Matrix Games Forums

I've decided to start this thread because there are many not-widely-known options and "tricks" that can certainly be helpful. Feel free to add tips to this list.

1. If you feel SPWAW is sometimes a slow game, you may try running the game with the following command line:

[path of spwaw directory]..." \mech.exe impatient"

Then only the first weapon (slot 1) of a unit will be shown firing. That especially speeds up artillery bombardments (especially the 76mm batteries!) and infantry combat (don't have to see the LMG firing each time).


2. It can be very annoying when you start a game and notice the vic hexes are worth only 20 points at end of battle, or if you don't like "per turn" objectives etc.

When you create the game you can actually see the V.hexes during buy phase. Press "View map". Notice where the hexes are on the minimap, then hover the mouse over the spot where you THINK there is a V.hex.

After a short while some terrain info will pop up on the screen. If you positioned the mouse correctly this will depict the V.Hex information. Then you can abort the game and recreate without trouble if you don't like the setup.

This list might get longer soon.

A very interesting twist and approach.

Cool!

Goblin

Keep 'em comming Svennemir,

There are new recruits joining our community everyday. They, along with many of us already here can always learn from other members. Taht's what keeps me comming back to the forums on a daily basis.

John

Thanks for the feedback, I'm sure you are all welcome to contribute to this list - especially since I would also like to learn a few things myself

Well, here's the third one (have actually mentioned this on the forum before).

If you don't have much harddisk space, or if you for some reason have multiple SPWAW installations, it is possible to compress the game significantly.

WARNING: Some of the following might hurt your feelings.

Sounds can be deleted. All .wav files in \snd directory can be deleted without trouble. This will free about 245 MB of harddisk space. From this site the SPWAW music can be downloaded in .mp3 format and played in the background. This is much better compressed than the music in the \snd folder.

The subfolder \snd\stream holds a lot of videos. These are shown e.g. when starting campaigns. They also take up a lot of space, and all of them can be deleted EXCEPT vid998.smk which is for some reason required (actually the game should run fine without, but for some reason it doesn't). Another 60MB freed.

The scenarios can be deleted in the \scen folder. 50+ MB. This will not be easy on the heart

Same for the \campaigns. ~40 MB.

Same for the \maps ~40 MB.

The \chlanda folder contains some editors which are excellent but not necessary. ~7.5 MB.

The \pic folder contains pictures of vehicles as shown in encyclopaedia. Not necessary, but still nice to have often. ~17MB.

If you really don't need it you can also delete manual.pdf and certain other .pdf files from main directory. ~12MB+ .

Now you have a stripped but functional SPWAW. Presently I have seven different installations of SPWAW on my harddisk. Impressive? (just have a lot of mess, gotta delete some of them)

Now SPWAW should take about 150MB (or more depending on savegames and what you didn't have the guts/heart to delete).

SPWAW contains more scenarios than most can play, so deleting some of them should be possible while still having some left - or if you prefer generated battles that should also do.

It is always possible to delete *some* of the stuff without breaking the whole thing.

Originally posted by Svennemir
.... all of them can be deleted EXCEPT vid998.smk which is for some reason required (actually the game should run fine without, but for some reason it doesn't).
[/B]

vid998.smk is the introduction video in smacker format which contains the SSI credit screen. Apparently it is a contractual condition on Matrix that the original publisher be given credit in all distributions. A while ago someone figured out how to bypass it so Matrix were forced to protect themselves by introducing a check for the intro before the game would run. This left you in all sorts of trouble if the 50MByte file became corrupt and so the Matrix site (and Mega-Campaign disks) had a backup of this file.

So if you guys want a free game, you are going to have to live with the introductory credits. (I can't figure out why they didn't convert the animation to a format with a smaller file size though...)

Cheers,
Reg.

. A while ago someone figured out how to bypass it so Matrix were forced to protect themselves by introducing a check for the intro before the game would run

But if the video gets annoying, just press space, and it'll stop, and luanch straight into SP

heya all...

being computer illiterate, i need someone to hold my hand through the first point...the "impatient" one


how exactly do i do it?


(pretend im a blond who did alot of whippits in college)




-jedimessiah

You don't have to watch the credits, you just need to have them.

Originally posted by JediMessiah


how exactly do i do it?

We will assume that your SPWaW installation directory is C:\Steel Panthers At War though is not necessarily the case (use file explorer to confirm that this is the correct directory containing in the file 'mech.exe').

Go to the start button and select 'Programs' then 'MS-DOS Prompt'. A DOS window will open. Now type the line below and hit enter.

"C:\Steel Panthers At War\mech.exe" impatient

Note the inverted commas are necessary if there are spaces in the file or directory names (impatient is a parameter and must be seperated by a space). I always wonder why they included those spaces as the default as they always confuse newbies.

If your mech.exe file is else where, insert the correct path instead of 'C:\Steel Panthers At War' and remember the inverted commas if there are any included spaces.

Best of luck.
Reg.

JediMessiah:

Another way which is more efficient in the long term is to make a desktop shortcut to mech.exe . Then rightclick upon the shortcut so the menu pops up and select "Properties".

Somewhere in the properties screen you can find the "Command Line", specifying the path to the SPWAW executable. On my computer it reads

F:\spwaw71h2h\mech.exe

Just add impatient to the end of the line like:

F:\spwaw71h2h\mech.exe impatient

Note: It doesn't matter that your path differs from mine.

In some cases quotation marks are placed as described by Reg. If you do this you won't have to use a DOS prompt each time you want to run the game. Just use the shortcut.

Reg: It's true that the intro can be skipped easily. If you run mech.exe instead of the standars executable, the intro will not play at all. But there'll still be an error message if it's not found. Thanks a lot for the info about the file.