Two Items: Line of Sight and movement

MemoryLeak · #1 July 29th, 2008, 06:11 PM

Hi,

I am new to SPWW2. I have played Wargames for 50 years and the closest to SPWW2 would be SPWAW. Line of sight seems too extended and through solid objects. My units can see 40 hexes and through forests. In SPWAW you are not able to do this. Is this a bug? And when you click on a unit with the intention of moving it sometimes the unit movement range is not highlighted and some times it is. I found out by accident that if you click on the reduce suppresion button you regain some movement but the range is still not highlighted until you move one hex and then the remaining movement range is highlighted. I am playing the long campaign. And the 40 hex visibilty is really unrealistic. I am patched to v3.0
While I am asking I might as well throw in a third question. I see that v7 is advertised on the Shrapnel website but I don't see any patches for that. Is taht a commercial version only?
Thank you for any clarification you can provide. I did try a search for line-of-sight but I got a lot of weird replies.

Mobhack · #2 July 30th, 2008, 02:58 AM

1) I would love to see a 40 hex LOS through forests. Please point me out an example of this, and I'll see what is wrong.

Though you can see up to 2-3 or so hexes into forests in high-visibility maps - more into orchards which are less dense. SP maps have always been so, in that LOS penetrates further into cover the higher the visibility setting for the map is. But never 40 hexes, not even in MBT with thermal imaging.

2) The move radius is only shown when you first select a unit. Should you rally that unit, thus regaining some MP - it will not redraw the highlighted area. It will only update on a redraw event triggered by movement or if you select some other unit and move back. It probably never has ever redrawn itself after a rally, as the code for that routine will be the basic SP1/2 stuff. It also gets highly confused by mixed water/land/bridge possibilities, and still does even after some remedial work was done a few years ago by us. So it is (and never has been) anything other than a rough planning guide to what's available, possibly of some use to beginners though?.

(I must admit I turned that feature off after the first game of SP1 I played back in whenever - 1997? - and have never used it since. I prefer my map to be in natural lighting, and not some sort of "LOS shadow" fog effect)

3) What version 7 is advertised on the Shrapnel website, and where?.

The old MSDOS game had reached 7.01, but is of course no longer supported - as being redundant after the port to windows. Hence the change of name to WinSPWW2 v1.0 after the DOS SPWW2 v7.01.

See the Game Guide "Development History" section - the old MSDOS versions are listed after the Win versions, and the details of the changes in reverse order in there under the "What was New for Version X.X" headings, back to 3.0.

Cheers
Andy

reverend · #3 July 30th, 2008, 06:31 AM

You can also just select the unit again after rallying and the movement radius will be displayed. I think the 'u' key does the same, since it redraws all highlighted hexes.

Pyros · #4 July 30th, 2008, 01:23 PM

Quote:

MemoryLeak said:
Hi,

I am new to SPWW2.

Welcome

Quote:

MemoryLeak said: Line of sight seems too extended and through solid objects. My units can see 40 hexes and through forests. In SPWAW you are not able to do this. Is this a bug?

Check your elevation.

One of the differences between those two games is the elevation factor.
WinSPWW2 has 5 times more elevation levels than SPWAW and this gives you a more complicated line of sight model.
Also as Andy told you there are times that high visibility will give you the ability to see through 1-2 forest hexes.

cheers,

MemoryLeak · #5 July 30th, 2008, 02:05 PM

MemoryLeak · #6 July 30th, 2008, 02:13 PM

Hi,

First of all I would like to say thanks for the replies. It may be the elevation factor. I am in the second scenario of the long campaign with me being Germany and Computer is Poland. First scenario was 40 hex visibility and current scenario is 35 hexes. I get shot at from clear across the map, including through trees. Makes it very difficult to move. If I knew how to send you an example of the map I would do it.
The movement is a little awkward(relax, I'm not knocking the game, just making an observation) because, yes I do like to know how far a unit can move using the highlighted hexes.
I did a screen shot of the SP:WW2 v7 which displays when you first access shrapnelgames.com but I don't really know how to display that here. It says "New in SP:WW2 v7" on home page right near the top.

DRG · #7 July 30th, 2008, 03:18 PM

Quote:

First of all I would like to say thanks for the replies. It may be the elevation factor. I am in the second scenario of the long campaign with me being Germany and Computer is Poland. First scenario was 40 hex visibility and current scenario is 35 hexes. I get shot at from clear across the map, including through trees. Makes it very difficult to move. If I knew how to send you an example of the map I would do it.

Check the save slot where you have this saved then go to the "Save Game" folder and select the .CMT and .DAT file for that save slot ( for example you would need SpSv012.dat and SpSv012.cmt if slot 12 was your save slot ) then zip them up and attached them to your next post. You do this by clicking on "Preview reply" then follow the instructions on attaching a save file where it says "You may attach a file if you like (no bigger than 30000000 bytes please"

Quote:

I did a screen shot of the SP:WW2 v7 which displays when you first access shrapnelgames.com but I don't really know how to display that here. It says "New in SP:WW2 v7" on home page right near the top.

That's the old DOS game. Ignore it. I will look into having that removed. You can attach a JPG of that screen shot you took in a separate post the same way as described above becasue I have been unable to locate it

Don

MemoryLeak · #8 July 30th, 2008, 06:00 PM

Here is the zip file with the screen shot referring to SPWW2 v7

MemoryLeak · #9 July 30th, 2008, 06:05 PM

And here is an attempt to place the two saved game files into this post.

DRG · #10 July 31st, 2008, 12:58 AM

Quote:

MemoryLeak said:
Here is the zip file with the screen shot referring to SPWW2 v7

The page is in the archives but we have no idea how you found a link to it. In any event, these old archive pages will not be moved to the new server when the site is upgraded and that will be very soon.

Don