Matrix Games Forums

** Important note, these instructions were assembled when the only way to acquire one of these was to purchase the CD. With the availablity of downloadable MC's now, which do not contain the base game, caution is advised when following these instructions. This procedure will be updated as further information on just what we are dealing with becomes available.**


Installing Steel Panthers World at War and Mega Campaigns without losing your mind.

Buy the Megacampaigns (shameless plug for Matrix)

1. Download all patches.
2. Copy all on-going games, and downloaded scenarios
3. Delete SPWaW
4. Install Megacampaigns and SPWaW
5. Apply 7.1 update
6. Apply all Megacampaign patches
7. Copy saved games back into the game


Here’s how you do it:

1. Make sure that your current SPWAW is updated to version 7.1. A word of caution here: If you are running version 7.0 now, then your saved games will most likely experience problems if you re-introduce them into a 7.1 environment. Get the download from Matrix site . While you are there, grab the updates for MCNA(1), MCLV(3) and MCWT(1). Go to Tankheads site (click on link from any gmenfan post) and download the campaign fixer for MCNA .If you don’t have SPWAW already installed, skip down to # 4. If you are already embroiled in conflicts, go to # 2. Most of these downloads are quite small, the largest being the 7.1 update..

(note: current version on Matrix servers is now 7.1.)

2. Open up your saves folder under SPWAW and copy any current games you have going to a separate, newly created, folder not associated with SPWAW (there are 3 files per saved game. R- click on them, select copy, open up the new folder and select paste. Do the same for any email games that you have in progress. There may be as many as 4 files per game for these if you are using password protection. Don't forget to copy any downloaded material, i.e. scenarios and campaigns also.


3. Completely uninstall SPWAW. Yikes, you say? ( I just spent the better part of my life downloading this and you want me to delete it !!!?) Not to worry. MC’s have a copy of SPWAW on it. Which by the way is a far easier way to acquire this game. (Shameless plug # 2. It costs a lot of resources to make one of these megacampaigns and we need to keep the fine folks at Matrix in the black if we hope to see any more). Browse your Windows Explorer and make sure that the MatrixGames\SPWAW directory is completely gone. If it is still there, then manually delete it.

Installation assumes C: is the default drive.

4. Install Desert Fox first, if you have it. Do the complete install. It will put SPWAW back on, but at version 5.1 or 5.3, depending on the production run you have.

5. Install MCLV. Use the entire install, not just the update. Do the entire install with MCWT also, if you have it, even if you just did it for MCLV. This will upgrade SPWAW to version 7.0 .

6. Install the 7.1 update. Here is where it gets a little tricky. There was a production error in the update. During the installation verification path, it wants to install to the wrong location. There is a space between Matrix and Games that needs to be deleted. The installation path should read”

C:\matrixgames\steelpanthers world at war”,

and NOT, repeat not,

C:\Matrix Games\steel panthers world at war.

Failure to do this will put the update in the wrong folder and it won’t take.


7. ** During manual extraction of any patches if your system asks for overwrite file verification, you must select YES to overwrite for the proper files to be installed(this will also ensure that the files are being extracted to the proper locations).

Apply the MCNA patch. Extract it to:

C:\ matrixgames\steel panthers world at war\megacam\ the desert fox-41.

Extract the campaign fixer in the same place.

**Note that this program is not an automatic fixer, you have to open it up and run it to make the necessary fixes. It will fix any MC, even if the fixer is not installed in that particular mega folder.

8. Next, extract MCLV patches 1.1 and 1.2 to..

C:\matrixgames\steel panthers world at war\megacam\lost victories.

Install the WT patch as follows:

extract the scen009.dat file into the

C: \matrixgames\steel panthers world at war\megacam\operation watchtower directory

and the *.shp files into the..

C:\matrixgames\steel panthers world at war\shp directory.

Extract Lost Victories sound patch to ..

C:\matrixgames\steel panthers world at war\snd.

9. Go to the temp directories that you copied all of your saved games into, R-click and copy, L-click and paste each back into the appropriate folder, i.e. saves, MC saves, emails etc., etc.

*For scenarios and campaigns that you downloaded and added this note of caution: When you add scenarios and campaigns to the original game you had to assign them to a specific slot. If all you did was add them to the existing lists, then the numbering you did then should just overlay into the re-installation.

Be careful if you moved stuff around because you may have numbering conflicts and may overwrite something.



When you are finished, if all went well, then when you open SPWAW to play, the 1st option screen should have version 7.1 at the bottom.

When you open the megacampaigns up, they will only read 7.0. This is correct. All of your saved games should work as well.

** This procedure should work for most setups but there are soooo many different combos out there that if you can't get it to work, a little fine tuning is probably your next step. Post your problem on the forum and chances are very good that someone else has experienced it and can help you sort through it.**

It is a very good idea to periodically make back up copies of all your games in progress as occasionally you may experience crashes to desktop which may corrupt the game in progress. These backups will save your bacon. (Especially important for the megacampaign saves unless you want to see a couple of month’s efforts go down the drain.)

May all your victories be decisive. Good Luck and Good Hunting.


Many thanks to the gmenfan for all of his help in putting this together.

Viewed and assisted in the editing by yours truely, so it's as close to a Matrix approved procedure as your going to find.

Gmenfan: Pls correct me if I'm wrong but dosen't the above install also leave a set of OOB's running around in a useless folder ??? I am not referring to 7.1x.

Chief, if you are referring to the OOB folder, it conatins txt files for OOBs correction from past version of SPWAW and it is still part of the installation of SPWAW as not to pose any confusion I like to keep the SPWAW installation integrity intact. I could be wrong but this old useless folder still get installed even under the new installs of 7.1, yes it is useless but contains no real OOB's just text files. Are we talking about the same folder?????

Yeah gmen that's the one i kinda figured that Jim 1954 might want to get rid of it and add that to his very good post.

I had thought about it but I decided that it was still part of the integrity of a SPWAW installation I didn't want to mess with it, the whole folder only takes up 256kb in size.

Since this comes up so often maybe this should get a "sticky"?

Stoopid question: I have about a hundred additional scenarios that I have dl'ed, am I going to loose them when I uninstall SPWAW per Step 3?

Thanks to Jim and gmenfan for putting together instructions simple enough that I might just risk installing MCNA this weekend

Mojo, yes they will go away. What you could do is to back them up somewhere else ( like the saved games). When you do the install, you will get the original scenarios with the original numbering. If you just added your 100 odd scenarios after the ones that came with the original game then the renumbering you did then should just overlay into the new install with no numbering conflicts. I just downloaded the Scenario manager from Tankheads site which according to gmenfan should work with WAW. This might be a good place to store those extras. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet to see how it will work, but maybe someone out there has done so and can comment on how it interfaces.

Thanks for the compliments, btw.

Slightly anal request, but Jim, your opening post would be just a tad easier (mechanically executable wise), if the "install to here" locations were editted to be on a unique line in your message text by themselves (made it just a tad tricky cutting and pasting them into the file extractor I use).

Otherwise, your directions worked fine for my first ever full complete start to finish every danged file install of Steel Panthers.

Wasn't able to get it the first stab at it though, tried to install to my secondary drive in a specfic named folder (my normal preferred install preference method).
The Watchtower campaign didn't seem to install correctly. Although the rest went well.
So I uninstalled by re installing after uninstalling, by just letting it install to C its way.

Desert Fox has a trouble free install.

My LV disc doesn't seem to find the campaign set up file off the auto run image on the screen. I have to right click on the cdrom icon in My Computer and use explore then manually start the set up file. But it install correctly otherwise.

Watchtower when allowed to default no messing around install, performs correctly.

The patch files install fine, but like I said, the target locations could be easier to cut and paste (ok I'm lazy and don't like to type em out heheh, cut and paste is faster and eliminates a lot of human error potential eh).

How's this Les?

Much cleaner Jim.

And thanks for providing us forum mates with a good comprehensive insiders look at the best way to install.

My pleasure. good luck in the desert and the jungle.

Just a further tweak Jim so you can have the best possible text. I noticed a detail that might be a stumbling block to those that might not realise the significance.

When you install Desert Fox it installs the base game program and the Mega Campaign in one process.

When you install Lost Victories it requires the game then the Mega Campaign as separate installs.

With Watch Tower, it is possible to mistakenly think "well I already have 7.0 from Lost Victories, I will just install the Watchtower Mega Campaign".

Not sure why, but you should add with specific wording, Install 7.0 from your Watch Tower cd, even if you have already done so with Lost Victories.

Both tries from very start to very end, I tried the not install 7.0 with the Watch Tower cd, and something got fouled up installing the Mega Campaign.

Must be a detail in there somewhere.

Otherwise, I think your text is the complete process.

How In any way can this affect also having Panzer Leo's H2H mod installed? Will it change the Mega-Campaigns?

Ok, 1st and foremost, H2H and SPWAW are really 2 separate critters. The mega campaigns are designed to work with 7.x. They will not work in H2H.

If you made a duplicate install of 7.x when you imported H2H (as most do) , then you have a situation where you really have 2 games, H2H and the original 7.x which can have the megacampaigns installed.

Unless some REALLY, REALLY brave soul decides to try to convert the MC's to H2H compatability, I think you are out of luck on this one and will have to make do with things that are, and have been converted to H2H.. There are plenty and more coming all the time, but I wouldn't hold my breath on the MC's.

Hope this clears it up some.

Can H2H and the Mega campaigns coincide without any problems?

mlomax, if you are asking what happens to the megacampaigns AFTER you import H2H into your base game of SPWAW, I don't really know. I don't know the particulars of why it won't work, just that it won't.

Is that what you did?

Megas will only work in a true SPWAW install, not H2H!!!!!!!!:rolleyes:

I reinstalled everything except H2H, because I wanted make sure that it wouldn't interfere with the Mega-Campaigns. I just got LV and I want my first experience with it to be as painless as possible. Thanks for the help. I will leave H2H off until I finish LV.

There is no need to miss out on H2H. Just make a duplicate, full install of SPWaW and rename it to something like H2HSPWAW and import H2H into that. Start that one from the mech.exe file inside of it and you can enjoy having both. (It will take a loooong time to finish LV).