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When SSI's Steel
Panthers II:Modern battles (SP2) was originally released, there was no OOB
editor available for this. Andy Gailey produced the original Mobhack
editor for SP2 to allow end users to modify the game database. As a result
of this, Andy was asked to become a beta-tester for SSI's Steel Panthers
III which was a brigade-level version of the Steel Panthers system.
Meanwhile Don Goodbrand had figured out how to modify the game graphics
with the help of Fred Chlandla's SHPEDIT utility, and produced sets of
"Camo" mods for SP2 which replaced the original SSI units in
electric blue, mud brown and olive green with realistic camouflaged
graphics.
Both of us were
more interested in the World War 2 time frame, but unfortunately the
original SP1 WW2 game had not been upgraded to the new SP2 engine. SP1 was
limited to only 48 units a side whereas SP2 allowed 100, for example. SP2
had the PBEM replay, and SP1 did not. Our original game, SP2WW2, first was
conceived in early 1998 and developed and released in December of that
year. It was a simple mod to SP2 and was aimed at making that system
handle WW2 so we could utilise the advances in the SP2 engine over the
original SP1. It was based mainly on Don's artwork, some hex-editing of
the original SP2 EXE and OOB data provided via Mobhack, and some basic
scenarios.
SSI liked our mod
so much that the source code for SP2 was released to us, and so the SPWW2
project was started. We were no longer restricted to hacking into the EXE,
and the modification of the game engine commenced in earnest. SPMBT came
along in 2002 and it was a return to post-WW2 warfare but based on our
enhanced game engine.
Our main focus with
the game system has been in the improvement of the original graphics,
especially the maps, and the expansion of the unit data and force sizes,
with a lot of work done on the original extremely simplistic computer AI.
For a fuller account of the details - check out the release history
sections of the game at http://linetap.com/www/drg/SPCamo-4.htm. It's much
too much to list here!.
After releasing
eleven upgrades for SPWW2 and three for SPMBT over a five+ year time span
we now have the game system ported onto a Windows platform, thus
eliminating all the problems the old MSDOS game engine had - especially
for XP users. This conversion will hopefully ensure that the game system
will be available to be experienced for a long time to come.
We hope that you
enjoy playing the game as much as we have enjoyed creating it.
Don
Goodbrand, Andy Gailey
Producers/Programmers: winSPMBT
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