OT: looking for zovs66

[ErikCumps]

Hi,

My name is Erik Cumps, I am the creator of the War Cabinet tool.

I am looking for a "zovs66" who used to be registered on the tapatalk SP:WaW forum and who expressed an interest in adding support for winSPWW2 to my War Cabinet tool.

I wish to contact him, because I have some good news in that regard. :)

Best regards,
Erik

[zovs66]

Erik,

Sent you a private message.

Don

[ErikCumps]

Thanks Don,

I'll be in contact via mail shortly.

Erik

[lukerduker123]

So, if you don't mind me asking, what exactly is this War Cabinet? Got my curiosity here!

[zovs66]

I'll let Erik explain. Essentially it allows you to track stuff in a campaign game over time. You can also track stuff in scenarios. Its most usefulness I would think is tracking your core campaign forces status.

[ErikCumps]

Thanks for the quick introduction, Don! :)

From the README.txt:
Warcab is a tool to record and track battles in an SPWaW campaign, or to
record and track turns in standalone battles from scenarios. It is inspired
by Campaign Watcher.

Warcab tracks information for core units (including reassignments) during
a campaign. It also shows and tracks information for core, auxiliary and
opponent units during battles and battle turns.

Its current main missing features are data export and printing.

Also, and of some importance for this forum I expect, I have started work on adding support for winSPWW2 to warcab.
This work has progressed to the stage that an experimental proof-of-concept is available and that work has just started
on integrating that new code into the offical warcab application.

Finally, because pictures say more than words:
...apologies, the images are big...

Example dossier overview:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErikCumps/spwproject/master/info/screenshots/dossier_overview_20180926.png

Example dossier OOB roster:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErikCumps/spwproject/master/info/screenshots/dossier_oob_roster_20180926.png

Example unit history:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErikCumps/spwproject/master/info/screenshots/unit_history_promotion_20180926.png

Example battle overview:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErikCumps/spwproject/master/info/screenshots/battle_overview_20180926.png

Example battle turn strategic map:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErikCumps/spwproject/master/info/screenshots/turn_stratmap_20180926.png

Example dossier kills graph:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErikCumps/spwproject/master/info/screenshots/dossier_mmas_kills_20180926.png

More screenshots can be found here (https://github.com/ErikCumps/spwproject/blob/master/info/screenshots/LIST.md).

Erik

[lukerduker123]

So this only displays data for a campaign or scenario? Super useful, I have to admit! I saw the screenshots but figured it was sort of a 'bigger' thing, like the Men of War campaign bit where it was a strategic map where you could move units and fight out the battles as a scenario.

[zovs66]

No originally as Erik stated it was originally created for the other game and I asked him if it might work for WW2 and MBT. He said he'd take a look at some saved games and get back to me if it did. It does.

Essentially its just a fancy way of viewing your core force for a campaign over time, or for viewing how a large scenario played out (I am using this for a monster scenario to track things).

Here some screen shots from a recent German East Front (small 1890 points) CG I am running (been busy editing other things...):

https://i.imgur.com/Jma15iz.png

https://i.imgur.com/xd78k7V.png

https://i.imgur.com/yJKe1rA.png

https://i.imgur.com/AEfy9Ht.png

https://i.imgur.com/2cmHTYG.png

https://i.imgur.com/CEIrCgL.png

https://i.imgur.com/dEKfZyL.png

https://i.imgur.com/a1vS9xI.png

Pretty neat stuff, if you have more completed scenarios in a campaign game you'll get more results, I have only completed one battle thus far.

[DRG]

That is a really interesting program. In the last two ScreenShots, the map appears to show which side has control over specific sections?

[zovs66]

Yes that is correct, if you look closely you’ll see the check boxes I toggled on/off.

[DRG]

I did look closely that is why I asked it be confirmed.

How is that "frontline" determined?

Is this something that is reviewed after the game is completed or during?

[Kritkeen]

That looks awesome. I spent too much time on Excel sheets keeping track of my force turn by turn. I can't wait to try it when it is out.

[zovs66]

How is that "frontline" determined?

Is this something that is reviewed after the game is completed or during?

I can't answer the details on how it's done (don't know), but it is calculated per turn or per saved loaded up.

[ErikCumps]

No hard game data is used for the influence calculation, it is not as such recorded in the savegame.
At least not that I know. If it was in there I would have used it.

Instead it's a very simple heuristic where for each hex a blue and red influence value is calculated and the highest value wins.

Each blue and red unit contributes to the total blue and red influence value, with modifiers for distance, unit readiness
and relative height difference.

The frontline is basically the edge between the blue and red influence zones.

As I said it is caluclated based on data in the savegame:
the battle does not have to be concluded, nor do you need savegames for all the turns of the battle.

[zovs66]

What is neat, I think I did this in the past (but been busy lately) is to create a small CG, save it, and then save several turns for each battle, so for example saving 5 turns in battle one, you can click on the strategic map thing and see the progress, but its all coding magic to me I live my trial and error so in my examples I'll see differences in each saved turn, I think.

[ErikCumps]

Yep, that's the idea.

With a savegame for each turn of a battle, it becomes possible to track the progress of the battle turn by turn:


By looking at the different 'Turn' tabs turn by turn.
You can use the green left/right arrows at the top, or the Ctrl+PgUp/Ctrl+PgDown shortcut keys,
to move from one turn to the next (or back). This works especially well for the 'Strategic map', I think.



But on another level, the 'Battle' tab, having savegames for each turn gives much more depth
to the battle unit history and MMAS tabs.

[ErikCumps]

Quick note: unit readiness is also a synthetic value, there is no such thing in the savegame data.

The calculation of the unit readiness is based on:

/*
* A unit's readiness is influenced by:
* damage more damage means less readiness
* headcount less available effectives means less readiness
* suppression more suppression means less readiness
* abandonment means total loss of readiness (-100%)
* crew means significant reduction of readiness (-90%)
* status additional readiness reduction
*/


The suppression impact is calculated by deducting the unit's suppression from its morale: (morale - suppression) / morale.
The result is capped at zero, so that it cannot become negative.

[Imp]

Nice clear presentation Erik looks Ike a great little tool. Could use info easily to modify game play slightly if wanted.
Make up some new victory conditions & in a campaign keep track of damaged vehicles if you wanted to delay replacing destroyed/heavily damaged ones by a battle or to.
Look forward to having a play with it.

[kingbowl]

this is cool i hope in the future for the games winspmbt and winww2 is ready

[MarkSheppard]

Question for ErikCumps:

How does SP store the scenario data; I know it's very compressed; are there areas of compressed data, followed by uncompressed "Pointer" data?

Reason I ask is that I have the code for Fred Chlanda's old SP1 to WW2 conversion program and it may be possible to make a conversion program to convert old SP1 and SP2 stuff (eventually) to modern format.

[ErikCumps]

Hi Mark,

The savegame data is stored in multiple blocks, some compressed and some not.

This comment from my source code explains it quite well, I think:

/* This is the SPWaW/winSPWW2 savegame file format:
*
* A savegame is a contiguous set of several data blocks.
*
* The first data block is the game info section.
* This is a fixed-size data block containing the savegame marker.
* (which is currently "SPWAW_SAVE_V101"/"SPCTS_SAVE_V100" for SPWaW/winSPWW2)
*
* The other data blocks contain the savegame section data.
*
* Each data block consists of:
* a data block header
* the section data.
*
* The fixed-size data block header describes the section data that follows:
* the identification number of the section
* the size of the section data
* a flag indicating if the section data is compressed or not
*
* Uncompressed section data can be loaded as-is.
*
* Compressed section data must be decompressed after loading.
* The actual size of the section data will be larger than the size of the section data in the file.
*/

/* This is the SPWaW/winSPWW2 section data compression format:
*
* Compressed section data is a contiguous set of run-length coded data blocks.
*
* There are two types of run-length coded data blocks:
* uncompressed run-length coded data (URLC)
* compressed run-length coded data (CRLC)
*
* Each run-length coded data block consists of:
* a run-length coding byte (RLB)
* one or more data bytes
*
* A compressed run-length coded data block is used to for sequences of identical data bytes:
* the RLB indicates the number of identical data bytes (N)
* the RLB is followed by a single data byte (B)
* the decompressed data is the sequence of N times the data byte B
*
* An uncompressed run-length coded data block is used for sequences of data bytes with mixed values:
* the RLB indicates the number of data bytes that follow (N)
* there is at least 1 and maximum 127 data bytes
* the N data bytes can be copied as-is
*/


The concrete block header layout for winSPWW2 is this:

#pragma pack(push, r1, 1)
typedef struct s_BLOCKHEAD_WINSPWW2 {
unsigned int section;
unsigned int size;
unsigned char flag;
} BLOCKHEAD_WINSPWW2;
#pragma pack(pop, r1)


If the 'flag' value is 0, the section data is NOT compressed.
If the 'flag' value is 1, the section data IS compressed.

Note: the two #pragma's you see are not part of the actual data layout, they are just hints to the compiler that it should respect the data layout as is and not insert additional padding between fields.

Hope this helps,
Erik

[Second-Maître Laurent]

Hi Erik

Is Warcab work for SPWW2?

For I'm playing Omaha Beach Scen. (Scen #9) and I'm on turn 16. At this point, it's a mess and I want to point my units, as in the unit menu, on a printed sheet. For, for me, it would be more convenient than to read it on the screen.
I know I'm quiet weird, but that's my way to doing things: I'm from the paper generation yet