2024 Game Updates
 

Some of you may have been wondering why there has not been any info on this year's updates

It's complicated and involves personal issues for both of us. We weren't exactly young when we started doing this in 1998 now add 26 years on to that. There were years when we had released two updates per year. Those days are long over

What I can tell you now is we will not be issuing this year's updates for both games together as has been SOP in the past

We HOPE to have the final release for winSPWW2 ready by the end of April 2024 and we HOPE to have the final release for winSPMBT ready before Christmas 2024

That is all the info I can provide for anyone at this time

Re: 2024 Game Updates
 

FYI.........." before Christmas 2024" is not going to happen

My apologies for not updating this sooner. I forgot I had said before Christmas and there is no way that is going to happen.

Perhaps sometime late winter early spring 2025..... MAYBE


UPDATE May29th/2025....... more realistic ( and that may change.....It's not just me.... Andy is having a battle with health issues right now as well ) first quarter of 2026 for the final MBT update MAYBE

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I thought I would slip this in this thread

I figuired this factoid out on a whim

I started working on what became SP2ww2 at the beginning of January 1998. Andy started August 1998 and over time that work morphed into the two mods featured here.

Jan 1998 the world population was 5,875,688,329

Today it's 8,202,999,400 ( and counting...)

So we have been working on this game longer than 2.3 BILLION people have been alive :eek:

And just for more giggles it took all of recorded history up to 1927/1928 for the world population to reach 2.3 Billion

:D

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Sounds like you've been double timing it for some time. That's a 200% effort. That's a mighty impressive contribution to wargaming. My thanks go out to you both, you and Andy.

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I was 15 when the game became available. I remember cutting grass all that afternoon and trying to push that mower along even faster so I could get inside to download it, which took a couple hours IIRC.

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Was it SP2WW2?

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Yes, with the scenario "The Raiders Ride to Work" or something? Each tank unit had the name of people involved with the Wargamer.

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OK.... Then you are almost the age now that I was then

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Speaking of that past, is Ed Mortimer still around?

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I have no idea. I have not communicated with him since we ended the DOS version updates and started work on the windows version. I think he wandered over to Matrix but in what capacity IDK

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I was fourteen when I first started playing this game. I turned twenty-nine last week so I'm not nearly as old as everyone else, but it feels kinda bittersweet seeing the game finally wrapping up. It's been a long, LONG ride, but it's been real fun. I hope this game continues to get enjoyed far into the future -- it scratches an itch nothing else can.

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I can't assume everyone looks at the MBT Thread so, I've "cut and pasted" Dons latest post from there to here knowing most are focused on this Thread at this time.

I wish the news could be better...

From MBT Thread Post #1935

"Guys

On january 13 slipped and fell on ice in my backyard. It was sudden and I KNEW I Had hurt myself as soon as I hit the ground
AS A result I do not know if I am capable of moving forward with the games and ASSEMBLING.THE PATCHES HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY RESPONSIBILITY[/b]...only time will tell but I May not be able to carry on and I am just putting EVERYONE on notice about that my ONE HOPE is that I start gettin better soon

Don"

I leave you with your thoughts for his family and more importantly Dons health and full recovery.

Regards,
Pat
:capt:

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Can someone please help me?. I am trying to create an 89x89
pink square and no matter what I try to enter into the shp file list I keep drawing a blank

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:d :d :d

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I'm dead Serious I need help remembering how to do this I hav e had a serious head injury and if I do not get assistance the MBT patch is dead in the water

Re: 2024 Game Updates
 

Dear Don;

Sorry for taking so long to get around to this. I've been a bit distracted/busy.

How are you holding up?

Can someone please help me?. I am trying to create an 89x89 pink square and no matter what I try to enter into the shp file list I keep drawing a blank

Are you trying to make a transparent square or a pink-ish square?

There is a specific color that is designated "transparent" by the game code; it's pink-ish in color.

The exact value of this transparent color is:

#ffe6e6 (HTML code to cut and paste into Paint Shop Pro Color Picker)

R: 255
G: 230
B: 230
H: 255
S: 255
L: 243

ANYTHING THIS COLOR WILL BE TREATED AS TRANSPARENT (BLANK) BY THE GAME CODE

If you're trying to add a transparent bitmap into an existing SHP file using SHPEd, I can walk you through this process tomorrow.

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Thanks Mark but I had my eureka moment about this a week ago....... all good now but I was trying to create a standard transparent pink 89x89 Icon square and striking out........then the light came on


https://forum.shrapnelgames.com/atta...1&d=1743556401

I would advise anyone to avoid head injuries....... it is a PITA -------It took me two weeks to figure out how to do what I had been doing for 27 years

Don

Re: 2024 Game Updates
 

I had a major stroke in 2016. I lived, so there's that, but recovering from a brain injury isn't like any other injury. First off, the brain doesn't hurt, so you don't know what's knocked out of kilter until you try to use it and it doesn't work. Nine years later, I still stumble over things I know I knew, until I get a clue, and I, too, have those EUREKA moments. Don't ever try to rush brain healing. The skull is a bone, the brain isn't. I asked my nervous doctor if these episodes were remnants of the stroke or old age creeping in. He told me to assume both.

I wish you well and sincerely hope you didn't get as knocked about as that stroke worked on me. I read the first few posts in this string when it was posted, but never wanted to know if people were badgering the update to hurry, so I just now saw this old January news. Be well, and celebrate every day. That's the gravy of every brain injury, every day.

You give good advice. Don't get a brain injury. I might add, skip shingles too, and if you are married, try to avoid the Clap. That would be the only time it turns fatal.

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Thanks. Glad you survived your stroke, The "little" one I had in 2015 only messed me up for about a month.

I am getting better, I felled a dead tree yesterday with a chainsaw and dropped it within inches of where I wanted it to fall. I know trying that 2 months ago would have been foolish (stupid actually).There are still days I struggle with things that not long ago I did not think twice about which can be incredibly frustrating but I know I am making progress more often forward and much less often backward but this one was something that initially I got up from where I slipped on the ice, made sure nothing obviously was broken and continued on for over a month before I had to admit "something was wrong". Recovering from this has been harder that recovering from the open heart surgery then the "small" stroke a month later.

I would like to meet the clown who came up with "the golden years" for old age and introduce his nuts to my foot.

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We are quite the survivor's group here.

While I did not have a stroke I did have a widowmaker heart attack with a 13% chance of survivability back on August 20th 2023. Here I am almost two years later, 70 pounds lighter and surprisingly healthier then I have ever been I think (mind, body and spirit).

I think that those of us that have faced and escaped an early death have a much different perspective on life then what others and ourselves once had. Doing our best to not take for granted those that love us (we we them) and spending as much time with them as possible. Work just is not that important anymore and games are just a nice distraction, but the really important things are what really matter in the end.

I am getting closer to my sixtieth year of existence and noticing a lot of friends and family are passing on before me, my mother passed in 2020, but my father is still ticking at 87 years old, I hope he sees 90 and maybe even 95, his mother lived to be 102.

God bless you all and love those near and dear to you.

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Old age isn't for sissies.

Regards, Warwick

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I don't see this game as a distraction. After my stroke, I used it as a learning tool, building the largest maps from the start, then putting together extensive scenarios based somewhat on a reality of some point in time. It was great therapy to rehab my longer-term thinking and memory skills. I was a semi-competitive she's player at one time. I never went to a ranking, but I played ranked players. I gave that up eons ago, but I just couldn't see playing a computer to try to bring those skills back, and since I've played Steel Panthers since the original 24-piece game and followed the upgrades through all of the DOS, the Windows versions, so I chose to stick with that I could recall the basics and the manual is much easier to understand if your prior knowledge is low-level.

It's still extremely hard for me to play a scenario I didn't design. My brain just refuses to look at an OOB on a roster and translate that information onto an existing mapboard. The units become all jumbled and the rally function becomes a crap shoot. Campaigns fall by the wayside as I can't quite relate pieces of the same units to each other, so decimation of every coy and company is quite normal and hard on moving on to the next scenario.

But if I put things together on my own, my memory processes very well, so I'm content. Considering I had to relearn to read and keyboard, SPMBT was a huge re-learning tool.

I'm 72 and have retired multiple times. But I've only seen what dying is like once. It does mature a fellow's thinking. I don't want to stress over things I have no control over, and I want to wake up early every day so I miss no time in our woods. I rarely consider any time wasted, but I do consider some activities and people a waste of my time, so I filter much better than before. I know I'll never be 23 and freshly discharged from the Army again, ready to take on the world. But I also know I don't need to cram living into living. Life is a good thing to have.

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We're the same age and in some ways gone through the exact same issues

I did what would have been a 10 min job moving Icons from SPWW2 to SPMBT but today practically every step needed thinking through but I got it done but it took me 4 times longer than it would have 6 months ago but the real test will be doing it again in a week or so to see if the memory of how I did it stays...... or I have to relearn it

That said, Andy and I are both recovering from our own separate issues but we have discussed this and we are going to enjoy this summer off and will start preliminary (baby steps ) work on the MBT patch and MAYBE a mini update of WW2 in early October and really put a full effort in November and HOPEFULLY have something to release early December 2025.

For now..... that's "The Plan"

Don