Question to Matrix core crew and some more...

[ariv]

Hello! I have been following this forum as 'offline' member for about a year, maybe more, and it has been such a delight to see people who share same interest to WW2 (it was a great human tragedy too, don't take me wrong). Anyway, this is one of the great 'old' games and Matrix staff has made an EXCELLENT task with the Steel Panthers code to make it even more playable. In fact, that made me curious: How much source code did/does you have when you make the changes to game? I understood that you made a DOS game to WIN game, that must have been quite a task too!
Question: What are the compabilities with the operating systems nowadays? I have had some troubles with WIN2000 (game crashes to beginning screen randomly, could be ThinkPad issue). With Win95/98 I have had no troubles, DOS and Linux I have not even tired yet.
BTW, there seems to be some old IT-gurus around, I've been with
computers since 1980 *sigh* (Atari, AppleII, and mostly the old good maiframe computers, memories,memories...).

[Gary Tatro]

From all the posts that I have read. There are no problems with any of the operating systems. I have seen a number of posts with temporary problems, these people are quickly helped and the problems are quickly solved. SPWAW does not work on MAC computers from what I have heard.

Welcome, glad you finally joined offically. Just out of curriosity why did it take you so long to get on officially. It only took me about a week before I joined.

[ariv]

Hi Gary and thanks for the reply!
I also thought that there couldn't be any general flaw with the SPWWII and WIN200. Well, I have been wondering also why I did
not sign in earlier, maybe being lazy is just what I do best...just kidding. I have this principle that I use my ID in Internet as little as possible, you can't be too cautious here as you know. Hmm, okey, maybe I exaggerate sometimes...

[Gary Tatro]

And you will get an ear full.
But to put it simply. You file taxes? Have a credit card? Email address? Check book? Drivers license? Any professional license? Telephon #? Equivelent to a Social Security #?

Well then anyone who wants to know all about you can do it for about $100 US. So feel free to join sooner next time.

[ariv]

Good point, Gary! In fact the major reason until recenty was that I was using my employers Internet connection, and belive me, the Big Blu..oops, I mean they would be pissed if I got something messed in our LAN.

[Redleg]

I get an occasional crash - Windows ME. Seems directly related to multi-tasking, not a big issue with the Autosave feature.

[ariv]

Thank you Redleg! Do you have any experience how these crashes can be reduced or even avoided? Some programs are tricky with old DOS-based games (antivirus etc.). Does SPWWII
still use some of it's DOS-based non-Windows routines?

[ariv]

Oh my, God, sorry! Why do I keep speaking SPWWII while I should be speaking SPWAW!! It is my fathers fault, really!. He keeps playing with the CAMO:s version even when I told him that there is a real GAME also to play (well, he is over 65, what can I do *grin*).

[Supervisor]

SPWaW is a true Windows games and does not require DOS nor will in run in it. SPWaW will run on Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT / 2000 / XP. SPWaW will also run under OS/2 and Linux as well. Because it is based on the old DOS code revamped to be windows native it chews up alot of CPU useage. So it's recommended to run it with no other programs running in the background. It also requires a sound card and DirectX 6.1 and about 100mb free hard drive space for a swap file to run smoothly. The occasional game crash unfortunately does occur, sometimes we can get it resolved due to an outdated driver, scenarios, corrupted/missing files or other simple fixes and other times all we can do is make it bearable. Because of the billions of different system configs out there it's impossible to test them all. And this is true with almost any program, games I have no trouble with, as soon as I visit it's message board I'll find plenty of gamers that can't get it to run at all or at least without it crashing. So quit hiding in the closet and jump in with both feet.

[ivantheterrible]

Welcome, ariv! Just FYI I'm running Windows 2000 on Thinkpad T20 laptop and have very infrequent crashes running SPWAW, maybe once a month on average. I find it to be very stable, even when I multi-task with a few other programs, and it also works fine with the laptop's suspense/hibernation mode.