Question: How Did the SSI to The Camo Workshop Come to Be?

[davidshq]

Hi,

This is kind of an arcane question, but, how did the transfer of SSI source code from SSI to The Camo Workshop come to be? And how did there come to be two branches of SP? That from The Camo Workshop and that from Matrix Games?

I'm just an inquisitive fella.

Dave

[DRG]

The only way to answer that completely gets me discussing issues that are 15 years in the past and serves little purpose at this time to do anything other than raise my blood pressure. if you have any skill at reading between the lines read the development history in the game guide.

The, short, clean, happy version is in the Fall of 1997 ( corrected from 1998 in the original ) I started PBEMing SP2 with a guy in Italy named Piero Angeli . This was the post SP3 disappointment and we started discussing how it would be nice to play the 50 meter hex WW2 with the added features like the extra units and the better artillery routine....... months past, a few others named in the GG joined in , work was done..... the World Cup interfered then was over and eventually in August 1998 Andy joined us to sort out the OOB....... he had created MOBHack and was familiar with what we needed ( and WE ALL THOUGHT THIS WOULD LAST 6 MONTHS AND BE DONE .....CAN'T Y0U JUST FEEL THE IRONY )

From there you can read the development history in the game guide. The first release SP2WW2 was an add on to SP2 with a Hex Edited EXE. In 1999 we co-shared the code ( but had no direct control over ) that had been aquaired by the Gamers Net with their staff. Long story short and I'm REALLY trying to be polite..... it wasn't a good "fit". We ( Andy and I ) knew where we wanted the game to go but other people had other ideas and after SPWW2 DOS Version 2.0 was released we were "told" that future development was going to be on the SP3 engine so we went from the originators to a side show and that was that.

Again... long story short there were "negotiations" and we ended up with un-fettered access to the SP2 code and Andy tucked into that like a terrier after a rabbit ( he had been an uncredited playtester for SP3 ) and that ended any secondary sources making changes we didn't want. EVERYTHING that had been coded or added into V2 was re-coded by Andy and that became Dos V2.2 then V3 was released in July 2000 with 15 leves of terrain and a HOST of other improvements then around that time.. not sure when but I think it was late fall but I could be wrong... "the other game" was released and we went our way and are still developing the game, and they went theirs and here we are today and we are about three weeks from releasing another upgrade to the game(s). ( because we decided we didn't have enough aggravation in our lives so we expanded SP to 92 nations and the date range to 2020 and created SPMBT )

[davidshq]

Thanks for the summary! I apologize, I didn't mean to raise any blood pressure levels!

[Pibwl]

Thanks for an interesting story.

In the same 1998 I started to correct SP1 and SP2 OOBs and pictures on my own, and now I'm pestering Don...

[MarkSheppard]

Through sleuthing, I managed to find a copy of the original SP2WW2 that started it all; and here goes:





No Campaigns, no nothing; just the "Raiders ride to work" scenario; and a near complete conversion of all the OB data from SP1 to SP2.

[DRG]

It doesn't sound like much now but it let people play ww2 especially PBEM with the added units / formations of SP2 and the more advanced SP2 artillery routines and trust me NOBODY and I mean NOBODY expected to be STILL updating the game as a full windows version in 2015 with a couple dozen updates behind it..... that would have been crazy talk.. complete and utter insanity

Don

[ERISS]

Originally Posted by DRG

NOBODY expected to be STILL updating the game as a full windows version in 2015 with a couple dozen updates behind it... that would have been crazy talk... complete and utter insanity
Don

Thank for your madness

[Paderborn]

Fascinating chronology of the battle-scarred path to the wonderful games we enjoy today in the form of winSPMBT and winSPWW2. As a reminder of what was, and thankfully what is no longer-I keep the various SSI games I've owned and played on a bookshelf in line-of-sight of my game computer with the winSPMBT and CD winWWII game installations. Thank you guys for all you've done to make these games so enjoyable and equally important-playable!

[MarkSheppard]

And before that; SPCAMO workshop got it's name from the repaints

SP2:

Original SSI Art:


SPCAMO Green SHP Repaint

[DRG]

Crude now but a big change to the game at the time and I really started doing that as experiments to see how to work with the game palette and mapping the Icon locations for the ww2 changeover