winSPMBT V11.01 upgrade for 2017

[DRG]

Version 11.01 NOW AVAILABLE

( further information at the end of this post )




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As usual, we remind everyone that ongoing secure PBEM games WILL fail when a new patch is applied while they are being played.

WinSPMBT version 11.01 Upgrade patch

15 New Scenarios
6 Revised Scenarios
10 New or Revised Map files
77 New or Revised Photos
176 New or Revised vehicle / aircraft Icons
93 Updated OOB Files ** all revised in Ver 11.01
138 New or Revised Icon and Terrain Graphic files
6 New or Revised Text files
2 Revised picklist files
18 New or Revised sound files
10 Revised terrains
7 New terrains
updated cost calculator ver 11.01


There was a bug showing when off map batteries that were due to arrive later as reinforcements but the scenario designer had programmed them to fire in turn 0 pre-game bombardment that caused phantom fire missions. This has been fixed. Off map artillery that are plotted to fire before they arrive now properly clear down the illegal fire mission instead.

A bug whereby the early end of battle routine in a PBEM campaign was not engaging correctly and games that should have ended went on even when there was no enemy activity has been fixed.

Map sizes now increment/decrements by 5 hex increments, not 10 as before giving players more control over map size

The "phantom crews" bug in long campaigns has been fixed

A bug where the wrong observer may be used as the basis for scatter when the observer was retreating or worse was fixed.

The function to recombine split off crew with their vehicles (usually caused by loading the vehicle onto a cargo plane and then unloading again) had been inadvertently removed from the code. The "j" key functionality is restored to the deployment screen so if you have loaded a vehicle into a heavy air transport aircraft for a para drop. You can now unload it during the deployment phase for whatever reason and you can now re-join the crew and vehicle by pressing 'j' ( for "join" ). Previously you had no choice but to leave it behind

A scenario info button to the game play screen, this is helpful if you have forgotten what battle you were fighting or need to know the scenario battle location ( batloc # ) once the game is underway. Previously there was no way to know which map your battle was on after the game had commenced. Helpful if you like the map and want to generate a similar one again using the same batloc #.

HEAT and HESH guns had stopped firing reaction fire at infantry at <1000m or so due to a knock off effect when we coded for NLOS ATGM. This has now been corrected.

Long range SAMs with extremely long minimum ranges were not engaging incoming aircraft or those that were performing a stand-off attack. This has now been fixed. SAM minimum range is now irrelevant for a stand-off attack (that includes entry onto map). However these very long minimum range SAMs will not fire on the surviving planes as they then move across the map only upon entry and in stand-off attacks.

Post 2014, "What-If" battles involving NATO nations versus Russia will be in the Baltics

Any nation that signed the Ottawa land mine treaty will no longer be able to purchase and place mines in defence after 1999. Additionally, any nation that signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions will no longer have cluster munition weapons in their game OOB's after the date that nation put the convention ban into effect. Depending on the nation that could currently be any time between 2010 and 2016 as there is a wide range of dates the various nations covered by the game have put the convention into effect. Conversely any nation that IS NOT a signatory to the Ottawa Treaty will still be able to purchase and place mines in a defensive battle and any nation that DID NOT sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions will still have access to cluster munitions in the game. Hopefully that explanation will cut down on the amount of erroneous "bug" reports.

Units which manually turn to face a new hex may now draw opfire. This affects both infantry and vehicles at different ranges and there are random variables we tossed in to make in unpredictable but generally ( and the randoms we added really do mean "generally" ) in hex infantry movement could possibly attract opfire from enemy units up to 3 -5 hexes away (generally...). Vehicles shifting hull or turrets around could attract opfire from enemy units up to 10 hexes away ( and maybe a bit more... ). And all that depends on the enemy's training , morale, suppression level, vision rating and battle visibility etc. AS WELL AS your units training , morale, suppression level, visibility etc.. This new game feature was originally intended to stop players from turning their tanks in place to present their heaviest armour towards the most likely threat without attracting enemy attention. That was expanded to include swinging the turret as obviously that kind of movement if spotted by the enemy would naturally draw fire in a real battle situation and then that was expanded to include infantry as well. The bottom line is if you just want to "look around" to check your LOS use the } hotkey otherwise you risk drawing unwanted attention to your unit .

Players should see a reduction in the number of cases where ERA defeats large aircraft launched anti tank missiles.

There were very rare cases when palm trees were generated on winter maps and we *think* this is now fixed

26 pages of OOB suggestions were integrated into the game OOB's

Info on revised terrains for 2017

After a hiatus of many years we added more terrain and revised to varying degrees some of the old ones. All terrain will show up on generated maps at one time or another but this year only CD owners will have access to edit the new terrain and we have added new way to edit them into maps

Here's a list of revised terrain. The list of new terrains are in the New for CD holders section below

• Summer trees are totally redone and more have been added to the base set
  
• Ground level grass
  
• Beach Sand has been totally redone ground level and hills
  
• Autumn trees have been reworked a bit so they aren't as colourful
  
• Winter trees have been reworked a bit as well. Not as much as the summer set but they have had a touch up
  
• Summer, Autumn and Winter orchards have been reworked to make them a bit denser than before.
  
• What was "winter grass" in the game is now "very light snow" because there is a new "light snow" set ( see below )
  
• Short dry grass set has been totally redone ground level and hills
  
• Impassible terrain has been totally redone ground level and hills
  
• The green crop set has been totally redone ground level and hills

NEW for the extended CD version holders only

* The DLLs that Scenhack uses to sort scenarios have been included with this patch for the vast majority of players who don't have Borland Paradox installed on their Hard Drives for over a decade (and why we forgot everyone else needs them too )

* CD / extended version holders will now get a warning message if they try to enter a building hex with a vehicle. You are now asked to confirm that you really want to do that. This is to stop you from inadvertently immobilising yourself as most cases involving building entry with vehicles is the result of a too long movement call through an urban built up area. The feature will also display on rough+slope combinations if you have travelled 3 or more hexes and thus are in danger of sticking. It's just a "friendly reminder."

* SAM and AAA will tend to save shots on low-probability to hit shots. Especially against Spotters (inc UAV) with less than about a 20% chance, other fliers at about 10%. AAA guns will hold fire at longer ranges (>1 KM) if to hit is under about 10% and wait for a better shot. This applies only to CD owners.

* We have introduced a new Formation sorting routine for the premium game. Over all the years these games have been developed, unit classes have expanded as required, but there was no logical order to the expansion as they were added on a need-it-now basis so the different infantry, armour and artillery unit classes that were used to build formations were spread all over the 256 unit class slots available and this meant that in some cases when buying formations you had to search though multiple pages of formations to find the ones you wanted. The new routine in place for CD holders only helps group unit types together and in a more intuitive and logical way. The caveat to that is that when sorting formations by unit class the unit class of the formation is still determined by the first unit in the formation and there is really no getting around that.

For example. with this new routine if you go into the artillery page you will generally find that Forward observers are the first formations listed then generally if there is consistency to the first unit in the formation you will find the light mortars, then the medium mortars then the heavy mortars then the AT guns, then the Hvy AT guns through field guns into rocket formations, off map guns and finally AA guns. Again...its all determined by the first unit in the formation but in the past ( and the free game will still use the original method ) you may have had a one type of infantry company with unitclass #1 infantry as the first unit but the second type of infantry company may have had a unitclass # 64 Medium Infantry unit leading to in some cases a dogs breakfast of the sort order. A good example of that was the winSPMBT Russian OOB in the years that the T-55 and T-62 unitclass #13" medium" tanks were active along with the T-64 and up unitclass #59 "MBT" formations but the lower end Mediums were on page one and the higher end MBT's were on page 2. With this they are all grouped on page one and we think this will help bring a bit more order to the game

* A new button has been added to the main screen that allows access to the premium map editor from inside the game


Info on new terrains added for 2017

* There is a new "scrub grass" ground and hills set in dark brown tones for ground and hill levels that would be useful on maps between November and March but also as an accent on any map type. In the map editor this can be accessed from the "add short grass" button which is on page 2 of the editor to the right of the add trench button. You will be prompted to " Press 1 for regular grass, 2 for scrub grass "

* There is a new bare field ground and hills set that represents either a freshly planted field or a freshly harvested one. These are also handy as a base for any orchard type. In the map editor this can be accessed from the green crop button. You will be prompted "Press 1 for Crops, 2 for Tilled "

* There is a new "light snow" ground and hills set that will show up in the game in place of the old "winter grass" which is now called " very light snow". The new "light snow" is used by the game as a base tile over which winter trees are placed. It can be accessed only on winter maps from the button on page one directly under trees. You will be prompted "Press 1 for light snow, 2 for very light snow"

* There are now pure coniferous sets for summer and winter and those will be auto-generated on maps. These represent "old growth" pine forests and have additional movement and sighting restrictions above regular mixed forests. This can be accessed from the Trees button and you will be prompted "Press 1 for mixed Trees, 2 for Pines "

* There are also new vineyards and coconut plantations/ groves for use in map making and these are also placed in small amounts on game generated maps. In the map editor this can be accessed from the Orchards button and you will be prompted "Press 1 for orchard, 2 for Vineyard, 3 for Coconut Grove "

* Deep water has been added ( ground level only naturally ). It is a very subtle change as it had to be . The water animation palette is fixed and not very big which limited my options and after two failed experiments I settled on what we have now as a compromise but as I said....it's subtle but sometimes subtle is best. The game palette was tweaked a bit to brighten up water....it's a bit more " Mediterranean" or "South Pacific" blue now.........a little less " dreary November " grey-blue.

We have also added an exciting new way to apply terrain to the map

Previous to this release the "Fill range" and "Fill" functions in the map editor were mainly used to flood and entire map with a base terrain that would follow the contours already on the map. If you tried to fill less area it placed whatever terrain you chose to use as a giant Hex shape block of terrain that was virtually useless for making maps so as a general rule anyone making a map avoided that control unless they were "skinning" and entire map. We have added a new dimension to the fill range controls that expands it's usefulness 10 fold or more

Now when pressing "Fill range" Extended game ( CD ) owners will see the following prompts:

First you will see "New Fill Range: " and you can enter any number you like. 255 will fill and entire map but you can choose any amount . After entering the number of hexes you wish to place your terrain onto the map, this new message will appear: "Enter 0 for Block fill, or 1-90 for a Splatter Effect ". "0 for Block fill" will give you what this feature has always given... a solid mass of terrain but entering 1-90 for a Splatter Effect controls what percentage is covered in the area you selected. Enter a high number and it will fill to that amount, Enter a low number and you have a much finer control over how much is placed on the map allowing you to build terrain gradually. It can almost be thought of as a spray gun. It is very useful when building up a forested area or when starting a map off after building the hill contours if you want to blend different types of grass.

AS WELL ( yes.... there's more ! and to anyone who builds maps this will be huge ) we have changed old SSI function of "right clicking" the mouse to add 7 hex clusters of terrain to the map at a time. Left clicking the mouse button will still give you single hex fine control but now right clicking the mouse utilises the same function as fill range so whatever range and density you have set you can now add by clicking the right mouse button. If you want to use it the "traditional" way simply set the range to 2 and 0 for Block fill and it will behave as it always has but now you can set whatever range you want to control the size of the fill but you can also adjust the splatter effect which GREATLY enhances the usefulness of the tool so adding terrain becomes quick and easy reducing the time it use to take to hand build a map by many hours..

This new tool has many uses but one thing you really want to avoid is mixing contrasting terrains together too much. A little is OK but it really depends on what you are mixing as too much is very distracting and can totally camouflage any contours on the map. What it's ideal for is blending similar colour densities together or placing forest. you can also use it to place hills but even a fast computer will take a few seconds to compute everything and place it on on a full sized map so be patient at first as slower computers may take a little longer to complete the command. We are after all, asking a 20 year old game to do a lot more than it used to but it will with sometimes spectacular results. I help design the feature and I'm still finding new ways to use it. We look forward to seeing the maps players design with this new feature.


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EDIT.... MARCH 31/ 2017

A revised 11.01 version of this year's patch was released March 31. 2017. It was necessary to do this because this was a year we were pressing a new CD version for BOTH GAMES as well as releasing patches for both and after the 11.0 version was released we discovered a couple of glaring OOB errors and that the cost calculator was not working correctly for perhaps 5% of the units in the games......the problem is between both games 5% of the units is about 2400 units so we corrected both winSPMBT and winSPWW2 for the CD's and that meant we had to issue an updated 2017 patch once the CD's started being shipped so everyone's OOB's match for secure PBEM.

Anyone who DL'd the early March Ver 11.0 should also DL this new Ver 11.01 version. When installed and the game starts you will see the new 11.01 version number at the bottom of the screen


We regret that this had to be done....but it had to be done

More detailed PR HERE

Don