WinSPWW2 Game features

[DRG]

Some of the following points will be new to anyone ONLY familiar with the last DOS version of SPWW2 but they are shared additions with WinSPMBT.


Conversion of the old MSDOS game engine to Microsoft Windows.

Complete removal of all the old problematical MSDOS sound, mouse and graphics problems.

Optional DirectX or Windows GDI based graphics.

Option to use DirectX Full screen mode, or operate in a window on the desktop.

Windows-compliant sound and mouse routines.

Game size is no longer restricted to merely 640 by 480 pixels. User can choose from 640x480, 800x600, and in the enhanced CD version 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 modes.

Completely re-organised game screens


Arid and Savannah type terrains added to the map generator. They replace many maps that used to be desert but really shouldn't have been

New zoom-in level added

10 NEW terrains added

*Bare Earth (Arid Soil)
*Red Earth
*Brick Cobblestones
*Stone Cobblestones
*Beach Sand
*Sparse Grass
*Grass ( variant )
*Leaves ( Forest Groundcover )
*Autumn trees ( October )
*Autumn Orchards ( October )

The Map Autogenerating routine has been upgraded to use the 10 new Terrain types

12 Terrain tile sets totally re-done

* Green Grass
* Rough
* High grass
* Snow
* Soft Sand
* Desert Rough
* Sand
* Paved Roads
* Pavement
* Winter light snow
* Winter Snow Drifts
* Mud

*Revised Game palette
*Railways will now occasionally be generated on maps
*Barbed wire added for defensive battles. The AI will place Wire when it defends
*Loading and unloading of passengers now costs Movement points for both the vehicle AND the passenger units
* Custom OOB's can now be easily loaded and the default set of OOB's can just as easily be restored
* AI may now target any smoke signatures with artillery
* Vehicles may now reverse while while keeping the vehicles front pointed towards the enemy

Items specific to WinSPww2

*66 New Scenarios ( 332 scenarios are now included with the game )
*69 New Maps
*294 new photos added.
*Six new nations added ( Slovak Republic, Manchukuo, Italian Social Republic, Vichy France, Polish Communists (LWP), Chinese Communists)
*Over 500 New and Revised Vehicle/Aircraft Icons
*Infantry squads will now display up to 19 men ( was 13 )
* Full WW2 scripted Long Campaigns added for France, Chinese Nationalists, Chinese Communists

The game's AI opfire and reaction fire routine has been re-written to make it more selective in targeting based on the weapon firing , target type and range.

A retire function for APCs/Halftracks/carriers and trucks has been added . Unarmed APCs/Halftracks/carriers or trucks with no passengers will retire 1km ( approx 20 hexes ) after dropping off their passengers. For armed APC/Halftracks/carriers etc. they will retire a few hexes (if any MP left of course!), then turn and face enemy. If they are close to the enemy and have sufficient MP they will occasionally reverse instead.

A new load up function for APC and trucks under AI control has been added . The game will now cycle through all APCs/Halftracks/carriers and trucks . If the carrier is unloaded and not within 20 hexes of enemy (at start) and it can move and is not retreating etc it will look for a target infantry unit or team to pick up (within a 1 km or 20 hexe range of the carrier). The target infantry/team must itself not be within 20 hexes of enemy. On the first pass the APC only looks for grunts of its platoon. On pass 2 it will look for any unloaded infantry or team (this allows trucks or APCs in a MISC platoon purchase etc to get in on the action) if the carrier decides there is a target infantry unit or team it motors towards it, and if it gets to the location of the passenger it loads it up

Plus dozens of other small tweaks, bug fixes and adjustments to game play such as.....

* A button has been added to the artillery menu to access the blast circles routine
* fix to spotter planes (direction 6 was broken)
* delete last formation - properly relinking subordinate formations to HQ (A0) if co HQ is deleted
* delete core formations now allowed (on the expand core screen of the core upgrade menu)
* German and Italian WW2 Long Campaign for taly and N Africa - allow Indians as opponents
* base morale now shown on purchase screen
* maps - ability to set battle location and access to the map generator with added buttons in the map editor (inc extended CD map editor)
* Included waypoint mechanism to linked scenarios.
* New properties for rough terrain.
* Minor modification for Z fire triggering AI OP fire.
* Fix on Preference bug (pbem).
* New code for AI APC vehicles.
* New Waypoint technique.
* "Z" ( area ) fire will now draw reaction fire
* Modified path-finding code (extended).
* Option to delete Core force units and refund the cost.
* Modified the Bicycle class and added the snow benifits to the light Ski class
* A new set of ID flags with their positioning lowered
* New ScenHack program
* New CampaignHack program
* New CostCalculator program
* The batloc was not being displayed in campaigns, if the default loc was not being used - fixed
* The game was putting severely crippled vehicles on map. Now fixed to immobilize severely crippled core vehicles (damage >= 1/2 cost).
* There was some tinkering with UK/Ger batlocs in North Africa in 1941 - should not go to Crete in LC.
* A campaign marginal victory gets min of 300 points, a decisive 500 (for smaller cores), before difficulty adjustment.
* When displaying the entry/exit hexes of air units in the bombardment screen, zooming in or out will cause them to disappear from view. And reappear when you move the cursor over them."----FIXED
* The "generate Campaign" screen had problems with some of the buttons....FIXED
* The games costing routine in the mainscreen was only incrementing cost at 90+ morale, and had a minor bug as well. FIXED
* Rough will now cause disablements on ROUGH+SLOPE hexes. It will NOT disable on regular flat rough terrain
* Wagons are now treated like cavalry and not trucks
and much more..



NOTE We went to the WAV format for WinSPWW2 becasue of the difficulties some people were having getting MP3's to run on their machines



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A special note regarding the scenarios in WinSPww2v1

The scenarios included with this game that were designed for earlier version of the game have been checked, rechecked, adjusted and tweaked in a number of ways. Quite a few man hours have gone into this and all the scenarios released with this game should play as they were originally designed to be played ( or even better! ). We have also revised the OOB's in the Windows version to eliminate many of the old, unused entries and because many of the older scenarios still used them it meant we had to go in an buy new units to replace the ones that were removed. As well, we found when we converted to Windows that some of the scenarios using Germany still had some info dating back to when Germany was OOB00. This too has been corrected and these sceanrio corrections extend to all the scenarios that were used to build the User Campaigns in the game. In the case of campaigns, not only have the scenarios that make them up been revised but also the point structure to ensure players can purchase what we suggest you can purchase for the campaign

AS A RESULT of these changes and the conversion to Windows players who download scenarios from various places on the Internet that carry scenarios for SPWW2 **MAY** find the older ones are "broken" in WinSPww2 and will require upgrading either by the original sceanrio designer or the player themselves. The changes we added to the game to make it better made this unavoidable and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause but we hope this inspires people to upgrade and re-issue their old scenarios for this new version of the game.
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Some notes on the new AI "Artillery Interest" routines.

Previously, the AI arty routines targeted those troops which were spotted in its own phase and would then fall-back to the routines to beat up objectives, or approach roads etc. Thus you could do the "hill dance" of moving up from behind a ridgeline, firing and popping back down, drawing only normal return op-fire while exposed but ending your move out of LOS, so the AI would not assign arty on these units. The new AI artillery interest routine is linked to events which the human player is told about during game play, but which previously the AI was ignorant of. Basically - anything which generates a message that your human opponent (in a PBEM) could use against you, the AI now knows about as well. The AI artillery interest routine takes events which the human player would spot, and assigns a chance for the AI to assign available artillery to the general area of this event. Trigger events include flipping an objective hex, making direct fire smoke, making smoke from dust trails from vehicle movement, direct fire events (including direct area fire with the Z key), normal on-map artillery firing indirect fires (which generate smoke in the hex), and engineering clearance operations. All things reported to a human opponent, and now available for the AI to assign delivery of a few "presents" to as well, just as your human PBEM opponent would.

Also previously the AI was a bit reluctant to plot its on-map artillery assets, usually mortars. Often, a mortar unit with 60 or so original rounds would end the game with perhaps 45 or so rounds remaining. There is now a routine to check for possible mortar (includes all on map arty including say SP-MRL) targets, with the AI focussing on detected enemy units close to objective hexes as the prime search criteria. The on map arty assignment also tends to fall-back on enemy held objectives if nothing better is located, so it then drops searching fires around these. Thus, "camping out" near objective hexes will be somewhat more interesting for the human player!.

Addition features of the enhanced CD version only


*Cut and paste Map editor
*Secure Tournament play
*640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 windowed and full screen modes.
*250 Secure PBEM save slots
*Encyclopaedia Sorting functions
*ScenHack scenario editor for WinSPWW2 --------NEW ADDITION!
*CampaignHack campaign editor for WinSPWW2 ----NEW ADDITION!


Andrew Gailey and Donald Goodbrand
The Camo Workshop




WinSPWW2 Version 1.0

PRODUCERS: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

GAME PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey and Don Goodbrand.

MOBHACK PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

UTILITY APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING: Andy Gailey.

PLAYTESTING: Boris Ajdukovic, C. B. Blackard, Claus Bonnesen, Maciej Czerkas, Tom DeShetler, Peter Dunn, Pyros Lambert, Remco Leenhouts, Ulf Lundström, Artúr Székely-Takács, Mike Torrance, Jason Young

ICON DESIGN : Blazej Ciepluch, Don Goodbrand

TERRAIN TILE ART: Don Goodbrand

SCENARIO DESIGN : C. B. Blackard, Blazej Ciepluch, Pyros Lambert, Ulf Lundström

MAP DESIGN: Blazej Ciepluch,Pyros Lambert, Ulf Lundström

OOB CONTRIBUTORS AND CONSULTANTS: Blazej Ciepluch, Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand and our Playtesters

GAME MANUAL AND DOCUMENTATION: Andy Gailey, Don Goodbrand

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Game Requirements

Windows 95,98, ME, Windows2000 or XP. 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.

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