will give you the best possible result from 1000 calculations .Re-sampling CAN give a different result sometimes, depending on the influence of the random factors the game uses to calculate penetration. Help files for both can be found in the main game folder along with the programs

21) The ANZAC Campaign has been corrected for OOB changes and added to the patch. It and five other campaigns contain corrections made due to OOB upgrades as do a number of scenarios.

22)There were numerous minor unit , weapon and formation changes made to the OOBs .

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Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

Wow! I see some interesting changes implemented, just when one could think the game is showing it´s age you find the way to keep it fresh.

Keep up the good work SP Camo! and thanks again for a new update.

Two new features got my attention in particular:

"21) Two of our game development programs have been included with this patch and can both be found in the main winSPWW2 folder. ArmourCalc is a very straightforward program. Enter the armour thickness and angle and press calculate and the answer is displayed in the Result box" What answer that would be? you´re still not revealing the code formulas, are you?

***removed from patch-DRG

Keep Cool!

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

HAIL DRG and Mobhack!!!

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

The "answer" is the thickness of the armour through the angle it is inclined. It's simple basic math ....a piece of steel X thick inclinded at Y angle = Z thinkness....put into a calculator anyone can use. It's a simple aid for determining a tanks armour thickness and will be of interest or use to maybe 2% of the players.

Don

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

Cool news! Just in time for the weekend! :D

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

Don and Andy, you guys are just splendid...Splendid I say!
Hurrah!

Thanks for all your hard work.
I am very sorry not to have the time to help test.

A marvelous effort, as usual.

Much Respect
Walrus

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

Thank you for #13!

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

Yeah, new patch coming!thanks for the new tools. btw, in the game launcher(not the main game exe) will there be a shortcut to access them like mobhack?

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

I'm really grateful for these patches. Keep up the good work. :up: And so are the people that play but never post. I know; I used to be one.


K.

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

No. They are very specialized programs. Anyone truly interested will set up their own shortcuts

Don

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

It feels like... Christmas! :angel

Thank You for Your work and may you receive equally nice Christmas presents. All the stuff in the patch is simply awesome.

(re. the "special tools", count me in the 2%, I look forward to seeing whether my empirical formula for penetration dropoff in SP really got the results right :))

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

Thanks a lot for the new patch!

After almost two years without playing winspww2, I'm hooked again. The CD version is awesome, btw.

Best regards & Saludos
Miki

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

PATCH IS FINALLY OUT!!!! check it out on:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Wo.../WW2_page.html

(I'm still wondering, IS this the REAL patch i'm linking???? I mean, I just CAN'T BELIEVE THE PATCH IS FINALLY OUT BUDDIES!!!)

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

WOOOHOOO! Christmas has came early this year

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/index.html - News and Announcements section.

Cheers
Andy

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

also appears on the latest blogs in the left of the screen
now for anything else...

about explosives(demolitions):
1. can a exploding demo chrg/fougasse/boobytrap trigger other explosions in a chain reaction?(would be nice to press f once and create a wall of fire)if yes, wich one?

2.if a unit passes near a fougasse, say, the hex beside it, can it trigger an explosion?
edit:
3. would regular troops spot explosives or enter their hex without blowing up?(just like mines)

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

1) Yes it can. Easier done in testing with massed PLO suicide bombers and petrol bomb tankers than dug in demolitions of course,since those were soft targets. And one going off can trigger another which ....

2) No. Fougasse goes on the road hex you want to block, hexes are 50m after all. The side fires (if any produced) can land in other hexes though, so a command detonated (with radio contact, press F) one might spray into the hex you wanted.

3) Troops going slowly who did not set it off might spot it, or might not. Engineers walking very slowly miles better of course. Engineer required to clear - and can have an oopsie doing so. Snipers can fire at demolitions, dont do it from too close up mind! :)

Andy

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade
 

Thanks Andy, can't wait for MBT patch

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Excellent work!

I've already taken a quick look through the OOB and have spotted a few nice updates and tweaks.

Your hard work is much appreciated, and I look forward to playing with these new toys. :up:

Many Thanks,
Cross

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Thanks Don and Andy for your hard work and for taking into consideration all of my niddling TO&E/OOB suggestions. :D

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Good to see the 4.0 patch is out.

Better wait to install,if have ongoing battles or pbems.

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Is a list of the OOB changes available?

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Thanks guys great present, had a quick look at AP Calc there is more going on under the bonnet than you think. Things you would expect to give a wide spread like flamethrowers do, shouldn't have expected anything less really:up:

No. We rarely keep detailed lists of OOB change lists as stopping to make notes on each change eats into the time we have available and we already have enough to juggle. Turning what should be 5 minutes work into 10 has never appealed to me. I know other games do that and it makes for suitably impressive lists but this patch contains 52 revised scenarios because of the OOB changes so that should be a good indicator of the changes made

The rough notes on work done to SPWW2 would print out to 36 pages. The changes made to the weapons were generally made to ensure all of weapon X had the same stats as all the others just like it and there were well over 200 items that needed looking into, nothing earth shattering, things like a MG may have had a different accuracy in one OOB than it did in 5 others and that needed to be looked at but I really have no interest in stopping what I'm doing to write down something like " India, weapon 2, accuracy changed from zero to 1" for every change or make notes on the three slightly different sets of data we had for mills bombs in the eight OOB's that use mills bombs. If I stopped and made user friendly notes like that every time I changed something there is no way this patch would have been released when it was and my interest in releasing them would be near zero because there are only a very tiny handful of people who would ever read such a list or remember half of what they read afterwards and I personally have absolutly no need for a list like that.

For the record the SPWW2 v4 OOB's contains

12,143 units
4,626 weapons
6,769 formations

and at least ( very conservative estimate ) 300 combined weapon, unit and OOB changes were made to them( this does not include the over 4,000 unit end dates that were trimmed back to 12/46 )

I will give a quick example though. Quite a number of guns used the US 105mm M2 photo. I tracked down ( hopefully ) all that were wrong and changed them to the correct photos and in the process discovered quite a lot about pre war Polish artillery. As a result the artillery units available now to the Poles in 1939 and before are much more complete than they had been.


Don

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Thanks again Don and Andy!
This is going to be a long weekend!....

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Thanks about great patch Don/Andy! And Merry Christmas too:)!

Now I don't want any else gifts after getting new patch:p...

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Great news! Thanks a lot to Camo guys for the continued community support, you rule :up:
:party:

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

I just used the new Hex Grid on/off Hot Key for the first time.

Hot Key: . (dot)

This is one new feature that wasn't mentioned in the release info, but I was really looking forward to. Very useful.

Thank You
Cross

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Eh? - that has been there since the DOS versions...

Nothing 'new' about it whatsoever :)

Andy

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

I know we have always been able to turn the hex grid off/on in preferences. But I was talking about the Hot Key where we can just hit one key to turn it off/on.

Wasn't that put in MBT 4.5 for the first time last year; and this is the first time I've been able to use it in WW2.

Cross

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

w00t!

This is too good!

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Nope - back in the good old DOS days, V 2.0 as far as I can recollect, along with the in-game help section (? key), where all these hot keys are listed. So they have been there (and listed in the in-game help and the GG) since 1999 or 2000-ish.

Andy

Ahhhhhh.......no Andy. This was put in just after 3.5 was released when we first started working on the v4.5 MBT patch. I just double checked with a copy of WW2 3.5 and the hex grid will not turn on and off pressing the <. period > key. Neither will a v1.0 exe


The problem is this was put in right after v3.5 was released and before the last MBT release ( January 24/ 09 to be exact ) so for us this is akin to ancient history. It's been active for so long ( one MBT patch and now one WW2 patch ) that it just seems like it's been there forever . What Andy's remembering are changes we made to the Map editor ages ago.

Don

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Probably the map editor or suchlike then since I vaguely recall switching off hexes before I moved house, ie before 2005.

But then I just set the hexes on and leave them alone, myself.

Andy

Re: winSPWW2v4.0 upgrade Now Available
 

Thank you all for my one and only Christmas present this year.

You guy's are the greatest!:up: