Matrix Games Forums

Meine Herren - The war is not over

First, thanks to SSI, Matrix and all involved developers for this intense strategic turn-based work. Backed by my family's history (one grandpa at eastfront, the other 2.SS Panzer Corps Bittrich westfront), there was nothing that addictive as strategy games. When I first played mid'80 'Crusade over Europe' on C64, I found my digital destiny. In 1992 I claimed 'Advanced Military Commander' for Genesis which lastet twelve years in playing and was cornerstone. So I looked all these times fo a PC-equivalent, Panzer General was disappointing, Jagged Alliance was fantastic but not WWII, I hit '96 on 'Steel Panthers' and found that it came to AMC nearest, but editable library and neat statistics and sadly, no real campaign over the whole period. There were the 'Close Combat' series, I played them till unconciousness. Last year I grabbed the '96 SP CD from the archive and found, it won't run anymore stable in XP's Dos-box.
After closing AMC a second time I looked forward Steel Panthers again and was surprised by these v8.x releases. And here comes my tiny question: I found, that right now battles, scenarios or campaigns ending preliminary by certain victory conditions. I would like to have that condition 'to the bitter end' - till the last man is eradicated from the map. This feature 'search & destroy' would expand the game time and satisfying my subtle instincts. I know there was in SP'96 or in CC. When I can decide, my morale is rock-bottom, but I still can trigger the gun until the last bullet, or being god over enemies surrender proposal. Is that possible?

dismissed

Few things more. I re-encoded those two uncompressed iv.avi's intros to ffds.avi's, which saved 60mb. I tried the same with all those 600mb wave files, but it seems SP doesn't support mp3 sound effects, even with a riff-wav header, cbr or vbr, with an external decoder. It could save 500mb disk space. Then I saw, that all my Kraut troopers are ranked with U.S titles and collars. Its a bit absurd for me to see my SS-Obersturmfuehrer with Private Ryan stripes and rank. I tried to figure how to patch this, but then I thought, SP will not distinguish between nations army, marines, waffen-ss and so on. Also, some human voice samples to underline realism like soldier chatting, farting or crying. I did so in Worms, Soldiers at War and FarCry. The results are always funny and stunning, mostly spending more time with patching than with playing. A game worth playing is worth hacking. Then I saw these good old Amiga form-lbm's still alive and I think, they stay right there for nostalgic reasons.

Have some problems with the usage of Mozilla Firefox in this forum, must use IE.

ss.kettenhund

Whellcome [:D]

You'll might found your home, as some other grognards...anyway, your questions:

I would like to have that condition 'to the bitter end' - till the last man is eradicated from the map. This feature 'search & destroy' would expand the game time and satisfying my subtle instincts. I know there was in SP'96 or in CC. When I can decide, my morale is rock-bottom, but I still can trigger the gun until the last bullet, or being god over enemies surrender proposal. Is that possible?

It is possible, but it takes some further editing of the individual scens. So it goes to editing this baby. And once you start, you can't stop.

For the future: Engine ends battle when it counts that it don't have enough men/vehicles to conquer flag in remaining turns. Solution to quickend: one highvalued flag/VictoryHex, hidden from player and "amovable" AI_HQ is needed, might be that HQ's morale has to be raised also, above 120, and it keeps hacking remaining troops to fight. And when you notice these conditions are working, you'll change scenarios turns to 99. Remember to give little handicap to AI by giving her 2x more troops than you have, (or what is enough for you. This can be done in your random battles, exsisting scenarios are what "As-Is" in this matter.

This is short version of "how to start messing with editors". This whole forum has hundreds of topics just of editing, use "search"-option, fill in your keywords and after some cup of coffee you have answers.

What it comes to Firefox: I haven't use anything else in this forum (and anywhere) but Firefox. Check your preferences, and ask if it don't work. We have "Techhelp from gamers to gamers" forum, post there if something occurs in this matter.

hope this helps for the start

salute

mosh aka skukko

Mosh has answered well here. In designed scenarios, load it into the editor, put one objective flag in a corner of the map, make its value for twenty points, fix it so it won't even be visible till the last turn of the game. You should really do one for each side.

I've found through personal experience in my own design, this works over 85% of the time. If you need more info on how to do this, let me know.

Wild Bill