Editing a saved game in WaW ?

[UdiHrant]

I haven't played any of the Steel Panthers versions since the original many years ago and I just ordered 'the whole shebang'. It's downloading now.

One quick question - is there nay way to edit a saved game? The reason I ask - I am addicted to offline and co-op flight simming with Il2 and now Pacific Fighters and we would love to combine the two games into our LAN parties. Picture this - when an airstrike takes place in WaW you recreate it in Pacific Fighters and intoduce the results into the flow of the campaign by editing out tanks and men or blowing bridges by editing a saved WaW game.

Hope that made some sense. So - is it possible?

Thanks.

[Igor]

Well, you can do some editting with WAWEd; but you'd have to experiment to see just how much of that it can do.

[IBTyrone]

ORIGINAL: UdiHrant

I haven't played any of the Steel Panthers versions since the original many years ago and I just ordered 'the whole shebang'. It's downloading now.

One quick question - is there nay way to edit a saved game? The reason I ask - I am addicted to offline and co-op flight simming with Il2 and now Pacific Fighters and we would love to combine the two games into our LAN parties. Picture this - when an airstrike takes place in WaW you recreate it in Pacific Fighters and intoduce the results into the flow of the campaign by editing out tanks and men or blowing bridges by editing a saved WaW game.

Hope that made some sense. So - is it possible?

Thanks.

Hi Udi.

I've found in my own relatively newbie experience that WaW Ed is not the easiest program to use. There is a built-in editor that comes with SPWAW that works fine for most editing chores. I've never built a scenario myself, but I've tweaked a bunch of existing ones and for simple things such as adding or removing units, the editor in SPWAW works fine.

To edit a saved game you need copy the .dat and .cmt files from the saved directory to the scen directory and rename the files from saveXXX.cmt to scenXXX.cmt and saveXXX.dat to scenXXX.dat in the scenario directory. Also, you need to make sure that the filenumbers are above 345 unless you want to copy over one of the existing scenarios (which you probably don't). You have 999 slots, so you might as well use them. After you've copied the files to the scen directory, they should show up under the appropriate slot number when you load the scenario into the editor to play with.

Hope this helps.

[RockinHarry]

Yes you can do most edits in SPWAW or Freds editors. If you rename a saved Steel Panteres:WAW save game from saveXXX.dat to scenXXX.dat and shift it into the Scen folder you can open and edit save games like any other scenario file. After editing just rename and shift the file back to Save folder. Note: I´ve not tested if these edited save games still work as any unedited save games, but I think they should. If not, you can restart the edited save game as new scenario. One or the other method should normally work ok.

Units can be destroyed in the editor by using the "U" key. However, this does not leave a crew on the map, so if you want a surviving crew you should probably abandon (9-key) the vehicle instead and "declare" it destroyed. More particular edits to the scenario data also can be made with Freds WaWEdit. Editing out men can both be made with renamed save games in SPWAW editor OR directly with Freds WAW Editor. Blowing bridges can be made in SPWAW ingame map editor (or in Freds Map Editor, but I recommend use of the ingame map editor for this purpose) by use of the "add heavy damage" function.

The mentioned external editors (Fred Chlanda´s WaW Ed and WaW Map) can both be found in the Chlanda folder of your SPWAW install. Before use I recommend to copy both applications into the root SPWAW folder. If started from Chlanda folder sometimes proper file and folder locations won´t be found. That´s some internal limitations of these programs, but starting them from the SPWAW root folder removes that. Useful infos about these programs can be found in the Chlanda folder. Check in particular: WaW_Map.htm, Readme067.txt and help020.txt

have fun [:)]

[Wild Bill]

I've never tried it and don't know that it would work. I take that back. On more than one occasion, for example if I wanted a smoky battlefield, I finished the scenario, added lots of artillery, played the first turn under human control on both sides with artillery set to fire on turn one. I saved the scenario with smoke in the air. Since both sides were set to human player, the computer did not move any units.

I then renamed the save files as scenario files, checked the smoke effect in the editor, then saved it again. It worked fine.

I did the same in a scenario from the campaign, "The Chosin Few." Here a tank crew is outside the tank. I had to do that on turn one after designing it. I then left the crew in the same hex as the tank and saved. I then renamed the scenario and on turn one tried to load the tank crew into the tank. If they don't get shot up, they do load back into the tank and all goes well.

So I'm certain some editing can be done on saved scenarios, but I'd be careful with it.

WB

[mosh]

Hi guys.

yes, you can edit saves quite easily. I just don't know if it reasonable to do so if you want to be great commander [;)]. Besides, knowledge on how to edit MC-saves is also question of morale: Some guys did hard work on single battles and to best way to respect that work is to keep their work "as-is". Just my opinion [8|]

Of course if there is BUGs or some fatal errors, something must be done, but is another issue. So, you could tell why you want to edit.

salute

skukko aka mosh

[mosh]

Hi again!

Forgot to say how to avoid heavy casualties in MegaCampaigns, but here it is:

Create folder somewhere on your disk. Copy your MC-save from games save-directory and paste them to your new folder. Play game and if you loose too much, copy your backup-saves back to MCs save-directory.

This has worked out before, I don't know if works with version 8. I don't see why it shouldn't still do it.

salute

skukko aka mosh

[RockinHarry]

ORIGINAL: mosh

Hi again!

Forgot to say how to avoid heavy casualties in MegaCampaigns, but here it is:

Create folder somewhere on your disk. Copy your MC-save from games save-directory and paste them to your new folder. Play game and if you loose too much, copy your backup-saves back to MCs save-directory.

This has worked out before, I don't know if works with version 8. I don't see why it shouldn't still do it.

salute

skukko aka mosh

Hey mosh, where have you been? Thought you were lost in deepest of finnish winter![X(] Glad to see you back though![:)]